Welcome back: do you recognize these Ottawa Senators?

"A break unintended is a break nonetheless." Who said these wise words? Probably no one but myself, attempting to apologize for an unintended four-month break in blogging. Fortunately, the object of your and my mutual affections has undergone quite a few changes during that course of time; there remains yet a heap-tonne of items to discuss in regards to the 2014-15 Ottawa Senators.

Take, for example, the Ottawa Senators of this past week. Is there capacity in our collective minds to grasp the sheer goodness of a team that shuts out the two better California teams on a back-to-back, one day after jet lagging their way from the East Coast, and then finishes off with a comeback win over the last California team? Take a moment to bask in the five-game winning streak that's hotter than that one day in March where almost all the snow melts and temperatures hit positive digits... because, like the day after that, the streak will likely turn cold soon. Let's look at some of the aspects that have been pushing the Sens along.

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Game n°3 preview: Sens stop by Sunrise, FLA for fall hockeying

Don't look now, but the Ottawa Senators are straddling a .500 average two games into a season that's presented them with yet another road trip to start (albeit one theoretically easier than last year's Opening Line-Up of Death). There's one last game to play down south before settling in for a two-week homestand, and it'll be one chez les Panthers.

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Golden Linings/Crimson Bindings: the centres' faceoff prowess

A feature looking at the recent positives of the Sens' play.

A glance at the NHL's faceoff leaders shows that the Ottawa Senators are sitting snugly at 9th place. This has been evident over the season, and has perhaps been the duet partner in consistency to the Sens' surprising, and welcome, offence. (We're on pace to be shut out just once more in the season's last 25 games, for a season total of three blankings.) It's become just about commonplace to see >50% numbers from our main centres Jason Spezza, Kyle Turris, Mika Zibanejad and Zack Smith.

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Playing the rookies and the Sens' line combos

Even though Ottawa’s been one of the luckiest teams this season in regards to injuries, it still feels as though we’re playing too many rookies every game. This is mostly true on the back end, where only two players out of six any game are older than twenty-five years of age; among the forwards, the invasion of Rookie Noobness varies widely depending on how high Paul MacLean has set his blender on, along with the degree of blindness to which he’s turned to certain With Or Without You statistics for certain forwards.

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The losing record and the afternoon games: a fairytale

That sounds rather nice as a storybook title, doesn’t it? Now, before I claim that the afternoon loss is a myth, it must be said upfront that I have no actual insight into the ways which the team gets ready differently for afternoon games; I don’t know who gets up late, who eats differently and who skips the team warm-up. Instead, I decided to take a look at the previous afternoon performances of the team and see how much of the story that 1-7-2 losing record tells.

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Game n°47 file notes: Sens' neat hockey shuts out Wild 3-0

Turns out watching an entire game filled with tape-to-tape passes and shot attempt after shot attempt all made by your home team is pretty tremendous fun.

Seriously, if there was one takeaway from last night’s game, it was the fact that the esoteric chemistry frequently cited as a reason to keep forward trios together exists. MacArthur, Turris and Ryan connected time and time again with beautiful passes through the neutral zone that led to near-perfect zone entries, moving straight through the oddly passive Minnesota Wild defence; their first goal was a result of a textbook-rush. And they were facing top competition, too; Ryan Suter faced no one Senator forward more than Kyle Turris. (Suter was also line-matched with the Cowen-Karlsson tandem almost exclusively.)

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The shutdown line: we need more Condra and less Neil.

If ever there was a real-life example of the sad fact that puck possession on a player level does not always translate to points, it would be Erik Condra. However, the very point that he isn’t a scoring machine testifies to another aspect of his game: his defensive value.

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To think about: are the Sens inconsistent, or just bad?

For perhaps the entirety of the 2013-14 season's first half, followers of Ottawa Senators hockey have tossed the word "inconsistency" and its derivatives around like lettuce in a Caesar salad, yours truly included. And just like overtossed salad, the catchphrase has become somewhat limp and dry, with less substance than the no-nonsense carrots and tomatoes garnishing the salad (which, in this analogy, represent the fancy stats). But it seemed relatively accurate; we've reached our first winning streak since November 9th, and somedays, it seems as if our beloved Sens simply don't show up to play.

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Game n°42 preview: Caps look to gain capital chez les Sens

Welcome back from the holidays! Fine, perhaps it's the Ottawa Senators who need to do some gaining, not Washington — the Caps currently sit 2nd in the Metropolitan Division, 5th in the Eastern Conference and 14th league-wide... right about the spot where a lot of bloggers, fans and experts picked Ottawa to settle in at comfortably, with two games in hand besides. Well, the second half of the season starts now. Our inconsistency continues, but the boundaries of our inconsistency have moved to the positive side of the spectrum, mostly.

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Golden Linings/Crimson Bindings: the scoring monsoon

A feature looking at the recent positives of the Sens' play.

Last season, in 48 games, the Senators were shut out 4 times. This season, in 35 games, the Sens have been shut out once. This puts us on pace for approximately 2 to 3 blanks this year... in double the number of games. We have 5 players in top 50 league-wide scoring (well, MacArthur is #52); Erik Karlsson and Kyle Turris are 10th and 19th league-wide assists; and we're sitting nice and pretty at 2.80 goals per game, good for ninth in the league.

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Game n°33 preview: Sabres lumber in to Sens' snow playground

All right, so the Canadian Tire Centre hasn't exactly been our playground so far this season. But the snow's been here for three weeks, and so has the Sens' play; we've been above 50% in Fenwick For Close for the past eight games. Although it's hard to know exactly how much encouragement to take from this, given that we lost to Buffalo in a ridiculous game on Tuesday, Ottawa seems to be trending firmly upward. And this home game versus the (dead-last-by-seven-points) Sabres should be an easy on to take to help continue the trend.

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Hits, physicality, rough stuff & the Sens

As a stat, hits are often a negative indicator of possession: the more you’re hitting, the less you have the puck. But this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule. It’s undeniable that certain players make their niche in the NHL through physical play, and rough stuff can become an integral part of any player’s game. But there’s a time and place for physicality, and it’s usually not whenever and wherever Neil’s doing his business.

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Game n°29 file notes: Lightning out-Leafs Sens for 3-1 loss

It looks like the Pesky Sens are back in every way but goals and wins.

Taking a look at Extra Skater's game-by-game performance graphs, Ottawa's been over fifty percent in even-strength close Fenwick For % for the last five games — the longest stretch of games over 50% in FF% since the season's start. Yet we stumble through alternating wins and losses, unable to string together consistency in shooting and scrounge up enough points to get us over .500.

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To think about: the Sens' forward lines & WOWYs

During last night's win, a lot of freaking out was going on over the fact that MacLean's lines looked a little bit wonky. Hoffman-Turris-Ryan stayed relatively intact throughout the game, but Spezza was handed MacArthur and Condra, Michalek was cobbled to a third line with Zibanejad and Conacher and Greening-Smith-Neil became our fourth line. Travis Yost suggested that instead of trying to find Spezza some chemistry, MacLean is instead trying to insulate him by arming him with possession-drivers who can get out of the defensive zone and into the offensive zone.

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Catching up: a third of the way through the season

Here we are, ~34% through the 2013-2014 regular season. Let's do a little self-evaluation.

Heritage jerseys.

They played it safe, and safe ended up being beautiful. The 2014 Heritage Classic jerseys are a tasteful inversion of the black heritage jersey which is currently acting as our third, and I fully expect them to be just as popular. The style of the sweaters is optimized when one pairs them together: the black is modern, a little more edgy, while the white is unpretentious and clean, with the cream lending it an undeniably throwback feel. Together they would make absolutely fantastic home and away jerseys, and one can only hope that this is a possibility under serious consideration by the organization. I mean, as long as it doesn't affect our internal budget, right?

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Game n°25 file notes: Sens beat Caps in wonky 6-4 game

If we were looking for a turning point, maybe this game was it.

It was the type of game that made the Washington broadcasters remark of the Sens, “They look like they’re still on the power play.” It was the type of game where capitalizing on every chance helped them create their own luck, rather than letting the other team come to them. And if you thought that cliché was one cliché too many—it was the type of game with spirit. Team spirit. (But only from the second period on, though.)

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Game n°24 preview: Sens jet into Carolina to play Canes

Last night's game wasn't a repeat of the Sens' last win versus Detroit, not exactly, but it was definitely one of the most scrummiest and most peculiar matches we've seen in a while. If we're being honest, the Sens don't get too fired up to play anybody — except the Flyers for some reason — so a potential rivalry between Detroit would be excellent, for both the teams and national coverage. And, of course, for the second game of our back-to-back, we go to... Carolina.

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Game n°20 file notes: Blue Jackets add to the Sens' stack of 4-1 losses

I had the (mis)fortune of attending this game in-person. Thus, to avoid rehashing the painful experience twice, I will forgo looking up all the #fancystats and instead present a few brief optical notes on the matinee game.

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Game n°16 file notes: the Lehner show purloins the Sens a 4-1 win over Habs

For all the talk spewed by the Ottawa Senators’ organizational personnel regarding “finding our game” and “sticking to the plan” and “bringing it back to ABCs basics”, I’m just going to say now that I really hope last night’s game was not the epitome of the Sens’ performance.

Thank God for Robin Lehner.

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Game n°12 file notes: exciting hockey (nearly) makes up for the Sens’ 6-5 loss to Chicago

It was Colin Greening a season or two ago who, during a second-intermission interview with a CBC Hockey Night in Canada reporter, commented on the end-to-end nonstop pace of the game versus the Toronto Maple Leafs. “Yeah, it’s a track meet,” he said in his honeyed I-graduated-from-Cornell-University tone, and proceeded to comment on how they’d like to slow it down and get back to their game.

I don’t know… sometimes a track meet is a good thing.

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