The NHL has Lauren Conrad typing a blog and the Sens Army has headed for The Hills.That's a smart-alecky way of calling attention to the nightly recap at Epic Carnival. Pittsburgh 4, Ottawa 0, says it all as far as the game was concerned.
The real contest in the Sens-Pens series might be for the most scurrilous Senators rumour floating around the Internet. The early leader can be found at Canucks Corner; it's repeated here strictly for the entertainment value. It's a comment on what people will -- take it away, Dean Brown -- "scraaaaaaamble!" to come up with in order to make sense of the Capital Crapout.
"Senator fans will remember (Ottawa hockey writer Bruce) Garrioch taking a nice long honeymoon last summer. Rumour has it that he walked in on (Ray) Emery and a teammate doing something they shouldn't have (which would explain a picture that the owner of a Kanata dining establishment has been showing people where Emery has a white powder around his nose) and the Senators decided to reward Bruce for his years of service in the Ottawa media by paying for his honeymoon."Puh-leeze. Everyone has to look like an insider, eh? Bruce Garrioch didn't get married last summer; he actually got married in 2006. That "long honeymoon" was most likely comp time he had coming to him after the long grind of covering a team which went to the Stanley Cup final. A journalist who travels as extensively as a NHL beat writer also has enough frequent-flier miles that he would never need to accept a free trip, not that he ever would.
That being said, that rumour is out there with regard to the Senators. Everyone wants to imagine that there's an elephant in the room rather than sifting through the endless nuts-and-bolts hockey explanations.
Posts
6 comments:
Allow me to sack up and acknowledge that, on this night at leat, J.P. was dead right about the Senators. Good God, were they awful. They could have played until midnight and probably not scored. Tom Benjamin makes a fair point -- maybe the Senators aren't nearly as skilled as everyone thinks, especially after the repeated skill downgrades they have taken recently. (Schaefer for Donovan, dumping Tom Preissing, Corvo for Commodore, etc.) You keep doing that, and eventually you just aren't that deep anymore, something that gets cruelly exposed when your captain plus two of your best checking forwards are out of the lineup. One can only hope that Gary Roberts' proverbial spit in the face in the last minute of the game when he ran Bass from behind awakens the giant within, so to speak. If that is me in that room, I am seething with anger right now, and can't wait to get out there and a) put Roberts face first through the glass, and b) hit everything else I see with a dorky Penguin on the front.
BTW, I singlehandedly cursed the Senators when I dissed Roberts for his age the other day. You just knew the Hockey Gods were going to stick it up my nose for that one. As soon as I badmouth an opposing player, he has a big game against my team. You can set your watch to it.
Finally, I think the rumour-mongering about the Senators' alleged off-ice activities is just about the lamest thing going. You hear this in every Canadian NHL city - "My buddy's girlfriend has a cousin who works with a guy who saw Redden and Emery blah blah blah." You used to hear this crap about Wendel Clark in Toronto, Gretzky and Messier in Edmonton, Bure in Vancouver, etc. Not much has changed.
If you ever want some good fun, call out the rumour mongerer. Tell them you find the story fascinating, and ask when you can talk to his buddy's girlfriend to get some more details. They get very snippy and defensive, (kind of like a certain Sun freelancer who writes another blog) and suddenly the trail goes very cold. Apparently it is considered bad form to be a killjoy on malicious gossip.
Like I say, I posted that idiotic rumour to show how pervasive that rumour has become about the Senators.
Dennis has it right. They've steadily downgraded their talent.
Someone else pointed out the Sens seem to be divided into three camps -- the settled homebodies (Alfie, Phillipes), the young guys who still like to rip and tear and the newish players who haven't found their spot within the pecking order. That's as a better explanation than cock-and-bull stories that cast aspersions on Bruce Garrioch, who works too hard for that bull.
Putting aside the very real and disturbing issue that the bulk of the Senators are not capable of competing at the level commensurate with their remuneration, either through poor conditioning, questionable off-ice habits, erosion of skills or just plain not up to speed, the REAL STORY in this town, one that inexplicably continues to be ignored by media as if it was the worse of communicable diseases, is the dubious track record of Bryan Murray here, both as coach and, more importantly, as GM.
When they hired him as coach in 2004, I wrote (go ahead, look it up) that the Sens had their ducks grossly misaligned in that the coach's only claim to fame was his great work as GM and the GM (Muckler) won his Cups as assistant (4) / head coach (1).
Alas, Murray hired the wrong coach twice (Paddock, Murray) and has also made some terrible, terrible hockey decisions with trades and non-trades. So he has been the architect of his own demise, clearly demonstrating that the game has passed him by.
Time for the St-Barbados's Horseman to clean house in the country club.
Meanwhile, it might help a tad if they dressed Brian Mac in place of Spezzacat.
J.P.
I don't mind the "celebrity blogging" trend as long as they have something interesting to say, and some of the people the NHL recruits usually do seem to know a bit about hockey (Kevin Smith's blog,for example, is pretty awesome). That said, Lauren Conrad is terrible. From her first blog:
"My name is Lauren Conrad and I’m a casual hockey fan who has gotten into going to Kings games over the past 2 seasons. I’m blogging about the NHL playoffs because I LOVE hockey and I thought this would be a fun way to get more involved with the Post-Season."
Anyone who uses LOVE shouldn't be allowed to write about hockey, and you can't capitalize post-season (hyphenated or not). Also, she grew up in Ducks territory, claims to be a Kings fan, but is now adopting the Ducks because they're the closest team? Clearly not much of a hockey fan: you can bet Leafs fans aren't flocking to the Senators. It's one of the first rules of serious fandom that you absolutely detest the local rivals and don't cheer for them under any circumstances (see the Kevin Smith blog linked above for a good example of this).
Also, if they needed a celebrity Ducks fan, they should have asked Snoop Dogg. I'm sure a hockey blog by him would be a must-read, as his appearance on Hockey Night in Canada was pretty much the highlight of last year's playoffs.
Oh, Sens.
First, you come up with the vaguely offensive "Sens Army" campaign, which is hard to get on board with when there are young Canadians being killed almost weekly in Afghanistan.
Then, you sign or trade for the same player over and over and over. Can anyone really tell us the difference between McCammond, Robitaille, Donovan, Lapointe, or even Stillman? Or Richardson versus Commodore?
Do you notice something there? Those are all good Canadian, heart and soul, scrappy, sandpaper, gritty, Canadian boys with heart.
And when you pack a team full of good Canadian boys, then that's supposed to lead you straight to the Cup. Right?
This team needs an influx of skill, because this heart and soul bullshit is getting old.
Post a Comment