Unlike Buffalo’s opponents during the first two rather diplomatic rounds of the National Hockey League playoffs, working up a healthy dislike for the Ottawa Senators shouldn’t be too tough.
There’s the Chris Neil hit on Chris Drury and the lengthy brawl which followed when Ottawa last visited HSBC Arena, on Feb. 22. You can relive the festivities here, including the love the Rogers Sportsnet announcers heap on Senators goalie Ray Emery, who is much better at throwing punches than stopping pucks. They also go out of their way to blame Drury for absorbing a hit that, while technically legal according to hockey’s vague rules, was clearly late and intended to take Buffalo’s co-captain out of the game. (Sorry for not identifying the commentators by name, but let’s face it – most of those Canadian hockey guys sound the same.)
And a year ago, Ottawa’s Peter Schaefer kayoed Tim Connolly early in Game 2. Apparently, if an opponent has his head down, it’s perfectly OK to try to remove it from his neck. The clean headshot kept one of the most skilled Sabres sidelined until shortly before this season’s playoffs began.
Then there’s John Muckler. Never in the modern history of sports has one man received so much praise for accomplishing so little.
Muckler’s reputation grew from the years he spent carrying Glen Sather’s clipboard with the Edmonton Oilers in the 1980s. Sather was nice enough to move into Edmonton’s front office before the Oilers’ last Stanley Cup-winning season, allowing Muckler to get credit for the franchise’s fifth such trophy.
Muckler parlayed Sather’s favor into opportunities to fail as both coach and general manager in Buffalo.
During his stint here, Muckler did acquire Dominik Hasek, then sagely kept him on the bench behind the aging Grant Fuhr.
Muckler also built the Sabres team that won a surprising division title in 1996-97. But he left Buffalo in the aftermath of the in-house ugliness that also led to Ted Nolan’s departure. While Nolan, fresh off winning Coach-of-the-Year honors, waited a decade for another shot in the NHL, Muckler went back behind the bench for the Rangers. Where, despite having one of hockey’s highest payrolls to work with, he managed to keep his career coaching record under .500.
The ultimate hockey insider, Muckler’s reward for his dismal three seasons in New York was another plum gig, this one as Ottawa’s general manager. The Senators have compiled more than 100 points in each of his four seasons there, but have lost their way each spring.
Ottawa fans tired of his act after last year’s early exit and a slow start this season, though once the Senators got rolling, a blog dedicated to his dismissal went dormant. For now, at least.
But if you really need a reason to disdain the Senators, look no further than their name.
It might the lamest nickname in professional sports. Rather than adopt a ferocious animal or some sort of soldier as a mascot, Ottawa is represented by the most long-winded breed of politician. Perhaps opponents should be cowed by the prospect of being filibustered into submission?
Yes, we get it. Ottawa is Canada’s capital, and the nation’s Senate convenes there.
Of course, Washington, D.C.’s baseball team used to be called the Senators. The team went out of business twice, though. The third time around, the name was wisely ditched in favor of the slightly less dull “Nationals.”
Ottawa’s franchise tries to toughen up the image with a logo depicting a rather grim-looking Roman centurion, hoping that no one knows the difference.
But we do. Roman senators got to wear some fancy clothes, but not the brush-top helmets seen on the jerseys of the Ottawa Senators.
All senators were entitled to wear a senatorial ring (originally made of iron, but later gold) and a tunica clava, a white tunic with a broad purple stripe five inches wide (latus clavus) on the right shoulder. A senator pedarius (or a non voting senator) wore a white toga virilis (also called a toga pura) without decoration. A senator who had held a curule magistracy, and thus the right to speak and vote was entitled to wear the toga praetexta, a white toga with a broad purple border. Additionally all senators wore closed maroon leather shoes, but senators who had held curule magistracies also added a crescent-shaped buckle. All were forbidden to engage in mercantile activities outside of the the ownership of land and natural resources. After the Punic Wars a law was passed to prevent Senators from owning a ship of more than 300 amphorae in tonnage, to prevent shipping of goods for trading purposes.
Pretty intimidating stuff, eh?
Then again, maybe Senators is the appropriate name for a team that annually promises its fans that this year things will be different, then falls short in the meekest, most painfully familiar of fashions when it really matters.
Who can forget Ottawa captain Daniel Alfredsson watching Jason Pominville circumnavigate him on the way to the short-handed winner in the fifth and final game of last year’s Eastern Conference semifinals, choosing to call it a season rather than risk taking a penalty?
This year’s edition is, all together now, a different team.
Believe it when you see it.
In the Eastern Conference Final, which starts tonight at 7 p.m. these Senators will allow Buffalo’s skill players more room to operate than they had against the Islanders and Rangers. And Emery, as fine a fist-fighter and cultural critic he may be, doesn’t belong in the same sentence with Henrik Lundvqist or even Rick DiPietro.
Better luck next year, Mucks. Sabres in five. Again.