Silver Nuggets: What to do with the Senators defensive logjam?

Not permanently mind you, but he could use the playing time & the ineveitable boost in confidence an NHL player gets from playing against lesser competion.
Lee & Carkner can rotate in and out of the lineup on a winning/losing basis. Eventually or inevetably someone on the D-corps will be injured or need a game or two off to rest and that will be the opportunity to bring Runblad back up.
Save the trading of the D-man for later in the season when the market & bidding open up a bit.

I know this is probably not the most ideal situation, but barring the players wanting to be sent down to the b-sens, why don’t we just rotate defensemen in and out of the lineup to give others breaks? This way we could have a rested d-corps come April [optimist] when [/optimist] we make the playoffs.

I feel bad for the B-Sens, they have had some serious struggles this season. I think the Sens should send them Rundblad for a while as a little pick-me-up. With him and Filatov on the power play they should start converting at a high rate of efficiency. Also, it might light a bit more of a fire under Wiercioch who seems to have been inconsistent this season.

Btw, is Rundblad still elligible for World Juniors? If he is not too old I imagine Sweden would be extremely grateful if the Senators made his available to them. As a fan of Canada’s World Junior team, I hope he is too old.

Paul MacLean said as much in an interview on TEAM 1200 last night: Karlsson, Gonchar, Phillips, Kuba, and Cowen are all set in stone on his roster (unless, of course, one of them is traded).

That leaves Carkner, Lee, and Rundblad rotating the sixth spot. MacLean said he hates rotating two through that spot, and would not be keen to try three; this leads me to believe that Rundblad is almost certainly headed to Bingo until a trade is made, with either Lee or Kuba as the guy moving.

I agree that retaining Lee would be for the best. But between Lee, Carkner, and Rundblad, Lee is who I’d move.

Obviously Rundblad won’t be traded unless you get Kyle Turis for him or something of that caliber. I would make that deal and I feel it would be fair, but there is a reason I am not a GM :) both players have a lot of potential, but we would have to add extra body or pick in that trade, because Phoenix may think we are trying to rob them.
I am sure Mr. Murray is activelly looking for options to trade both Carkner and Lee (not at once), but their value is rather small and in return you might get just draft picks or some prospects who would not fill any spots on current Sens roster. Is it worth it?
Lee is more valuable, especially since he has been playing recently, and doing pretty decent job. Carkner on the other hand is still couple weeks of conditioning away from playing and he will most likley spend some time in Bngo for conditioning. If he can’t play on our team yet, no one will take him to (not) play on theirs either, not right now!
This is a dilemma that we are having because we have all of our defence healthy. Look around the league – this is a luxury that very few teams can afford. Imagine (fingers crossed) that one of the 3 veteran Ds were to get injured – Kuba, Gonchar or Philips (ok, Karlson is a veteran too, so he is 4th) and our D sudenly starts to look much less experienced and reliable. You can not have too much depth on D… Trade no one, wait till deadline! Unless Phoenix comes calling, then all bets are off…

But it depends how bad Phoenix needs to trade him and how much longer are we willing to deal with a hole on the second line C. There are other 28 teams in the league who would be making offers for K.Turris, so you won’t be getting him cheap. I know he only scored 25 points last season, but on the ice he is much better than at contract negotiations… :)
And back to the subject… Since Kuba most likely will be traded before the deadline, we will need Lee, Carkner and Rundblad till the end of this season, unless something goes terribly wrong in the next couple months and there has to be a fire sale again…

Cowen, Rundblad, Lee, even Carkner …. why does it have to be zany young guys?

Can’t we find some 51-year old and sign him?

In a perfect world where no one gets injured… yeah make a trade. If the Sens could have gotten something for Lee, he’d be gone a long time ago. So we are just looking at dumping him for virtually nothing. Lee would probably develop much better somewhere else where he’d get a full time chance at least for a while, rather than the in and out of the lineup he gets here…. but unfortunately he’ll never be worthy of his 1st round pick.

Cowen is a different sort of a dman that the team needs to develop desperately… so he needs to play. Rundblad is the obvious man to be left out right now… mainly because of the old “contract situation”. He needs to wait until Phillips, Gonchar and Kuba are out to pasture, until he gets free reign to be one of the top guys here.

Do we really need Carkner’s one dimension… his hitting? We’ll see how he plays post injury. I wouldn’t make any moves until that is determined.

At least the “trade Kuba” bandwagon has quieted down, as he has turned into our best shut-down guy.

As an aside, it’s interesting to see that Brian Elliot couldn’t stop anything with this defence (or close to it) in front of him, but with the no name Blues D in front of him, he’s turned into a world beater Vezina candidate.

I demand a poll centred around that picture of Foligno as a weatherman.

Dude has been a solid player so far this year, but we have the talent to make up for losing him easily. So I say trade Kuba to someone looking for a solid vet D-man without a huge commitment, slot Rundo in his place and alternate Lee and Carks in the sixth slot. Perfect world scenario there for me.

Otherwise, I’d say send Rundblad to hang out with Filatov in the AHL until things clear up. Da Costa too, but that’s a whole ’nother thing.

I’d rather have Regin or Da Costa than Turris even without the draft pick. Forget about reclamation projects and let’s concentrate on BUILDING. Players tend to bring whatever problems they had in their previous organization with them.

We aren’t privy to all of the conversations and reasons why Turris hasn’t developed. Do you want a player who will hold out if he’s not happy? A VERY LARGE NO!!!

Do we really need “another” underachieving or “overrated” (depending on how you look at it player? No we don’t. If we give up on Da Costa after a handful of games, what does that say about us? He’s 22 years old and has played 25 NHL games. Patience will get us there.

…you ask Carkner to fake an injury until someone gets a real one… “my tummy hurts” – upper body injury!!! 1-4 weeks!

Also that picture of Foligno scares me.