Senators fall 3-2 to New York Rangers

I’m putting my vote in for Sergei Gonchar and Paul Maclean (via David Rundblad).
hear me out, on Serg’s 2nd period mistake, would it be more plausible to go behind the net, actually freeze the puck on the boards and fight for it OR blind no look pass? this from a veteran. for the paulrus case, DR. 7 is going to make mistakes, but leaving him in the press box to sit and wait did not help. at all. he came back a little beleaguered. overwhelmed alittle, perhaps. because he might have been thinking that the team had lost a few games so he don’t want to make a mistake and guess what, he made the blunder, but that falls on the coach for sitting a guy that was starting to find his footing. I might add to that he opted to start mr. anderson after lehner had a good game against the leafs.

Rundblad was out there a lot. Early on in the game, he looked dynamite, including one rush where he brought the puck up through the neutral zone and deked out Richards before getting it in deep. He actually had back to back shifts with rushes through the neutral zone. Clearly he was in Bobby Orr mode, but his downfall was his inability to flip the switch back to ‘responsible D’ mode, as evidenced by his multiple cough-ups down low as the game progressed. He’s seemingly always looking to make an advanced play where sometimes a quick, basic one would suffice. But I will add that I thought he handled the Gaborik 2-on-1 responsibly, and was a victim of an elite player making an elite play on Anderson with his D partner leaving him out to dry.

Karlsson had a couple soft plays with the puck, usually involving short breakout passes at the edge of the defensive zone. Nothing that burned him, but as a rule, I’d say he’s better off not passing it than passing it, because he’s Karlsson (self-explanatory). I’ve been patiently waiting for him to go end-to-end all season now, and yet he’ll build up speed from his own end, take it up to the opposing blue line, and then pull up and make a soft chip-in, or a pass to a player at a standstill. God damn it, we need a designed set play or two where a forward covers for him and he has the ability to finish these rushes that he starts without exposing himself defensively. Anyways, decent game from Karlsson.

Foligno, despite his late goal, was the most frustrating Senator. Again, he tried to deke through 40 cumulative Rangers with no success. Is he oblivious to his limited skillset as a grinder with half-decent awareness? Does he think he’s Rick Nash? Does he have immunity within the organization, and if so, why? Daugavins is making him obsolete as a boards-savvy grinder with half the turnovers and half the salary for similar ice time. Just sayin.

And Da Costa had a great game, obviously. He’s so shifty, so different, that defenses just don’t know how to play him yet. As a rook dawg he sure creates a lot of space out there.

With Spezza’s dominance in the faceoff circle last night, he is now #8 in the league among guys who have taken more than 200 faceoffs, ahead of Datsyuk in #9. (Wait, what?)

And several of the guys ahead of him are “faceoff specialists” (e.g. Steckel, Malhotra) who aren’t as strong in other areas of the game. Only Toews (who is killin’ it this year in FO% and is #1 in the aforementioned group) is on par with Spezza in terms of point potential among the leaders.

none by the Sens was attributable to Spezza. Was that a first?