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With just over 24 hours before the Sens' first game in what seems like a month, Toronto and Ottawa will both play their first games in 2 weeks tomorrow night. Sens practice was canceled yesterday for precautionary reasons and now we know why with 4 players going into the covid protocol.
Matt Murray and Filip Gustavsson will be the two goaltenders that DJ Smith has to choose from for his starter in Toronto with Filip Forsberg still in covid protocol. Erik Brannstrom will return from the injury list and will see his first action in 6 weeks. Josh Norris, Nick Paul, Tyler Ennis, and Dylan Heatherington are in the covid protocol so Adam Gaudette will finally play his 2nd game with Ottawa. Logan Shaw and Clarke Bishop have been called up from Belleville. Stutzle will replace Norris on the 1st line, so it'll be interesting to see how that line looks tomorrow night. Here are the lines and defense pairings from practice today.
Tkachuk Stützle Batherson Formenton Tierney CBrown Sanford Gambrell Watson Bishop Gaudette Shaw
Chabot JBD Holden Zub Brannstrom Mete
Looking ahead to the next Sens home game on Monday, Jan. 3rd vs Minnesota, one has to wonder if that will be postponed due to only 1,000 fans being allowed at any indoor venue in Ontario. At least we can expect to see Ottawa play at Seattle on Thursday, Jan. 6th when they start a 5 game road trip. At some point, the league is going to have too many games to make up during that 3-week stretch in February that was originally put aside for the Olympic break. As it stands now, Ottawa has 8 games to make up, with 7 of them at home. PITT/BOS x 2/CAR/STL/NYR/NSH and a road game at WSH to be made up.
With so many teams looking for players to sign that have NHL experience to help them out with the taxi squad, I'm actually quite surprised that Bobby Ryan hasn't drawn any interest. Ottawa will be paying him for the rest of this season and the next two seasons after this one for his buyout. I'm sure he would sign anywhere for the league minimum. Just a thought!
On another note, I was told by a very good source within the organization that Pierre McGuire has been told he won't be talking to the media at a presser on behalf of the organization anytime soon. It was Sens GM Pierre Dorion who said that when McGuire was hired one of his duties in his new role with the team, would be to talk to the media more so he wouldn't have to. This makes you wonder if Dorion feels a bit threatened by how McGuire could upstage him on how he handles the Ottawa media's questions. It's no secret that Dorion has made a few comments on which he has had to backtrack plus if you recall Dorion had no idea owner Eugene Melnyk had been talking to McGuire for a week about possibly hiring him before Dorion was notified about the new addition to the Sens front office. As I stated here over a month ago in my blog, Dorion balked at reporting to McGuire and got his way so he could continue to report to Melnyk. Is a power struggle beginning between these two perhaps?
It was no coincidence that after many media in Ottawa(print/radio and TV) were calling for Dorion to speak to the fans about the direction of the team, out of the blue he held a last minute press conference on Dec. 4th. It was McGuire who pressed Melnyk for this to happen as Dorion had been silent since his media presser at the beginning of training camp on Sept. 22nd. After the Dec. 4th presser, Dorion then went on TV with TSN during one of the intermissions in mid-December when they were on a road trip in Florida to talk about Sens-related topics. He also had another availability just 3 days ago talking about the Tyler Boucher entry-level contract signing. So Dorion went from being silent for two and a half months to doing three pressers in just three weeks! Don't kid yourself Sens fans, it wasn't Dorion who spearheaded this instant media access, it was from the urging of McGuire to Melnyk, as he truly understands how important it is to get the proper messaging out to your fanbase, season ticket holders, and sponsors. It'll be very interesting to see how this potential power struggle plays out over the rest of the season.
In case anyone missed it, Tyler Boucher interview link from yesterday - https://www.tsn.ca/radio/ottawa-1200/boucher-i-m-good-buddies-with-jack-beck-and-heard-a-lot-of-great-things-1.1740351
Thanks for reading and Happy New Year!
Kevin