After Saturday night's abortion of a hockey game, the Ottawa Senators were back on the ice in preparation for a daunting five-game stretch on Monday. Below, some quick news and notes after today's practice.
-- Ben Bishop is your starting goaltender against the New Jersey Devils in a big, big game. Not only is Ottawa frantically trying to catch one of the wild-card teams, but they're still trying to distance themselves from the pack below. With rumors of Craig Anderson's availability coming as early as the end of this week, Bishop will want to turn in a solid performance. On the year, Bishop's 3-1-2, with a .915 save percentage and 2.10 GAA.
-- More to the point about tomorrow night's Eastern Conference battle being big in nature: Ottawa's schedule gets pretty painful here in a hurry, and points may come at a premium. After a home tilt v. the Devils, the Senators run a four-game gauntlet against Montreal, Pittsburgh, Winnipeg, and Philadelphia, with only the Penguins game coming on home ice. Yeah, that's not going to be easy.
-- Don Brennan of the Ottawa Sun dropped an interesting quote about the play of Filip Kuba this season:
"To fully appreciate the turnaround in play of Filip Kuba, one needs only to look at the plus-minus category."
Kuba's currently a +25, which is tied-for-third in the National Hockey League behind the likes of Patrice Bergeron(+31) and Tyler Seguin(+28).
While his wild swing from a -26 one year ago is absolutely remarkable, the +/- measurement in general is still a wildly flawed statistic. Kuba's been an absolute rock and stabilizing force alongside youngster Erik Karlsson, and should be praised for an entirely remarkable bounce-back season.
Still, +/- is the last place I'd ever go to 'fully appreciate' one's script flip.
For starters, +/- is allegedly indicative of one's singular performance at even-strength, but Filip Kuba's been logging the majority of his 18+ ES TOI with the likes of Jason Spezza(NHL's fifth-highest scorer), Milan Michalek(32G and counting), and the highest-scoring defenseman in the league in Erik Karlsson(19G/52A).
Oh, and Kuba's dialing up about 0.45 PPG in his own right. When you're scoring so many points at such a high rate as a five-man unit, your +/- is going to correlate positively. Especially when the Ottawa Senators are 10th in the NHL at even strength scoring(1.04 GF/GA).
My point? I'm not sure the league average defenseman - replacing Filip Kuba's exact spot in the lineup - would have a dissimilar +/- rating.
Where Kuba's making the impact, as mentioned previously, is in the defensive third. The guy's been the biggest stabilizer on the team's blue line, and it isn't even close. His defensive point shares currently clock at +4.5, which is the second-highest number in his career [Minnesota 02-03, 5.0].
A lot of that stems from the fact that Filip Kuba is the team's best shot-blocker at 135 - nine ahead of grizzled veteran Chris Phillips. And, he's chewing up an absurd amount of penalty kill time game-in and game-out, logging about 3:27 per.
Kuba - oft-labeled as an offensive defenseman - has remodeled his game this season to better suit the later stages of his career. Kuba's still a puck-mover and contributes offensively, but has become incredibly reliable in his own end - a new dynamic that we never saw consistently from him in years past.
What we are left with isn't an indictment of Filip Kuba's play in the slightest; rather, an indictment of the plus/minus statistic. The measurement tries to attribute the play of a collective unit to one individual, and the fact that there's writers and bloggers who use it as a defining-statistic of sorts is downright terrifying - and lazy.
-- One thing I think we all hope to never see again: Sergei Gonchar in a fight. His 'battle' - ahem - against Clarke MacArthur was his first since November of 1998 against Guy Carbonneau. And guess what? There's video of that abomination of a fight.
-- Surprise, surprise: After further review, Nick Foligno's second in the National Hockey League when it comes to goaltender interference penalties with five. Does this shock anyone? Sometimes, it feels like Foligno's sole prupose in the offensive zone is to create a shitstorm in front of the opposition's goaltender, which usually ends with him getting sent to the penalty box for a two-minute minor. Only Scottie Hartnell(7) has more egregious contact with netminders this season.
-- Both Jason Spezza and Matt Gilroy missed practice on Monday due to personal reasons. Spezza attended a funeral, and Gilroy attended a wake down on Long Island.
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