Senators lose 5-3 to the Bruins after a poor performance

But you can’t say it didn’t work for the Bruins. The Sens had just scored, the crowd was as quiet as you could imagine. And for some odd reason, Konopka decides to accept Thornton’s challenge, which is a zero sum game as far as the Sens are concerned. The crowd gets back into it, the Bruins draw a penalty five seconds later, and they score to tie it up. To me it was a huge turning point.
I know the Sens retook the lead, but they were outclassed the rest of the way. The Bruins were far too strong for the Sens tonight. Maybe they would have retained a more defeated attitude if Ottawa was able to keep up the pressure after their first goal. I’m not a big Konopka fan so far. He’s gotta think out there.

The thing I noticed the most was that the Bruins did a great job of using their sticks to disrupt passes. Either that or the guys were too sloppy with their passes.

Things were going too well. We were due for a letdown game at some point. Boston seemed like a good team to have a letdown against.

During this rebuild period, Karlsson is being purposely overexposed to help train him… killing penalies and everything to train him to be an all around dman. And he is improving. IMO, we still need a young stud shutdown kind of a guy, and either bring Chris Kelly back or find a CK clone somewhere. Our GA and our PK is still suspect… and we are expecting way too much of Anderson if we expect him to do it himself night after night.

In particular we need these players when we play teams that play that GD trap style. It’s nice to have offensive-minded dmen but we need to balance with a couple of shutdown guys. I’m talking 27 year old Phillips / Volchenkov types. They don’t grow on trees. We still have work to do building our defence, and this draft is loaded with defence prospects.

We seem to have plenty of scoring now and developing. IMO, we need more defence from forwards and dmen if we are going to contend.

Even Puck Daddy gave him third star of the day for his three-point effort. It sounded to me that, at least in the early going, the second line was the team’s best.

Filatov is playing very little because he brings very little to the bottom lines and he is not being trusted. Condra fulfills a role killing penalties and preventing the opposition’s offence, things that are foreign to Filatov. When Stache trusts him to play like he’s being asked to play, he’ll play more. This is the same thing that Butler went through.

So it’s a double-edged sword (not playing enough to be able to produce), but the coach rules, and when he does it the coach’s way he’ll get more ice time. It’ll continue to be Blue Jackets Part 2 until he does it the Stache’s way.

Offensive guys who are struggling and don’t bring offence have this kind of problem because they don’t fit anywhere.

If he wants a bigger role, he’s going to have to be a scorer, or play better 200 feet as Stache puts it.

That’s a positive.

I want to point out, we’ve scored goals in 9 of the 13 games so far. The only exception is 7-1 to Colorado, 2-1 to Washington, 7-2 to Philadelphia, and the 3-2 win over Carolina (the shootouts don’t count as goals scored).

We average exactly three goals a game, and it’s not because of a few big games, it’s consistently there. We’ve also scored 6 goals in the last 2 games without Spezza or Michalek getting a point.

On the downside, we’ve already lost three games where we score 3+ goals. 5-3 to Detroit and Boston and 6-5 to Toronto.

Yes exactly… our offence hasn’t been the problem; and this is why Stache is insisting on defensive responsibility. He lets guys play to a point, and then those who aren’t listening will be riding the benches or watching.

As a goal scorer who’s producing, you can get away with some miscues, but a good coach gets that message across. Responsible forwards make for much more effective dmen… and a much more effective goalie.

I hope nobody who matters was watching last night in order to tell other teams how to play us.

That GD trap (left wing lock… whatever) seems to work really well against us, which makes alot of sense. Paulrus is trying to design a “puck possession play well defensively all over the ice” kind of system and the trap works well against that. Too bad there’s no way to outlaw it.

I HATE THE TRAP!!! Among other things it’s boooooorrrrrrrrrrring, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!… although it’s great for catching up on your shut-eye.

I am not worried losing to the Stanley Cup champs when we were 3-3 in the 3rd when not playing that great.

Saying that Boston just out muscled us on their fore-check, I think with the hits coming Gonchar and Philips didn’t stand up and deliver some hits back to make Boston forecheck a little more wary. If anything we made Boston look better than they currently are with their sticks on auto-dump for them to chase and check.

Go Sens Go