CBC-Sports

Senators putting league on notice

January 29, 2010 04:44 PM | Posted by   Mike Milbury  

With Hockey Day in Canada upon us, it seems a good time to peek at Canada's entries in the NHL. Or maybe not.

Edmonton has been on a sickening free fall that promises no end. Not far behind in a crash of unforeseen length, the Calgary Flames have turned Cup expectations to mush.

Montreal's Lilliputians don't have enough to win on a regular basis and no one seems to know if Carey Price is good enough or cares enough to be a big-time goaltender. Toronto started the season on life support and certainly there seems no reasonable hope that they will come out of their coma. Yikes.

Canucks challenging in the West

In Vancouver, there is hope. The Sedins have finally earned the attention and respect of the rest of the league and with Roberto Luongo in net, they have enough to be given a solid chance of winning a couple of rounds … but they would not be the favourites against either San Jose or Chicago.

And that brings me to the Ottawa Senators. Well, bust my britches, what do we have here? From the hockey trash bin comes a recycled Ottawa Senators group that has done itself proud.

The roller-coaster ride which saw the Sens gallop to the Stanley Cup final and appear poised to make a run at it the following year dipped precipitously into a valley of off-ice issues that make Patrick Kane's punch out of a cab driver look tame. With the inmates running the asylum, the whole thing unravelled. And into this mess stepped Cory
Clouston.

New attitude, new values, more accountability

Now, I know that coaches don't ever make a difference on the ice on game day. But players never make a difference either if they don't have the discipline and direction that a coach must provide. And in my estimation, based solely on the viewings, this team has both.

Playing without their best offensive players for a long stretch (and maybe that was critical to the advancement of the cause), Ottawa has come together. There is visible effort. There is passion. There seems to be a joy about their successes. And with the return of their captain and their talented but enigmatic centre, they are on an eight-game winning streak. Doesn't seem to matter who plays goal. Doesn't seem to matter who plays with whom. What does seem to matter to the players is that they break a sweat on every shift and that they pick themselves up after a loss.

It is not all to the credit of the coach, of course, but one would have to point to Clouston as the man responsible for instituting the type of values and accountability that form the core of a team.

The Senators may not be anyone's favourite to win a Cup but they have become much more of a lunch bucket brigade. And they’re a lot more fun to watch than back when we were worried more about Ray Emery's driving than the team's power play.

Take a bow Mr. Clouston for a job well done.

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