Silver Nuggets: Wake me up when September ends

Ah September. Kids are back at school, routines are starting to be set, and fall is coming (except in Toronto, where it's currently 32 degrees). What does this mean? Senators hockey starts back very soon, with the rookie tournament running in London, Ontario from September 13th - 16th. The roster looks pretty good at forward, with Curtis Lazar, Matt Puempel, Shane Prince, and Ryan Dzingel participating. Defense features Freddie Claesson and Ben Harpur, with the likely AHL goalie tandem of Hammond and Driedger backstopping the rookie Sens. User SensFan90 has a great fanpost on the topic here.

With a number of players using the rookie camp as a stepping stone for a shot at making the NHL roster, it'll be interesting to see how some of the aforementioned players fare. Main camp should start around the third week of September, and you should see a lot of coverage via SensTV, TSN 1200, and here at Silver Seven of course. The Score's Justin Bourne had a really good piece on how much information we can tangibly extract from the fitness tests and the storylines they create at training camp, but it will still be a good indicator of the Senators "new" defensive tactics that was alluded to by Paul MacLean at his year-end exit interview. I don't know how much we can read into lineup combinations, and deployment, but poster Richard McCrae had a good read on how he felt the Sens should lineup this year.

All in all, I'm excited for September to come, and end, because hockey's right around the corner.

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Sens Links

• The stretch run of our Top 25 Under 25 is underway. Adnan delved into our 8th ranked player, Alex Chiasson, while Amelia wrote about Curtis Lazar. I explored why Patrick Wiercioch deserved to be ranked #6, and Ian looked at hopeful NHL-player Mark Stone. Just this morning, B_T had a great piece on Cody Ceci. [Chiasson, Lazar, Wiercioch, Stone, Ceci]
• Our Email Hotstove last week got the Staff's opinions on who we feel should be the next captain of the Ottawa Senators. [Email Hotstove]
• There was a bunch of expansion talk (32 teams? 34 teams? Relocation?) earlier in the week, so Amelia took us through an exercise on how the last expansion worked in order to see which Senators players we'd protect. [Silver Seven]
• With the recent signings of MacArthur and Anderson generating some buzz, Michaela gave us an update on the remaining 2015 UFAs. [Silver Seven]
• If you haven't already checked out NKB's Five Thoughts piece, I'd recommend that you do so! [Five Thoughts]
• Varada and James had a great piece where they talked about Paul MacLean's tactics and what what needs to be changed. [WTYKY]
• A final wrap-up on the Craig Anderson Sensblogosphere takes, this time from James, and Jared [WTYKY, SenShot]
• Fresh off being blocked from the Senators twitter account (Hi, Adnan!), Nichols covered the weirdest news of the week - the ownership rumours. SensChirp also had a piece on it as well [6th Sens, SensChirp]
• Chet released his infamous September power rankings. Always great stuff. [Bonk's Mullet]
• I'm also listening to Chet and Luke's podcast right now! Why aren't you? [Bonk's Mullet]
• The Binghamton Senators released their 2014-15 season schedule, with 10 of their 76 games coming against the Lehigh Valley Phantoms (PHI), who are in the AHL's East division with the Hershey Bears (WSH), Norfolk Admirals (ANA), and the Wilkes-Barre Scranton Penguins (PIT) [SenShot]
• Jared revisited the Bobby Ryan trade, one year later. I'd still make the same deal. Would you? [SenShot]
• One of my favourite Sens-related posts from this week was this one from SensChirp, which included a video that told the story of how Ottawa got an expansion team in the first place. [SensChirp]

NHL Links

Thanks for reading!