For anyone who hasn't heard;

No surprise here but as of yesterday clouston was fired as coach of the Brandon Wheat Kings. There were alot of rumors during the season that the players had lost respect for him and did not want to play for him. This isn't even mentioning how BAD of a coach he is just in general: mismanaged ice time, stupid lines, never holding players accountable and never being able to get the best out of his players or ignite them (which prob plays into the whole lost respect thing) and much more. All i know is i'm so happy McCrimmon made this move as its something i was calling for all season. I wonder where he'll go next? the MJHL? lol.

Since everyone seems to think he shouldn't be the one that plays i am going to stick up for the guy. First of all we all know about his vision, offesive sense, passing and sniping capabilities that he's displayed in the last 3 years in the dub. (I would know as I am a perennial season ticket holder and have watched him carry the team the last two years)

In his FIRST nhl game ever he put up an assist on the ONLY goal of the game, put it on a plate for spezza, so in essence his assist won us the game as you can not win without goals and thats something we havent scored a whol lot of lately. Most importantly though was the fact that this goal that stone put up was spezzas first of the series, yet stone was barely given the same opportunity on the 1st line as silfverberg as. So maqybe if given more time and not just 9 min in his first game ever he could get spezza going? And for those who question his skating, look no further than Spezza, he sure ain't the fastest skater in the league either and for him to have someone playing with him that has the playmaking skill stone does i think it could give us that scoring we've been missing.

Don't get me wrong i'm a huge silfverberg supporter and think he'll be a great player, and i've always been a huge fan of Butler and think he's just going through the infamous sophmore slump but we've got to look at whose made a difference in this series so far and thats stone.. thats a fact that can't be argued and thats pretty good for a player thats ONLY played 1 career game and 9 minutes in that said game.

To differentiate a bit more i will give a recap of each players series thus far:

Bobby Butler: 3GP - 0P - AVG TOI 12:44 - 6 SHOTS - 0 PIM - +0

Butlers played great but has provided no offence thus far unfortunately and we need scorers......

Jacob Silfverberg: 1GP - 0P - AVG TOI 9:02 - 1 SHOT - 2PIM - +0

Silfverberg will be a great player but has just come over, never played on the smaller ice surface and looked scared and hesitant in his first game and took a bad penalty, so give him some time.....

and finally,

Mark Stone: 1GP - 1P - AVG TOI 8:42 - 0 SHOTS - 0 PIM - +1

Stone set up the only goal in game 5 and that says alot considering we've only scored 12 of em in 6 games , and never really got a great chance to show what he could do beyond that. But considering he's played less and has more points than anyone else on this list and probably the most potential as well says alot for him.

and someone no ones talked about..

Zack Smith: 6GP - 1P - AV TOI 12:54 - 11 SHOTS - 10 PIM - -2

Couple of things really jump out with smith.. NO finish and BAD penalties (5 minor penalties this series) which penatlies are one thing thats killed us in this series.. don't forget the - 2 , Condra has no finish but at least he kills penalties well, where as smith just plays his 12 minutes takes a minor penalty and a few shots and thats it.. I like smith but really hes been the same as Butler for the last half of the season except he takes more bad penalties. If it were up to me Butler and Stone would be playing over Smith.

So the just of this is, If anything that assist that won us game 5 should be the reason Stone plays. Cause really how many of those have other players set up this series? Give the kid a chance his debut looked alot better than some of our full timers whole series have looked. Not just 9 minutes...

Too much money and age factor, Reminds me of Kovalev from last year.
We also have pretty much all offensive d now and not many, defensive ones which scares me with our goaltending being a question mark. don't get me wrong i like what gonchar brings but what if he gets injured like hes had problems with recently. I almost would've rather had resigned volchenkov or michalek and also picked up Kurtis Foster for the power play, that way we would still have a defensive d man. Foster picked up over 40 pts last year which isnt as good as gonchar but hes only making 1.8 and if you look at volchenkov and michalek they are making 4 and 4.25 mil respectively and all three players are younger. Personally considering this would have costed us pretty much the same i would have rather done this. This is just my opinion, what do you guys think?

I Know this may sound crazy, and i may get ripped on quite a bit for this but i believe this is our best bet at coming back this series.

For Game 5... Your Starting Goalie... Mike Brodeur

You might be thinking wow this guy is crazy right now but lets face it the Sens need something bug to change to come back in this series ( One of these things is the reffing but we all know that.)  But if you look at it back earlier in the year when the Sens were struggling who came in and gave the team confidence and started the big winning streak?.. Mike Brodeur, He was excellent for the Sens and got them going whch is what they need now. Its not like the Sens are getting really outplayed by any means, i believe that they just need some confidence and that would give them a spark and hopefully get them going.

Now, I know most of you will say " No No are you crazy he has no playoff experience!"  True, but I ask you how much experiencce did he have before he played a game with them earlier this Year? Thats right none, and what'd he do? Went 3-0 with a 966 SP and 1.00 GAA. 

So this is my argument. Why not play him, Take a chance? Like really, What do we have to lose now anyways?

Something has to change.

Thanks For Reading ,

TYLER MCNISH

Did anyone else notice how everything the sens did in game 3 was called a penalty but the pens could do anything and not receive one?

A good example of this If you look at it this way cooke hit regin from behind which he should've got kicked out of the game for instead he only received a minor penalty for , shortly after this crosby's goal came which cooke should've got a interference call on but no, Pittsburgh goal... So essentially cooke shouldn't have been in the game to begin with and there shouldn't have been a goal.

The refs stole this game for Pittsburgh, and i for one am not pleased.

I live in Spokane and have season tickets and I can tell you Cowen is a very overrated player we don't even want him here anymore, He was a Terrible pick.. If hes terrrible in junior then whats he gonna be like in Pro? If you go back to drafts past we could've had Kopitar instead of Lee and Paajarvi-Svensson instead of Cowen instead were stuck with 2 bust dmen instead of 2 game breaking forwards.