Silver Nuggets: Where do the special teams go from here?

If Zack Smith had a $6.5M cap hit, he’d be buried in the minors, too.

They dropped Redden to the minors so they could use his salary to make their team better, not because he is not an NHL defenseman.

It’s always Brian Lee.

There isn’t a natural spot for him right now. But who knows what happens between now and the off-season. Is Carkner gone? Lee? Kuba is pretty much assured of being gone.

I’m not saying it makes the most sense, but if there were an opportunity, I’d be willing to have Wade back.

Not after it became clear that Gonchar was leaving Pittsburgh.

Michalek was more of an A-Train replacement w/ a better offensive upside than Anton. He was a plan ‘b’ for BM if he couldn’t land Gonchar.

I recall reading that he really enjoyed Ottawa and wanted to stay.

Ha, glad you enjoy it, we are pretty awesome though. ;)

Redden, in his prime, was one of the smartest defenders the Senators have ever had. If he wanted to get into coaching he would have a lot to teach to young defensemen coming up.

It would probably be better for him to get into it at lower level like junior of the AHL, but I can’t see any reason why he wouldn’t be a good coach down the road.

He was my kind of player (when he was good).

I just don’t see what he would offer the team.

I just don’t want him involved in this organization anymore and I’m stunned to hear it brought up to be honest.

The power play strategy these days seem to be, pass, pass, pass, set-up Karlsson for bomb at the top of left face-off circle. He has a cannon too, surprised he hasn’t had more goals yet.

I would actually like to see more fancy “cute” plays, we haven’t seen the Giggles cross crease passes as often this year.

I don’t know, is Alfie always on the first unit? Isn’t it Greening sometimes?

They kept a couple of the coaching staff. But fired arguably the most successful one from last season.

You refuse to try because they’re not going to forecheck? Babies.

… but not cowardly for Tampa to set the trap?

Last I checked, Alfredsson still missed four games with a concussion.

The Konopka-Avery fight accomplished nothing. I don’t feel justice was served; do you?

I generally disagree with Adnan’s sentiment in his comments about the link, but that more comes from knowing that he and I disagree on the role of fighting in hockey and consequentially also on the role of fighters in a lineup. That said, this was not one of those fights where we don’t know the circumstances going in unlike, say, the Cowen fight (seriously WTF was that?). Given that one player involved made a lot of public statements about retribution for the Alfredsson hit (and also given Avery’s reputation for running his mouth and getting people to fight him), I think it’s pretty easy to figure out what happened.

Given the way the team was playing in the first few minutes, I don’t even mind the fact that he fought since I’ve seen fights energize the team and get everyone playing better. For that very reason (plus the occasional guttural satisfaction of watching a Senator dominate a Leaf player in a fight) I believe that fighting still has a role in the game which means I’m in favour of fighters too – anyone who reads the GDTs and other comments regularly knows by now that I’m a huge fan of Neiler’s.

All of that said, my issue with your comment was mainly your implication through the language you used that this fight was part of some larger plan that we can’t see and specifically with you implying by saying that “everything happens for a reason” that it was almost out of the players’ hands. I don’t particularly like having Konopka on this team, but that’s not because he’s a fighter (it’s because his numbers aren’t great and I felt that we already had better players that fill the same role).

No my problem with it was that I’d rather a resounding victory in the game than in one fight. Retribution accomplishes nothing useful. While I agree that the NHL shit the bed on that decision, I don’t see how the Konopka fight accomplished anything to fix it. All it did was take two guys off the ice for 5 min, neither of whom was particularly important to his roster. Personally, I think it could have turned out a lot worse since I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the refs throw Konopka out to discourage retribution. Thankfully they didn’t, but that fight won’t stop Wolski or anyone else from doing it again.