Hello everyone,

After seeing a very positive response to the idea of a survey in the fanpost about swearing, I thought it would be a good idea to throw together a "full" census to figure out a little bit about the people that gather together to pay their respects to Lord Alfie. I devised a list of 15 random questions, none of them too personal I don't think, and hope to get enough support for the idea to at least get a bit of a cross-section of the community.

If anyone has any questions to add, don't hesitate to add them!

I'm not sure if everyone is going to respond, and if they do I'm not sure if people want it just posted as a comment or via email. This is obviously not required, it's just for fun. Thanks in advance to everyone that takes part. Below is the questionnaire:

Continue reading this post »

NOTE: Big thanks to PeterR for the commenting stats.

After reading through the strings of expletives after nearly every opposition goal, I was curious as to who was responsible for these choice words. Using a list of all of the users with over 100 comments, I set out to see who had the highest percentage of NSFW language in their comments.

Purpose: To determine which active member of the S7S community has the highest percentage of "colourful" comments

Method: Using the handy "Search Posts and Comments" box, I searched by username for any of George Carlin's Seven Dirty Words. Using the number of hits, I divided by the total number of comments to determine a percentage.

Hypothesis: Mike Hurley will lead the pack.

Results

Observations: The person with the highest number of profanity-inclusive posts is everyone's favorite cartoonist, Mark Parisi. Speedy McEachern led in the highest percentage, being the only user breaking the 10% mark. As well, every user with at least 100 comments had at least one use of one of the seven words.

Now that I've searched through by individual words, I've noticed some more interesting facts. Most glaring to me is that none other than PeterR leads everyone by a hefty margin in the use of the S word. As well, the lack of the final three words is intriguing. Finally, I knew in my heart I was bad for the F-bombs. My apologies.

In 2007, the upstart Pittsburgh Penguins were defeated by a veteran, talented Ottawa Senators group. The next year, using the valuable experience of the ousting a year earlier, the Sens were crushed by the Pens, en route to their first cup in over a decade.

In 2010, the upstart Ottawa Senators were defeated by a veteran, talented Pittsburgh Penguins group. The next year, using the valuable experience of the ousting a year earlier, the Pens were crushed by the Sens, en route to their first cup ever.

I like the storyline.

Bullet form, because I'm tired and if I wait for the morning I'll forget.

• Alfredsson breaking the glass and delaying the game? Excellent.
• $7.50 for a plastic cup of Canadian? I clearly don't go to many sporting events. Wow.
• Right after the anthem, Brian Lee and Andy Sutton did some sort of "secret handshake" type thing, a-la baseball. I found that to be a little strange, given one's status as a new player and one's status as a barely-there player.
• That wasn't a high stick.
• Erik Karlsson is fantastic. He looked as smooth and fast as I expected, but I noticed a certain level of scrappyness (rubbing people out, pushing back, chirping) that I didn't expect
• On the topic of grit, Michalek skating across the ice to get involved in a scrum made me happy. I wondered if Heatley would have skated as fast in the opposite direction.
• Regin and Kovalev are both zeros. I may never forgive Regin.
• Despite the enormous ice time disparities, I noticed Winch/Donovan/Ruutu many times more than Spezza/Alfie/Michalek
• After the game, the Flames all gave their jerseys away to fans in attendance. I laughed out loud at the guy who got Vesa Toskala's game worn sweater.
• The most surprising part of the night was seeing the number of Senators fans in attendance. I had gone, running on the assumption that I was going to be one of the very few there, like maybe a dozen at most. There were at least a couple hundred. Every "Go Flames Go" was drowned out by a "Go Sens Go", the disallowed goal was booed very loudly, and the post game consisted of plenty of "At least we're not in 8th place" heckles. I got several positive comments on my Alfredsson jersey, and was even there to back up another Senators fan in a Stanley Cup argument (Q: Have the Senators won the Cup? Yes.) The Sens fan base is apparently greater than I had imagined.

I may have more to add tomorrow, I'll leave them in the comments.

Hello ladies and gentlemen.

My name is Mike, and for those who don't know me, I am a Senators fan. A few of you, notably Chemmy and Jared, may remember me as the guy who first questioned about credit being given to Peter for originating the Comments for Haiti concept. Since I was actually in class when you made your comments in the Silver Seven GDT related to my inquiry, I would like to take this opportunity to respond (and defend myself).

First off, I'd like to say that you guys did a great thing in donating to charity.That's a lot of money to raise for a good cause, good work.

However, I stand by what I asked yesterday. I felt at the time that Peter deserved some credit for being creative enough to come up with the idea. In briefly checking through the original post on this blog, I found nothing to show that this was anything but your own idea. I chose to ask Peter (in my typical asshole style) whether you folks had credited him with the idea or whether it was just an effort to upstage a charitable effort, and that was evidently a mistake given the overblown reaction. What follows is my response to some of my critics:

I’m a douchebag because I woke up this morning, saw PeterR’s idea, credited him for that idea, and then got my readers to chip in money to HELP PEOPLE WHO ARE DYING.

Good to know.

You’re absolutely fucking pathetic.

I'd just like to clarify that I refer to all Leafs fans as douchebags, mainly because I can. My brother is a Leafs fan, and he's the biggest douchebag of them all. Implying that I called you a douchebag for donating to charity is actually rather retarded, and including that you credited the idea would have been enough to answer my question. Calling me fucking pathetic is just a personal attack on the grounds of... what? Nothing?

holy shit, talk about being a baby about things, do you want some cheese with that whine?
If your man enough to talk shit about someone behind their back and come up with excuses not to say it to their face then you might want to re-examine who the fucking baby is.
Take a pill and realize this is for a good cause and its not a pissing match where someone is trying to out do someone else.
If you cant be a man, then at least dont cry like an infant

First of all, I'd like to point out that this response about talking behind someone's back came 3 hours after the game ended. To me, that's the very definition of behind someone's back. Secondly, I trust this post is the "manly" way of confronting my problems. Now, regarding how "its not a pissing match where someone is trying to out do someone else.", directly from Chemmy's twitter feed:

In order to one up @silversevensens we’ll be donating SIX cents to charity for every comment in our Game Day Open Threads tonight. #Leafs

While you may feel reading comprehension is not rampant in Ottawa, I'm actually not from Ottawa, thereby excluding me from that impediment. Because I can read, I can actually understand that "In order to one up" means the exact same thing as "Trying to out do". Contradicting statements guys.

As well, on the topic of reading comprehension, I wasn't aware they changed the definition to include "Having the ability to read a random twitter feed of a blogger following a rival team". You'll understand, I'm sure, that I honestly don't give a shit what you have to say for the most part, and you'll forgive me for missing the shout out given via Twitter. My apologies for that.

In regards to the three occurances of crediting, two of them were via a twitter I've never read, and one was a reference point given as a somewhat condescending benchmark. You can see why I missed the two on twitter, but I will take responsibility for not thoroughly researching all of the blog posts for any form of credit given. I clearly don't have the time some people do to comb through other blogs looking for anything written about me or my team. Am I illiterate for that? No. And I take offense to that implication. See, maybe me calling you a douchebag wasn't far off. Am I the lowest of the low? Again, no.

In conclusion, what I saw at the time was an effort to one-up the charitable efforts of Silver Seven. Statements on twitter prove that's what it was. I am aware of the fact that there are more Leafs fans than Senators supporters, and I knew that your donation would be much larger than anything we came up with. My concern was only that the Silver Seven managers' efforts would go unnoticed because of what you folks did a few days later. I questioned whether there was credit given, and there was. That should have been the end of it, but it was taken further, and several ad hominem attacks were made on myself and a few others. I apologize for my role in this.

Thank you all for your time.

PS.

Trolling Leafs fans – the Sens fans surefire way to get attention.

Thank you Godd Till. That is the perfect example of trolling.

PPS.

In keeping with the spirit of donations, I will donate 25 cents for every needless flame I receive in the comments to the Red Cross.

In searching through Itunes for some appropriate Game Day songs, I noticed a strange pattern in my music tastes. Many of the songs that I listen to on a regular basis actually relate to how the Senators are doing! The following is my soundtrack for the first part of the season:

Continue reading this post »

(Note: Once again I find myself stuck at work for an 8 hour shift with little-to-nothing to kill time. I found myself watching videos on hockey fights, specifically Carkner vs. Adams, and I wondered the results of Senators fights from the past decade. Unfortunately, hockeyfights.com and their wonderful voting system only reliably goes back to the lockout. What follows in some interesting points I've discovered from a morning's worth of wasting time)

In taking up this study in Senators' fights, and more specifically the results of the engagements, I was curious to know a few things. First, I wondered the winning percentages of the Senators' fighters, especially the prolific ones, in the past 5 seasons. Second, I wondered about some of the chronic antagonists that the Senators face. Finally, I was curious about how Matt Carkner (one of my new favorite Sens) is doing in comparison with some of the other Senators. My findings are as follows:

PART 1: SENATORS FIGHTERS

The following table lists the players, in order of total number of fights, their win-loss-draw record according to hockeyfights.com, and their win percentage (2 pts for a W, 1 for a draw, 0 for a L).

A few things in this interested me:

- Through half a season, Matt Carkner is already #3 in fighting over the past 5 years.

- Though not in this chart (in my more elaborate spreadsheet), Chris Neil was 18-2-5 with Brian McGrattan on the roster, but 8-7-6 without.

- Dany Heatley is a douchebag.

- Mike Fisher. Undefeated.

- Also not on this chart, but Mike Commodore is the only player in the past 5 years to fight both for and against the Senators

- Sort of a tangent, but I miss Ray Emery.

- Jason Spezza vs. Carlo Colaiacovo. Enough said.

- McGrattan: 6'4, 235 lbs. Carkner: 6'4, 231 lbs. Neil: 6'1, 215 lbs. One of these things isn't really like the others.

PART 2: ANTAGONISTS

Included in this chart is those players that have fought Senators more than 3 times in the past 5 years. These numbers are from the point of view of the player, so a W represents a time they've beaten a Senator.

Again, some interesting stats here:

- Andrew Peters with 10 fights against the Senators? Unreal.

- Steve Downie is a douche. A winless douche, the worst kind.

- I'm kind of thinking the Sabres don't like us much. The Devils too.

In conclusion, there are certainly some interesting trends over the past 5 years. As expected, fighting is typically left up to the pugilists (McGrattan, Neil, Carkner) with few others dropping the gloves with any frequency. As well, this season is on pace to be the most scrap-filled year in nearly a decade for Ottawa, an interesting change of pace. Clearly, the team is in good hands (or, more appropriately, fists).