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First off, I'm going through a few personally, which have been difficult. If you're on Twitter you will see firsthand how mental health can affect you in so many ways. I've received many messages from the hockey world in general, some media members and numerous hockey fans of all teams. In the meantime, I had one of our regular readers do today's blog until get things back on track for myself. Huge thanks to Octavarium!

After coming off a tidy and expected win over the abysmal Ducks of Anaheim, the Sens look to continue moving towards .500 with their first meeting against the Montreal Canadiens this season. Strange to me at least that it took this long into the schedule for us to play a division rival and proximity rival of the importance of Montreal but who really can say why the scheduler does what they do?

Montreal is coming home after a long road trip that, from a rebuild perspective, could probably be viewed as pretty successful. The injury to Caufield wasn’t serious and he’s expected to be in the lineup. Suzuki continues to emerge as a great choice as captain of this storied franchise and they faired pretty well against some heavy western hockey teams. Will they fall into that old stereotype “trap game” after a long road trip? Probably not. I expect a high-speed, high-intensity game between these two. It would be even MORE spirited if Tim “The Diver” Stutzle was in the line-up - Montreal fans have made this kid public enemy #1. Sadly, he won’t be in the lineup for a while.

Speaking of Timmy, we know nothing. The best we can guess is shoulder or elbow as he was seen with his arm in a sling after the Anaheim game. Same with Motte. We got nothing on him either. I don’t think this has anything to do with the team withholding information and more with swelling and test results that even the team doesn’t have. Gambrell will slot back in and I guess “somebody else” will play. I wonder if Heatherington gets moved into the lineup, the defense gets juggled and maybe we see Branntrom at forward? But that too is unlikely as Heatherington was sent down. Rourke Chartier is also still with the big club so who knows what this coach will do. It seems he wants to keep his second line intact and play it more rather than move people around in the lineup. At this point in the season, I’m not shocked by anything this coach does. We and “me” have covered just about everything there is to cover with this coach. There isn’t much positive and the negatives are well documented. The players seem to love him and that is probably a good thing.

When it comes to player movement, nice to see some Senators prospects get looks at the World Juniors. Regardless of your intent to watch this year’s tournament with Hockey Canada mired in a sewer of scandal, it’s nice to see Boucher and Ostapchuk get looks in this tournament of elite junior players. The board of governors meetings revealed little to nothing about what is going on with investigations of allegations at past WJ tourneys. Lawyer-prepared “media speak” was all we got regarding the status of those investigations. The only interesting thing of note to me was that Hockey Canada was doing their best to conceal the “war chest” of registration money they’re sitting on so that previous victims can’t make a play for it in a parade of civil suits. Some quick mental math regarding minor hockey registration being anywhere from 500-800$ per child in Canada and a portion of each of those registrations yearly going to Hockey Canada and it’s not hard to fathom how they could own not 1 but 2 downtown Toronto condos for “executive use”.

Finally the sale of the team. Interesting stuff I guess. But as a long-time Ottawa resident, I find it comical how this city’s media is starved for anything that makes Ottawa “relevant news”. We are a quiet boring little town with fickle fans. Nothing much happens here. So when the team went up for sale the local talking heads couldn’t help but fall all over themselves with wild speculation. 12…no 15…NO 20 potential bidders for this team chugged Garrioch at pressers and “question period”. Gary Bettman slowed things down a little with some number confirmation but even that is pretty speculative. In the end, there will be fewer than 5 serious bidders. Once those bidders have seen how much red the books are actually bleeding I suspect we’ll be down to 1 or 2 who can afford to get this team out of hock, pay whatever the girls are asking, and then decide if they really want to deal with the NCC (the biggest hurdle of corruption in this deal IMO) People who have money---have money. But people who have THIS level of money don’t take kindly to being told how they’ll spend it.

Enjoy the game everyone. Predictions for tonight? Thanks for reading.
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Personal note, check out my Twitter – because Twitter is a wonderful place of kindness and thoughtful discussion.

Kevin

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