peoples criticism of cowen is more than justified.

if he had simply lost a step, or played a little less physical as a result of his injury, that would be completely understandable.

cowen's issues last year were the seemingly endless stream of mental mistakes, that seemed to actually get worse as the year went on. sorry, but you can't blame his injury for him not knowing where he should be in the defensive zone.

the kid is paid a lot of money to play defense, so if he isn't able to do it (which he showed continuously last season) then the criticism is justified.

not really sure what you're referring to when you talk about dislike towards methot.....maybe i missed something. i personally think he's a bit out of his league playing on the top pair, and is more suited to be a 3/4 guy, but speaking for myself, he's still a good player.
- sensarmy_11

I say give the player another year to prove himself. Don't forget who amazing he was one year prior. Mental mistakes happen to the best of players (e.g. Alex Ovechkin even had a poopty season). My point is he skipped training camp, it obviously doesn't justify the late season poor plays, but then again the whole team didn't play well enough. He needs a good back check from forwards to help out the D take the puck out of the D zone... which the forwards did not do last year, at the exception of Turris, MAC and Zibanijad. Give the player one more year. He has the size and physique to be a potential top two D. He is still very young D and no where close to his prime.

My two cents.

I say give the player another year to prove himself. Don't forget who amazing he was one year prior. Mental mistakes happen to the best of players (e.g. Alex Ovechkin even had a poopty season). My point is he skipped training camp, it obviously doesn't justify the late season poor plays, but then again the whole team didn't play well enough. He needs a good back check from forwards to help out the D take the puck out of the D zone... which the forwards did not do last year, at the exception of Turris, MAC and Zibanijad. Give the player one more year. He has the size and physique to be a potential top two D. He is still very young D and no where close to his prime.

My two cents.
- PtotheY

oh, i agree. you definitely don't give up on the guy. but at the same time, you can't absolve him of criticism. he was (frank)ing awful last year, and i don't believe for one second that his injury had anything to do with his hockey iq dipping into the negative territory

peoples criticism of cowen is more than justified.

if he had simply lost a step, or played a little less physical as a result of his injury, that would be completely understandable.

cowen's issues last year were the seemingly endless stream of mental mistakes, that seemed to actually get worse as the year went on. sorry, but you can't blame his injury for him not knowing where he should be in the defensive zone.

the kid is paid a lot of money to play defense, so if he isn't able to do it (which he showed continuously last season) then the criticism is justified.

not really sure what you're referring to when you talk about dislike towards methot.....maybe i missed something. i personally think he's a bit out of his league playing on the top pair, and is more suited to be a 3/4 guy, but speaking for myself, he's still a good player.
- sensarmy_11

Cowen is still young, he got into a lot of trouble last season because he overtried to be physical and wanted to run guys into the boards and knock them on their ass, establish himself as an elite physical presence - he would get into puck races with people thinking they would bail based on his line of attack but they'd usually just push the puck up a bit or come in behind him and he wouldn't have the body or the puck.

We saw this with Chara - he'd overcommit to running guys over, especially in his first couple of playoff series in Ottawa. When he got older he toned down the nasty and played a more contained game - Cowen will figure it out, he's still an elite 2-way talent in my eyes and if comes into camp with all the lessons learned from last season he'll be the 1 single player in Ottawa that will improve the team (Zibby having a good season is the other guy who can swing or fortunes)

Cowen is still young, he got into a lot of trouble last season because he overtried to be physical and wanted to run guys into the boards and knock them on their ass, establish himself as an elite physical presence - he would get into puck races with people thinking they would bail based on his line of attack but they'd usually just push the puck up a bit or come in behind him and he wouldn't have the body or the puck.

We saw this with Chara - he'd overcommit to running guys over, especially in his first couple of playoff series in Ottawa. When he got older he toned down the nasty and played a more contained game - Cowen will figure it out, he's still an elite 2-way talent in my eyes and if comes into camp with all the lessons learned from last season he'll be the 1 single player in Ottawa that will improve the team (Zibby having a good season is the other guy who can swing or fortunes)
- tuna99

i don't necessarily disagree with anything you said (other than classifying cowen as "elite").....i'm just not as confident that he'll find his game again. If he does, awesome, but i'm not holding my breath.

At this point, until he proves otherwise, mentioning him in the same sentence as chara is WAAAAAY premature. a more appropriate comparison would be Keith Aulie, IMO.

Nice trolling attempt, but that 'pipsqueak' was GM of the Greyhounds in the OHL... so ya, he's got some experience running a team. And knowing Ottawa's budget, they probably will reach out to Travis and offer him free popcorn to join the org (that, or pay him in Canadian Tire money - which will be super useful for someone living in the US).
- KarlKarlsson

window lickers galore here...
It was a joke in reference to his Corsi posts as the guy hired by the Leafs is a Stats guy ( and yes... was the youngest to run an OHL franchise in history... i know... he went to Brock U and graduated from the sports management program which a friend of mine taugh him in.)
Was a joke... meaning that Yost was looking to get a job similar to the guy in TO... by using Corsi stats galore.
Thanks for playing.

First time, long time!

Love the blog Travis been reading it for many years now, despite the rep the mother blog has yours is my first stop for daily Sens news, Thanks for doing what you do!

Interesting info on Chiasson regarding the illness, will be curious to see if he "bounces back" from said illness or if those flashes of brilliance down in big D were just that....flashes, the data suggest the former which would be excellent. I like how the team seems to be aiming at larger skill as i have felt on occasion we have been pushed around a bit especialy the last few years in corner battles etc... Also with Neil on his way out this team may loose some of it's gumption.

I am curious as to what your opinion is on the Ryan situation? I believed he would be re-signed fairly quickly even if the team had to overpay, now as i see almost every other team signing extensions/locking up their core and we sit with our hands in our pockets i get confused. Surely they will not go into the season with him unsigned? If it was my decision it would be sign by training camp or we ship ya out....no more distractions in Ottawa we have had enough for a long long time.

i don't necessarily disagree with anything you said (other than classifying cowen as "elite").....i'm just not as confident that he'll find his game again. If he does, awesome, but i'm not holding my breath.

At this point, until he proves otherwise, mentioning him in the same sentence as chara is WAAAAAY premature. a more appropriate comparison would be Keith Aulie, IMO.
- sensarmy_11

Ouch. That is a pretty harsh comparison. We better hope that he turns out better than that. I always felt Braydon Coburn would be a good measuring stick for Cowen.

Ouch. That is a pretty harsh comparison. We better hope that he turns out better than that. I always felt Braydon Coburn would be a good measuring stick for Cowen.
- Gord_Wilson_2.0

well, right now, he's closer to aulie then he is to coburn or chara, IMO.

he has the potential to be like coburn, no doubt....but right now, he's a big body with seemingly zero hockey iq......i'm definitely hoping he turns it around, but until he does, comparing him to actual good d-men isn't fair.

I'd rather have Michalek play on the 3rd line than not see Stone in the lineup. Did you watch this kid play down the stretch? He's insanely good both with the puck and without it. Some commenters already posted this, but Stone is vicious when he attacks the puck. I can definitely see him put up 40-50 points next season on the 2nd line.
- Hubris

Well, I'm not approaching this from the point of view of what I'd "like" to see, but rather what I think is most likely to happen. Again, I can guarantee that the cheapest team in the NHL didn't sign Michalek for $4M/yr to start him on the 3rd line, so I don't see the point in pretending that this is going to happen. Similarly, you can prefer a lineup where Neil and Condra aren't starters - but a cap-floor team isn't going to carry over $3M in extra forwards on the bench, so barring a trade that's just not going to happen. There will also be a lot of pressure to showcase Chiasson as the major return in the Spezza trade - and given that he's coming off of a rookie season where he outscored the likes of Monahan, Scheifele, and Nichushkin, I don't think it's unwarranted for him to get a look on a scoring line ahead of Stone, who's a year younger and played 2/3 of his games last year in the AHL.

Don't get me wrong, I like Stone and think he has scoring line potential - in fact, I've been quite high on him since his days in Brandon (the advantage of living in a WHL city), when many people were mistakenly assuming that Scott Glennie was the reason for his success. I just don't share the same kind of fanaticism that some people do about his chances of walking onto a NHL scoring line role at 21, and not only displacing players who have already proven they can play that role, but also potentially forcing a trade or losing comparable assets to waivers in the process. And there's absolutely no way that I would take anything complimentary that Kyle Turris happened to say about Stone as an indication that he'd prefer to play with him than with Bobby Ryan. That's like someone overhearing you compliment the office secretary's new hairstyle, and concluding that you're about to leave your wife.

Well, I'm not approaching this from the point of view of what I'd "like" to see, but rather what I think is most likely to happen. Again, I can guarantee that the cheapest team in the NHL didn't sign Michalek for $4M/yr to start him on the 3rd line, so I don't see the point in pretending that this is going to happen. Similarly, you can prefer a lineup where Neil and Condra aren't starters - but a cap-floor team isn't going to carry over $3M in extra forwards on the bench, so barring a trade that's just not going to happen. There will also be a lot of pressure to showcase Chiasson as the major return in the Spezza trade - and given that he's coming off of a rookie season where he outscored the likes of Monahan, Scheifele, and Nichushkin, I don't think it's unwarranted for him to get a look on a scoring line ahead of Stone, who's a year younger and played 2/3 of his games last year in the AHL.

Don't get me wrong, I like Stone and think he has scoring line potential - in fact, I've been quite high on him since his days in Brandon (the advantage of living in a WHL city), when many people were mistakenly assuming that Scott Glennie was the reason for his success. I just don't share the same kind of fanaticism that some people do about his chances of walking onto a NHL scoring line role at 21, and not only displacing players who have already proven they can play that role, but also potentially forcing a trade or losing comparable assets to waivers in the process. And there's absolutely no way that I would take anything complimentary that Kyle Turris happened to say about Stone as an indication that he'd prefer to play with him than with Bobby Ryan. That's like someone overhearing you compliment the office secretary's new hairstyle, and concluding that you're about to leave your wife.
- khawk

i get what you're saying, but using his 4 mil as justification is difficult when 4-5 guys who are as good or better are still on their ELC.

hell, michalek makes more than turris and macarthur, they're still gonna be playing ahead of him.

greening makes more than stone, doesn't mean he's playing ahead of him (although i guess he might with the way things have been going).

using a salary to justify where a guy will be in the lineup is flawed logic, IMO.

hopefully condra being put on waivers, for someone like peumple or pague to take over. he can go play keep away somewhere else. trade smith for a draft pick. these boys just don't put up any numbers.

I always wonder about the ceilings for guys who are cracking the league at 22+ years of age. It's the million dollar question that hockey operations guys really have trouble answering: how high can development carry a non blue-chip prospect as he enters his playing prime?
- Travis Yost

This is a question we're going to be asking about a few guys this season, and the answer will ultimately determine the sink or swim result for the roster.

Hoffman, Stone, Weircioch, Chiasson and to a lesser extent Borowiecki all fit into this category.

I expect the first four to play well, because I believe in all of them, but Boro to wash out.