RETURN OF THE DOMINATOR?

Fearless prediction: There will be a Buffalo-Ottawa game in the nation's capital on Saturday night. That's right, the Bisons are in town to play the Lynx. Triple-A baseball, you gotta love it.

As for Game 5 between the Sabres and Sens, it's 80-20 that the series comes back to Canada. The Senators will stretch this torture out for their stuck-in-denial fans.

The Ottawa Sun is reporting that Dominik Hasek is practising again and could even play tomorrow night if he's needed. Hmmm, put a 41-year-old goalie back in the net after he hasn't played in 12 weeks? How can this not work?

Now, if this wasn't a team with Ottawa's dubious post-season history, the Senators would stand a good chance of coming back. 1) This isn't some fifth-place beer-league team we're dealing with here; this is very good hockey team, or correct that, very good regular-season hockey team; 2) Buffalo's a little banged-up with Tim Connolly and Dmitri Kalanin out of the lineup indefinitely; it wouldn't be the first time a team got up 2-0 in a series and then lost because they started to run low on healthy bodies. If you're a Buffalo fan, start praying that Jay McKee, Toni Lydman and Teppo Numminen can shoulder even more of a load than they are already.

Connolly's probably out for the next game too after getting his bell rung in Game 3 on Monday, but Kalanin is "week to week" with a leg injury. Aren't we all week to week?

OTHER BUSINESS

• Albert Pujols. Albert Pujols. No wonder Joe Buck wants to cook his meals and bear his children (uh, once he gets done tending to Derek Jeter.) Sportsnet picked up the Cardinals-Rockies game this afternoon. First inning, Byung-Hyun Kim drops down and throws a pretty good pitch slider breaking away from Pujols, who turned low and away into high, deep and gone. That's 18 homers in 35 games this year. Wouldn't it be sweet, poetic justice that with all the Barry Bonds hubbub this year, someone who isn't mired in scandal might take a shot at his 73 homers?
• Just as Russ Adams was remembering how to hit, he's forgotten how to field. The Jays shortstop has gone on a mild streak at the plate to get his numbers up to .229/.290/.354, but he's committed four errors in the last three games. Reminds me of the Gordan Korman juveline novel I read as kid about a Little League team that had identical twins playing shortstop: one hopeless at the plate but dynamite in the field, the other a heavy hitter with a Texas-sized hole in his glove. With Adams so far this season, it's always something.
• Gustavo Chacin is getting 8.75 runs per start; tonight the A's counter with Joe Blanton, who had the sixth-worst run support in the American League last year. Interesting matchup.

See you after the games tonight.