I know that alot of you won't like hearing this, but the Sens style of hockey, even though it is an exciting style is not a style that is going to win us any playoff series. We won the majority of our games with an all out offensive juggernaut style which worked great during the regular season, as Karlsson played 4th forward and ran away with the point total for dmen.

Then the playoffs started, and Brian Boyle went after Karlsson, and even though we stood up to the behemoth, we were not comfortable with the defensive style required to succeed in the playoffs. Anderson needed to be our best player and he was. In the end we were done in by defensive mistakes that Anderson couldn't stop.

I enjoy offensive hockey as much as anyone does, so I'm not advocating rehiring Jacques Martin as an assistant to turn us into a dreary defensive machine. At the same time, we will need to add the personnel that will help this team when we're ahead in the 3rd period and a stronger defensive style is needed.

Yes, Chris Kelly comes to mind, but more important is to draft and / or trade for dmen who can play that style successfully.

Notice that the four remaining teams in the playoffs have that ability to play shut- down when they need to.

If we learned anything from watching Hunter's insistence that Ovetchkin play some defence if he wanted to get some icetime, it's that defensive hockey isn't really a skill. It's a willingness to expend your energy in a place that's not going to translate into the size of your bank account. All guys who have enough ability to make it to the NHL have the one on one skills to be able to win the puck from an opposition player. It's a matter of willingnes to engage and do what it takes.

Let's face it. The size of your contract in the NHL is directly proportional to one thing... the number of points you put up, so defence comes from the coach's insistence OR NOT. As long as the Capitals were not unhappy with Ovetchkin waiting around at the opposition's blue line for the puck, the Capitals couldn't win anything. Now that was exaggerated to prove a point, but notice how much better we are when our scoring lines play well defensively.

I'm delighted with how much our offence has developed and concerned about what we're going to do to lower the goals against, and be able to play shutdown when we need to.

In my ten years of coaching hockey from Atom to Bantam AA, I found that the best way to build a team was to have a great goalie and build a strong defence, and the goals would come. Anytime the best players on my teams were all forwards, it turned out to be a frustrating year of "underachievement".

So it's interesting how well the teams with good defences and goaltending in these playoffs are doing.

We are building some impressive offensive depth already, and I say that we should really concentrate on building the defence this off season through the draft and through the trade route. We won alot of games that were wide open run-and-gun this regular season, and did alot worse in games that were tight checking.

Now I'd love to see us run-and-gun our way into the lead in a game, and then be able to switch and shut it down when we need to.

Karlsson realized in the playoffs that his usual all out offensice style wasn't going to work, and we were not adept enough at changing the way we played without him playing 4th forward.

Yes, we had a great year considering, but now exepectations will be higher, and I'd love to see this team shore up the defence.

I'm glad to hear BM talking about acquiring a defensive dman. I can't wait to see who that is going to be.

I just marvel at how these two organizations built their teams. Mostly I love how the Penguins are built. They handled goaltending in the draft. They handled offence by getting strong down the middle. Then they had the smarts to realize that they needed to get better defensively, and boy did they ever. They've come a long way since Hal Gill and Gonchar were their go to guys.

The Flyers took their time waking up to the fact that they needed top notch goaltreding, but they did what they had to and now they are where they are without Pronger. They rebuilt their forwards by getting rid of Carter and Richards, two pretty popular players. They were doormats a few years ago, and now look at them.

We took the first steps rebuilding properly shoring up the offence... then the goaltending. Now it's time to strengthen the defence if we want to be one of the contenders.

I hope we don't just build a defence that's only made up of offencemen. It will be interesting to see what develops this summer.

Geez, what’s taking us so long? That’s what several teams are saying when they look at the Sens.

As I look at the season as a whole, there are so many positives. Spezza, Michalek, Greening, finding Turris, the surging Karlsson, refinding Kuba, Phillips and the development of Cowen, resolving the goalie conundrum, and so on.

Next year I count 20 forwards with possibilities of making the team, albeit some of them are only outside possibilities.

On the Left side there’s Michalek, Foligno, Smith, Daughavins and Klinkhammer.

On the Right side there’s Greening, Alfy, Silfverberg, Neil, Condra, Butler, Noesen and Stone.

In the middle, there’s Spezza, Turris, Z’jad, Regin, Winchester, O’Brien, and Filatov, and I guess Silfverberg could be a possibility as a center.

That’s a whole lot of possibilities, and we haven’t even counted anyone we will acquire if we do any dealing like for instance for a second line Left Winger.

I guess how different guys perform in the playoffs could go a long ways in determining how much chance they have making the team next year.

There are lots of questions to be answered and it all makes for a lot of excitement watching the Sens develop.

The defence has been talked about enough already.

Please join me in my prayers that we won’t have to play the Bruins.

After reading an article by Mike Augello about the Leafs moving or keeping Nazem Kadri, my suspicions are confirmed that the Leafs are about to do something really stupid AGAIN... and trade Kadri, who IMO is a diamond in the rough.

Burke has made no secret that the organization is not a fan of developing players through the draft because it takes too long... so if they are going to get rid of Kadri, we should have open arms.

I believe that Kadri is another in a long line of mismanaged players in an organization that has no clue how to develop it's young players. So they overpay for the Komisareks and Steckels and wonder why there is no cap space for offensive players.

We were hot after Kadri during his draft year, and watching Kadri play about six or seven games this year convinced me that we could develop him into a superstar. All he needs is some good coaching in an organization that takes care of its players.

So I think that with the kind of desperation that is present in Toronto, we could pull off a deal that would be great for both teams and land a player that I think we would quickly develop into a top six player for years to come.

I sense that the Leafs are fed up waiting for Kadri to be a superstar and can be taken advantage of. They probably wouldn't ask for draft picks. A group of forwards would do the trick. At this point if they wanted Z'jad and Butler, I'd do it because I think that Kadri has way more offensive upside than Z'jad.

Z'jad will make a good third line center and penalty killer. The Leafs could take a shot at having him center their top line, and who knows? I'd even play around and try to get a depth dman from the Leafs in the process, as they have a surplus of dmen and a shortage of offensive forwards.

So Kadri at this point, is pretty much the Leaf's version of Kyle Turris... mismanaged and lacking confidence to reach his potential.

I believe that Turris will raise his level of offensive prowess next year, as Kadri would with this kind of an organization behind him.

With Kadri, Silfverberg, Turris and Stone next year we would have a second line that rocks, and would be more like a 1B kind of a line than a second line. Alfy could take his place on the third line and do powerplay, making our third line so much better.

Last week-end I watched as Dougie Hamilton and Jamie Oleksiak took apart the Ottawa 67s and I was left thinking that maybe the best way of improving the Sens right now would be to go after some already well-developed prospects instead of just sitting around waiting for some of our defensive prospects to develop.

I'm not impatient. I believe in the draft and it's process. But there are other ways to build a team.

So I thought about this a bit and came up with five young defenders that I believe are very close to being ready to play and I'd love to go after, of course wondering just what it would take to pry one of these guys away. These guys are among the top dman prospects around.

The five I chose were in the order I'd want them: Adam Larsson (NJD), Dougie Hamilton (Bruins), Travis Hamonic (NYI), Jamie Oleksiak (Dallas) and John Merrill (NJD). Hamilton would probably be the hardest / most costly to get, but given how much the other teams need scoring, I think a deal could be struck.

We have a fair number of prospects. How many of these prospects do you think it would cost for one of these guys? I'm talking about O'Brien, Prince, Petersson, Wiercoch, Gryba, Da Costa, Butler and Stone (not one I'd want to move), maybe Foligno... not Z'jad or Silfverberg.

How about (one example) Prince, Da Costa and Butler for Adam Larsson or Dougie Hamilton.

Great trade for both teams!

In this Internet-crazed age, we are so starved for headlines that we create them even when there are no headlines to create.

As an example, Eklund of Hockeybuzz has been spinning yarns daily about trade rumours for weeks even months now... and he is not the only one.

All of this hype, along with a huge shortage of what teams really need artificially drives up the price of players that teams want to get rid of. They want as much as they can get for them... as well they should...

HOWEVER, the monotony of hearing the same-old same-old everyday non-news about the pending trading of Rick Nash and Carter is just very wearing.

Just imagine how it must be for these players who have to answer the same stupid questions everyday and have to protect themselves by saying all of the right things in case they end up not getting moved, no matter how they feel about being where they are.

In the end most of these moves are an overvalued waste of assets, a pie-in-the-sky reach for a hope somewhere that this particular player will be the difference and will help them win Lord Stanley.

Do a better job in the draft and build your organizations so that you won't have to be desperately trying to dump players in favour of others who are not going to help anymore than the ones you have.

Over the past number of years we gave away countless second round picks for rentals (Bondra, Stillman, Saprykin, Sutton, Comrie (for a 1st)) that brought very little to the table and then went to other teams... as did those picks. My examples might lack a bit in accuracy as to what we got, but the point here is that we paid a hefty price for our folly.

Yes, there are examples where this kind of strategy actually works. However, I'd rather see us focus on getting better at drafting and building our own players.

The teams that do that well year in and year out do not need to rely on this trade deadline exercise in desperation to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

I noticed two things in the paper this morning. We are 29th in the league in GA and 5th from the bottom in GA in the AHL. On top of that, our strength is "supposed to be" our tremendous depth on defence.

When we were contenders, we were solid defensively. Say what you want about Jacques Martin, but he delivered that from forwards and from dmen. Defence was not only valued but insisted upon or you didn't play.

Now, we deemed alot of the players who were solid defensively, among them Kelly and Volchenkov as too expensive, expendable and replaceable. We drafted "puck-moving" dman (the new buzz-word).

Now we need to reevaluate and include some "puck-stopping" dmen to shut down the other team? Our inability to defend has cost us alot of games. And yes, we have several new dmen in the fold and they are learning.

Our weakness, according to all the experts was supposed to be scoring goals. We're 5th in the Eastern Conference in GF. If we could defend better, we'd be up there with the best teams.

Karlsson for one has improved defensively. However, collectively, having more GA than GF is a recipe for disaster in any league. The kind of style we play requires an all star goalie with a .930 save percentage because he is often by himself while the fourth forward is up with the forwards. That is an oversimplified analysis for sure, but the point here is what exactly are we building and specifically what are we building defensively with all of these offensive-minded dmen?

The plan for next year looks like it will be to shore up the second line center position by adding more depth to the offence. With the best part of our defensive dman in the twilight of their careers, where will that leave us?

I say our biggest need is to draft or trade for a young Chris Phillips clone, and that our biggest need for improvement is in the GA department. The forwards we have in the organization will be knocking at the door next year. Silfverberg, Z'jad, Stone and company will be trying to break the door down, so we will have plenty of offence. And at the same time, I am thrilled with the development of some of our NHL forwards... ZSmith, Greening, Daugavins and Michalek in particular.

We do have alot of dmen in the organization, but the mix of types of dmen is REALLY lacking. Rundblad will probably get better defensively, but he is an offensive-minded dman. Cowen will get better defensively and he is developing well. Phillips and Gonchar and Kuba will need to be replaced, and that is what I am talking about here. Even though we have some really good ones, I don't see this glut of dmen that we are supposed to have.

The post about what we think we need in the upcoming draft brought out the response that people thought that the lowest priority was the defence.

So far this year, the evidence points elsewhere. We are at the bottom of the heap in Goals Against in both the AHL and the NHL. We can speculate as to the reasons for that if we want. The truth is we have a larger quantity of potential prospects than we had, so we are building something. However if prospects like Wiercoch, Gryba and Borowiecki etc. were as close to NHL ready as we seem to think we would be doing better in the GA Department in Bingo.

At the NHL level, we have moved mountains with our defence recently, and we have a group of aged veterans and another group of offensive-minded high level prospects. And as a group we are not defending well... so we have alot more building to do in that area. If we want to move Kuba and Gonchar out at the trade deadline, we will have to go to the FA or trade front to replace them... or the draft.

If we end up having only one first round pick, then that leaves the FA or trade route to shore up the defence in the immediate future.

There are plenty of dmen with 5th and 6th potential in this years draft but as usual the best ones are at the top of the first round. So if the best player available happens to be a forward, we have alot of work to do to bring in the kind of dmen that will give us the GAA that we need to contend.

I believe that the forwards that we have and the ones coming up will provide the offence that we need. Hopefully Z'jad will be that coveted 2nd line center we crave. Third and fourth liners we have galore, and perhaps the only need there is for more PK specialists who can also fill the 3rd and 4th line roles.

We need more goalie prospects, and that crapshoot can come in the later rounds of the draft.

Think about the life of a prospective Top Six forward for a minute. Every year there are about 30 guys dreaming about and dieing for the top six forward job that you want. If you are a young player, every year it's another proving ground.

Even if you tore up the league you were in last year, you are at square one in Training Camp with so many guys who you think you are better than being way ahead of you because they have a contract. Then you finally get into a game... and the pressure on you to perform is so enormous it's a wonder you can get your skate laces tied...

This is the life of an aspiring young Top Six hopeful. As the title suggests, there are only six of these jobs available on every team, and most of these jobs are already taken. On top of everything else, if you are judged as not being worthy of a Top Six job and are a skilled player, well then they think you are too skilled and are not the type of player to be wasted on a bottom six role, so you can only make the team if you win the Top Six role.

So this is the stuff that Regin, Zibanejad, Da Costa, Filatov, Greening and Butler are faced with.

Knowing all of this, I did not join in on all of the reverie when we traded for Filatov and I penciled him in as our number eleven prospect behind Da Costa, Butler, Greening, Petersson and Puempel figuring he'd need to spend some time in the AHL and not knowing how he'd react to that.

It takes alot more than just good skills or good stats to make it as a Top Six guy. It takes a very solid mental outlook and a personality that can let go of mistakes and poor shifts and learn from them and move on rapidly. Most people call this good "self confidence". I think of it more interms of having a very solid set of beliefs about yourself that very few guys have. In short, you need to be unstoppable.

Add to all of that that it doesn't take long for managers and fans alike to typecast you and then unless you blow their socks off they don't change their typecasting.

All of this adds up to why there are precious few guys who become solid consistent Top Six forwards.

It'll be fascinating which guys on the Sens become consistent Top Six guys. Who would you put your money on? My money goes on Da Costa and Greening this year and Zibanejad and Silfverberg next year.

Every team is looking for the best Power Forwards, either by drafting them or acquiring them. I've generally objected to the way that draft prospects are ranked, as too much emphasis is placed solely on points. My definition of a Power Forward is a combination of a point producer and a player who is really difficult to play against (very physical). So I decided to quit whining to myself about that and quantify that into a statistic that I find revealing.

Power Forward Index (PFI) compares a player's Points per Game (PPG), combined with a player's Hits per Game (HPG). At first just multiplying one factor with the other overemphasized the hitting and made stars out of the Chris Neils. So after playing around with this for weeks, I finally added the HPG to ten times the PPG in order to get a nice spread in the PFI.

The formula became PFI =  (PPG * 10) + (HPG*1.5).

I included most of the Sens and some other good NHL players into the mix and the spreadsheet I came up with is below.

via img21.imageshack.us

Note that Spezza gets his ranking almost solely from his PPG, whereas Toews, Kopitar and Kesler who have similar point production are considered better Power Forwards (according to this stat) because they are more physical. Greening gets his ranking from his PPG and his HPG totals combined.

Perhaps there is an assumption made here that the more physical players do better one-on-one in coming away with the puck. In any case I consider them to be more valuable if they can stay healthy through all of the physical play.

Once I have a well developed Draft Prospect List, later on, I'll plug their stats into the spreadsheet and see how it turns out.

This stat seems to give a pretty good indication of how good a Power Forward is. I look forwad to testing it on how well it predicts who will be the best Power Forward.

I am open to suggestions on how to make this stat more powerful. If you want to add other stats into the formula mix, they need to be stats that are readily available.

As an aside, I do have some knowledge on how to do Excel Spreadsheet Pivot Tables.

Editor's note: the following is a FanPost written by one of our readers, Marvellous. If you have something you'd like to share with the Silver Seven community, write up your own FanPost and some of our favourite ones will be posted on the front page!

The scrimmage was a very spirited affair. Cowick ran over somebody on the first shift and he was one of the targets for the rest of the night.  He took more than he dished out, including a rink shaker right in front of us.  It was impressive to see Cowen step up and hit him back on the same shift.

As a coach for 12 years I was always very defence conscious, and I noticed that I followed the defencemen more than the forwards.

Unfortunately the sight lines in the Sportsplex made it really hard to see very much.

All in all, I’m really impressed with the depth of our defence, especially their ability to get the puck moving out of the zone.  The highlight for me was the play of the defence.

Here are my impressions:

63 - Aneloski, Bryce: didn’t notice him at all

70 - Blood, Ben: Played with Cowen a lot and was impressive with his first pass and ability to win the puck and move it. Threw several solid checks and looked good with Cowen.

74 - Borowiecki, Mark: Most impressive dman after Cowen; very confident and poised command of the puck and a great passer. This guy is going to make it to the NHL.

27 - Claesson, Fredrik: Didn’t notice much other than a couple of nice passes.

2 - Cowen, Jared: Third star of the night. A leader barking out stuff to the guys, physically powerful, powered his way up the boards and made several perfect cross ice passes. Seemed super confident and had a "Don’t mess with me" attitude retaliating with Cowick. He made one mistake turning around backwards too quickly and Silfverberg went around him like a pylon for a scoring chance.  Made a fool out of Zibanejad in a one on one and went in for a scoring chance.

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Every year, I eagerly await Training Camp and watch the new prospects. I'm always enthused to see if the guys that I thought would make it to the big club do or don't. And every year it's the same story. Some prospect plays lights out and gets no chance because there are too many one way contracts.

We end up with the "Brian Lee" Syndrome... a player who should be developing in the AHL and instead is taking a roster spot because of his contract, while someone else who should be playing with the big club languishes in the minors waiting for the injuries to happen.

If you look at the potential roster you see that there are unlimited possibilities this year. If there are no deals made, I count 30 players that have possibilities (granted some are a long shot):

I love the way Colin Greening played last year and I hope he'll be a great player for years to come... but given the circumstances of last year, he proved nothing so far, except that he has some possibilities. What is the rush? Is some team going to come and swoop him up? NO!!! Giving him a one way could ruin him if he doesn't react well to all the added pressure that will be on him to perform. And then what? The "Brian Lee" Syndrome revisited? This is not to mention that there are six other players that may outperform Greening and end up with the inevitable, "Sorry you are a victim of the "numbers game". Does that suck or what?

That conversation every year where the GM says "This year there will be tremendous competition for jobs" is a sham.

If you watch the best organization in hockey, the Detroit Red Wings, they do things differently. A player like Darren Helm had a two way contract until he was good and ready and now he's a good well rounded two-way player with a one way contract (and a large amount of self-confidence) because he earned it.

Yes there are circumstances that force a decision sometimes when certain players become UFAs and you could lose them. But why hand out one way contracts like you're dealing cards or something? I say let the coach decide who plays... not the contracts.

The Sens have a lot to learn from watching the Preds. Here's a team with relatively little talent who have IMO the best coach in the NHL. Trotz uses what he has and has a great defensively sound system and wins with a bunch of worker bees and a good goalie. Trotz reminds me of Jacques Martin... coaches a system that is unexciting but effective. I was never much of a JM fan, cause I wanted more offence, but he used what he had and won with it, (just like the Habs are doing), and he put you to into a comotose state with his interviews.

It'll be interesting to see what the Preds offer Weber.

Go Mr. Underwood go!!! Another second rounder is on it's way.

If this year wasn't a strong enough reminder, we got another reminder from Price and Miller last night that goaltending is THE MOST IMPORTANT position on any hockey team. Let's hope that Anderson is the real deal, and that we take more steps to shore up the goaltending prospects during the off season.

I played hockey for a long time and coached hockey for 11 years, and it was always so clear to me how important having a great goalie was, and how much confidence great goaltending brings to any team. Why did it take so long for us to do something about the series of sieves that we have had in this town? Yeah I know... we tried... Trying sucks!!!

We have spent so much time and energy on this site speculating about what forwards we should pick in this draft, and it's worth mentioning that if Anderson gets hurt next year, do we have anyone who can step in? Will we have a backup who can carry a team that probably won't score alot of goals?

Everytime I look at the UFA list, I respond with some form of "YECH!!!". We have got to build with what we have and what we can get from the draft either directly or by packaging picks. This year, there is more scoring help available beyond the much-flaunted big three or four.

Surely with our in depth Swedish scouting we can find someone with the Nashville pick and / or our second rounders. This guy Zibenejad could end up to be the best two-way forward around, and he could be a better pick than Strome or  Scheifele if either of them last long enough to be available. I trust our Swedish scouting to figure that out.

I wouldn't think that Melnick will not be wanting any high priced UFAs on the payroll until some of our young'uns are ready to make us a contender. I still think we can build towards being a contender in two or three years if we play our cards right in the next couple of drafts.

I know I'm dreaming, but I am optimistic because we have the makings of a great defence and good goaltending. If collectively the management, players and fans believe it will take two or three years, it will.

As RFAs, Condra, Butler, Smith or Greening could be stolen away for nothing by any team offering them a one-way contract of less than $994,433 per year, or for a third round pick if  the price is $995K to $1.5 million. So having the luxury of being able to send them back and forth to Bingo will not be there anymore.

Do we have room for all of them? Assuming that at the draft we''re still looking for a 2nd line Centre and LW and Butler stays on the top line, we are loaded with 3rd and 4th liners if we sign everyone. I count nine players for six spots: Regin, Foligno, Smith, Greening, Condra, Winchester, Neil, O'Brien, Shannon, and maybe Silfverberg.

Some decisions will have to be made here. I still say I'd love to see Karlsson try some top six forward. Imagine him and Spezza together. That would be fun to watch. 

I read a very negative scouting report about Ryan Martindale from earlier this year on your site. I am from Ottawa and follow the 67s closely. All Martindale has accomplished this year is to center two guys who tore the league apart.

Tyler Toffoli won the scoring title and Shane Prince came out of nowhere to score 88 points this year. No winger can produce these kind of numbers without a good centre. Along the way Martindale scored 34 goals and notched 49 assists in 65 games or a 1.28 PPG average.

Granted he isn't the fastest or flashiest guy around, but just because his style is free and easy doesn't mean that he doesn't have any compete in him. He was the best player on the ice in the last two games I saw, and the 67s have lost so many players to injuries that he probably has had to play around 28 minutes a night or so.

As a third rounder if he takes another year or two to develop into an NHL third or fourth liner, then so be it. He will make it to the NHL.

There seems to be a real appetite for wheeling and dealing as we enter into the draft with more picks than we have ever had in the history of this franchise. The conditional pick from the Campoli deal makes five picks in the top 60 in this draft. What we did with Rundblad, trading a pick for a "more "NHL-ready" prospect can be done again this year to acquire more scoring forwards for the rebuild. We can also add Chris Neil into the package for someone like Cody Hodgson (dream along...).

Nashville's pick is geting worse and worse as the Preds are on a tear since the arrival of MF. What could we get for that pick and a second rounder?

Here's my list of dream guys to chase after:

On offence Hodgson, Ryan Martindale, Emersen Etem, Tyler Toffoli, Charley Coyle, Nino Niederreiter.

On D, Nick Leddy, Colten Teubert, Chris Summers, Travis Hamonic.

Maybe alot of these guys are untouchable and we have to find a more "under-the-radar" kind of guy who is underrated and will rise to the occasion like Rundblad who was only a 17th pick overall.

This year is where our scouting staff will get the ultimate test of how well we can find any hidden gems in this draft.

I heard some interesting stuff about Ryan Nugent Hopkins in the past few days. This sportcaster who has lived in Alberta or several years and now works for Team 1200, AJ Jacubek says that he has seen RNH play regularly since he was 15 years old and that he is the most talented of all of the top prospects.

Since RNH is the Top prospect that I have seen the least of, I watch with interest and look forward to when the WHL shows some more games.

If we end up picking third, and the Avs lead by Elliot are making a great run at the 2nd pick, do we really want a small playmaking centre?

Are we going to be trading some more to make a run at another top pick?

I just loved all I saw of Landescog and he plays both wing and centre and is great defensively to go with his offensive skills.

These are interesting times. This draft will be exciting.

Friday night the 67s got Stromed to death. Unfortunately I couldn't watch past the first period. It's not easy to score two goals and end up minus two in a 3 - 2 win. Obviously he must have scored two power play goals and been on the ice for both 67s goals.

My question is did he ever leave the ice? Do you suppose that Stromey read Mark's blog about him being the second line centre for our rebuild and he was auditioning? Looking good... Mark!!!

As I look over what's left of the Senators, it's pretty scary to see the extreme lack of depth of scoring. Yes, we have a goalie (finally, albeit unsigned as yet) and a good young developing defence (albeit largely offensive-minded)... but hey, we need to score more goals than the opposition to win games. It's going to take some kind of genius to remake this team.

Greening, Condra, Winchester, Foligno, Regin, Smith, Winchester, Neil... too many non scorers.. potential yes, however, unless we get some scorers, it's a loooooooooong road ahead.

Spezza needs to be surrounded by gunners to be effective. If we expect Spezza, (oft-injured) Michalek and Butler to carry this team, well... and at present let's be honest... we don't have a second line. Alfy may recover and as beloved as he is, he won't be able to carry the load of a second liner anymore.

The draft will give us an NHL ready top six forward and a whole bunch of potential that will take a number of years to realize... unless we finish last, in which case we'll take Larsson and end up with Shannon, Alfy and Foligno as our second line.

It's doubtful that we'll be dipping into any high priced UFAs during the rebuild stage, so it's build with what we have and can acquire via the draft or by using the draftees as assets to acquire prospects that are hopefully NHL ready.

The doors are sure open for guys to step up and show their stuff. These are exciting times. How long will it take to rebuild this team is anyone's guess.

So much blabla about the top guys. We've got three second rounders and BM needs help with these picks. Our picks are approximately 32 (ours), 54(Chicago's) and (Boston's) 56.

There are alot of guys that I haven't seen enough of... on the various lists and a tremendous variation from one list to another in the second round. So there's an opportunity to pick up a couple of gems.

Without Fisher and Ruutu (and Volchenkov), we have this need to get bigger and there are alot of small forwards like Tobias Rieder (who looked good for the Rangers yesterday) , Miko Salomaki, Vincent Trocheck, Daniel Catenacci, Mika Zibanejad and Shane Prince. I've seen Prince alot and he has tremendous quick skills but at 5'10" is liable to get killed before he turns into a scorer. Catenacci is in the same category, and even smaller.

I like Tomas Jurco a scorer from Saint John as our first 2nd rounder, albeit a Right Winger. So who do you pick if you are BM?

I'd rather get the second overall pick than the first. With first overall, guaranteed the braintrust will overlook the desperate need for a top six scorer and take the so called blablabla "best player available" Larsson. If the Oilers win the lottery, and Lowe and his staff have their heads screwed on properly, they will take Larsson to go with all the young gunners they have, forcing the Sens to take a forward... likely Langeskog.

The race is on!!! This is way more exciting than any of the Sens games prior to the trade deadline purge.

Is it legal to loan a guy who is about to become a UFA while secretly having a contract in place for next year?

I'm thinking Phillips and Kuba plus whatever (maybe a second rounder or flipping our Nashville first for their first ) to Vancouver for Cody Hodgson... thus assuring Phillips that he's on his way back here brimming with confidence after the Nucks win the cup.

Now that would be EXCITING. We'd have a group of high potential top six possibilities, plus a legitimate second line centre. With Butler also right, it makes us a little lopsided with so much scoring from the right side but Langeskog is a LW.

Like I said before, if we do this properly and stop saying and believing it will take years, we can rebuild fast enough to satisfy everyone.

Seems like Karlsson wants to score goals at all cost. So if he's not any good at defending, why is he playing D? Yeah I know cause he makes a nice first pass... but duh... he leads the league is MINUS and plays pretty small in the physical department.

Let's get some thumpers to replace all the physical dmen that we've lost... and move him up to Top Six. This time is extended training camp anyways, so why not try that? Doesn't it make sense to allow him to do what he does best?

Cowen and Rundblad are physical. Rundblad can play Power Play QB and so can Gonchar... so do you think that Karlsson scoring 30 to 40 goals a season would help our cause a little or what? He could be the guy that could inspire Spezza to new heights.

The Senators are amassing draft picks in a draft year where the only sure-fire first rounders who are NHL-ready are Adam Larsson and Gabriel Langeskog.  In the World Juniors, Sean Coutourier looked like a player who is a couple of years away from the NHL. Once you get past the first round, the size of a large part of the forward prospects is frighteningly small, and the last thing we need is another small forward.

So that leaves us with Bingo, Free Agency or the trade route to find some scoring for next year. Overlooking all the potential scorers in the past few years at the draft table in favour of Karlsson, Cowen and Rundblad was in my judgement the most fatal error BM and the management of this team committed. Not that they shouldn't have drafted any of those three... but certainly not all three of them.

A couple of years ago this hockey pool wizard friend of mine showed me a list of comparables of second line centres stats, and Mike Fisher was among the best in the league stats-wise... and I'm not knocking the Fisher trade... It was just interesting to me that nobody realized that even though FIsher is overpaid, he was among the league leaders stats-wise for second line centres.

Anyways, what I'm left wondering is... is all of these draft picks going to fulfill what we are missing? What we really need is a genius GM and management team who can pick us a few hidden gems.

Karlsson is not the only hockey player who is finding out that a one-dimensional offensive game just doesn't cut it in the NHL. Everyone loves goalscorers. Goalscorers are worshipped at every level. There is no glory at all in defensive genius. How do I know that? Because the salaries for defensive players are limited.

The thing that NHL players fail to understand is that defensive ability is not a skill. It is simply a willingness to do the work. Anyone with offensive skills has the ability to play defence. What's missing is the desire to expend their energy on such a "trivial thing" as defence.

Obviously, if a coach decides that defence is not trivial, then it is not trivial. In Jason Spezza's case, no one except Team Canada coaches and Jacques Martin ever insisted that he needed to play defence if he wanted to play. This year he is becoming a complete player because of this insistence, and it's about time.

A dman who is all out offence needs to be filling the net every night for coaches to overlook any defensive shortcomings... otherwise they end up like Brendan Bell... playing in the KHL even though they are loaded with offensive skill.

Any team that allows several offensively talented players to just play offence ends up with no team... sort of like what you have in New Jersey with the arrival of Kovalchuk. How can a lowly coach even begin to insist that their gazillion dollar Kovalchuk play defence or he won't play???

Interesting stuff...

It is great to see the hot goaltending propelling us to having some success lately. However, our new "no hit" defence still needs to be addressed or we will not go far. Losing Volchenkov and Sutton meant losing a huge part of our toughness. Sens management overdid it when it came to acquiring puck movers. When things get rough and tumble come playoff time, how will we manage?

It is scary to think of the Sens going into the playoffs with this powderpuff defence... where our number six is the only dman who can hit. It's nice to get Kuba back but that doesn't change the fact that we are so easy to play against in our end. Without spectacular goaltending we would not have won any of the recent games.

Yes, perhaps there will be help on the way in the area of toughness with Jared Cowen next year. David Rundblad is not very physical either, and it doesn't look like any of the other dmen prospects will be ready.

So I say that we need to deal for some toughness on the back end.

So far this season, it looks alot like in their team evaluation Sens management is guilty of seeing what they want to see, rather than what is actually there.

What good is training camp if the team arrives totally unprepared? And we did arrive in this season unprepared.

I'm left with more questions than answers. Who are this team's best players anyways? For the longest time now the team's best players have been on the third line. Do you think it is time to start rebuilding the top six on this team... or should we bleed a little more first? Or am I being cruel and need to have some patience to wait until Kovalev and others wake up and realize that there is a hockey season going on? Are these "Status Quo" leaders the leaders we need?

And on defence, have we rushed Karlsson too much and are we asking too much of Phillips?