Sens defeat Panthers, refs

The officiating in last night’s game between the Senators and the Panthers was nothing less than brutal.  I’m not really one to complain about officiating, it’s a tough job and you’d be remiss to accuse anyone of cheating lest you have the full facts at your disposal.  However, there’s no excuse for poorly reffed games in my opinion.  Okay, so the Senators got 7 penalties called against them.  I was watching pretty closely and I would say that 5, maybe even 6 of those calls were good calls.  I have no problem with that.  What I have a problem with is: when the other teams does the same exact things, the same infractions and gets all of one penalty the entire game.  And this game featured extended periods of time where Ottawa (specifically Alfredsson, Fisher and Kovalev) hemmed the Panthers in their zone and played keep away.  Panthers’ sticks were riding up, they were guilty of interference, tripping, holding, you name it – and that’s only in one of the minute and a half cycling plays.  Rob Martell and Justin StPierre are on notice as far as I’m concerned – and the NHL will have little to no choice to make sure they keep the level of officiating as high as humanly possible and not let another night like that dictate the outcome of a game.  By that I mean, instead of the game being 5-1, it was a 4-3, nail-biting, horror show.  And really, slow, choppy hockey.

So that’s my opinion on the reffing last night.  On to the game, which was weird and (not) wonderful in its own way.  The basic gist if you didn’t see the game was Pascal Leclaire was dizzy throughout the entire first period – not that he looked it, he was actually quite good.  He had to leave the game in the first intermission and give way to Brian Elliott.  Elliott was himself a victim against the Boston Bruins on Saturday.  He played a heck of a game and saw his team collapse in front of him in the final two minutes to tie and eventually win it in a shootout.  This night he would make sure there was none of that.  He started very shaky, then slowly got himself into a nice rhythm, allowing the Senators to break a 2-2 tie and go up 4-2.  He survived several Panthers onslaughts towards the end of the game and while he wasn’t directly responsible for the W, he was very solid.  Nice to see a young man come in and play well when needed so badly.

Daniel Alfredsson, Mike Fisher and Alex Kovalev played their best game of the year.  They simply dominated the Panthers in their own zone, cycling the puck so efficiently that eventually the Panthers were forced to stop moving their feet and watch.  When all was said and done, Alfredsson had a goal and an assist, Fisher had a beauty of a deflection goal and Kovalev was held off the score sheet.  But is that indicative to how well they played?  That’s a big no, they could have notched points galore.

Finally, the scare of the night was Anton Volchenkov going down near the end of the game with a suspected elbow injury.  As of right now, no one seems to know the extent of the injury, but the odds are against him playing tonight.  Look for Brian Lee to be called up from Binghamton.  How big a loss would ‘A-Train’ be for this team?  Huge, but not as devastating as people might think.  This is very much a defense by committee.  The Senators were without arguably their best all around D-man in Filip Kubu for the last eight games going into last night.  They played with a 2nd pairing of a young Chris Campoli and an even younger Erik Karlsson.  Their 3rd pairing was the young Alex Picard and the wet-behind-the-ears, 28 year old rookie Matt Carkner.  They had little to no NHL experience and still got the job done for the most part.  Admittedly Kuba’s return last night was massive as he logged 22+ minutes, had two assists (one on the woeful powerplay) and was a plus 2, but that doesn’t discount the fact that this team does things as a unit on the back end.  Volchenkov and Phillips are the money guys, they shut down the opponents, but the 2nd and 3rd pairings are just as important in keeping the other teams at bay.  To lose Volchenkov would hurt, but to gain Kuba is massive – just ask Chris Campoli how he felt to be playing with a seasoned (and underrated) veteran like Kuba, his game was fantastic last night for probably the first time all year (2 assists, +3).

Tonight, the Senators roll into Tampa Bay.  Elliott will most likely get the start, Brian Lee will most likely be called up, and hopefully real refs are present.  This will be a tougher test obviously, but still one where the Senators will have little to no excuses if they’re not victorious.