Everything Else

Follow Me To Freedom – Why Brent Seabrook Is Not A Norris Candidate/Even Good

By 1877

We here at the C.I. Labs often like to dispel any myth or the storyline that’s floating around at any given time. What can we say? When we’re not doing that we find children’s birthday parties and go pop all the balloons and steal the cake. It sustains us. It is our oxygen. Yes, we need help.

The current one going around these days, that I’ve seen far too often from people who should know better, is that Brent Seabrook is somehow a dark horse Norris Trophy candidate. This is ludicrous on a ton of levels, the first being that you can already set the three finalists as Karlsson, Doughty, and Klingberg and Karlsson should win it unanimously and the other two should apologize to him for taking up any of his time. Then Karlsson can worry about making a run at the Hart, which he has a serious case for but will never get because the Senators won’t make the playoffs, or aren’t likely to. But that’s not why you called.

Everything Else

Sens Spotlight: Erik Karlsson

By 1304

From today’s program.

It’s a pretty chalky choice to select Karlsson to spotlight when the Senators visit. But there’s hardly any point in talking about anyone else. In pretty much every sense, Erik Karlsson is the Senators.

The surface numbers are silly enough. Karlsson is the Eastern Conference’s leading scorer. As a d-man, that’s ridiculous. He’s averaging over a point-per-game, and if he continues on this pace he’ll break 70 points for the third time in his career (he amounted 66 last year as well). Should he stay at this pace he’ll have three of the top five scoring seasons by a d-man since the Great Bettman Lockout II, the one that canceled out a whole season. If he can better 80 points, he’ll also have the highest, which currently is held by Nicklas Lidstrom and that was from 50 power play points. Karlsson only has about a third of his points on the man-advantage right now.

When you dig a little deeper, it becomes more apparent just how Atlas-ian Karlsson has been for the Senators this year. Only two d-men in the league have higher Corsi marks relative to their team, that’s Aaron Ekblad and Victor Hedman. In Ekblad’s case, he gets far cushier zone starts than Karlsson does, starting over 60% of his shifts there while Karlsson starts only about 55%. Karlsson also faces harder competition than the other two, taking on the toughest the Sens face pretty much every night.

When looking at his teammates, almost every one of them see their possession numbers drop anywhere from seven to 12 percentage points from when they’re on the ice with Karlsson to when they’re not. His partner Marc Methot goes from a 48% Corsi player with Karlsson to 39.7% without him. Kyle Turris drops 9 points. Mark Stone drops six points. Mike Hoffman drops 11 points. It continues down the lineup in that fashion.

What’s more startling is how the scoring rates change. When Turris and Karlsson are out there together, the Sens score 3.55 goals per 60 minutes at even-strength. When Turris is on the ice without Karlsson it’s 1.67. Stone is 3.37 with Karlsson to 1.57 without him. Hoffman? 4.14 to 2.95. Every single player drops down at least a goal per 60 miuts without Karlsson behind them.

There’s been a lot of digruntled voices over Karlsson’s two Norris Trophies, because he doesn’t kill penalties. None of these saggy-balled codgers can tell us what d-man has ever won the Norris simply on his penalty killing though. It’s like complaining about a DH getting into the baeball Hall of Fame. How many players are there simply due to their glove? Like three? Patrick Kane has gobbled up most of the Hart talk, and rightly so because the Hawks wouldn’t be a playoff team without him. What he hasn’t Jamie Been probably has. But Karlsson should be right there with them, because without him the Senators are probably in Auston Matthews territory come the end of the season.

Does he also have to be so good-looking too, though? Seems a bit unfair.

Everything Else

Q&A With Silver Seven Sens

By 1404

Editor’s Note: As I mentioned, there are going to be some changes around here in 2016. One of them, and basically the big one, is I’m going to start putting more and more of what goes into the game program on here. It’s kind of a trial balloon for me to see how the model is changing and what I will do in the future. I’m not sure if I’m going to go full out for every home game or every game total. We’ll kind of find out together what I have the energy for. We’ve been doing Q&As with bloggers all over the league for years, so these are the easiest to share. Ahead of tomorrow night’s game, here’s the one we did with Ross from SilverSevenSens.com. You can follow him on Twitter @Sheer_Rossyness.

The Senators sit just outside the wild card spots in the East, but are only five points from the top of the Atlantic Division (even though Ottawa is nowhere near the Atlantic Ocean). They’re one of the higher scoring teams in the league, but they’re also one of the worst possession teams in the league. What is this team?

I can sum up this team in two words: Erik Karlsson. Granted, there are other players – Mark Stone is other-worldly, Mike Hoffman is a supreme talent, Craig Anderson has been great – but this team lives and dies with Karlsson. Keep in mind that he has a six point lead in the Eastern Conference entering tonight’s game. For a defenseman to be that far ahead of everyone else is mind-boggling. He leads the league in ice time per game. Ottawa’s possession stats are about even with EK on the ice, and are awful with him off it. I’d say more and more Sens fans are realizing that his prime years are being wasted on a team that keeps claiming it’ll wait for the right moment to spend. But for now, having him in the lineup is enough to keep the team afloat despite significant depth issues and questionable coaching choices.

Everything Else

N-V-T-S Nuts – Blackhawks at Senators Preview, Pregame Thread, Mid Term Election

By 1388 0

AltLogo at senator clay-davis-sheeeiiiit

Game Time: 6:00PM Central
TV/Radio: CSN, WGN-AM 720
House of Representin’: Silver Seven Sens

With no time whatsoever to dwell on last night’s steaming turd squeezed out on the shores of the Charles River (debatable whether or not that’d be an improvement), the Hawks stay within the Flortheast division with a trip up to Canada’s capital. No, not Toronto, Rand McNally. They’ll be in Ottawa to face off against the Senators, whose issues this season made whatever difficulties the Hawks had with the Bruins last night seem meager by comparison.

Everything Else

Love Your Suit – Senators vs Hawks Preview, Pregame Thread, Winterization

By Matt McClure 1129 0

Senator Kelly vs AltLogo

Game Time: 7:00PM Central
TV/Radio: CSN, WGN-AM 720
Et Tu, Brute?: Silver Seven Sens

After a nice rebound victory on the tail end of a home and home with Minnesota, the Hawks will now have the Senators to face less than 24 hours later. Meanwhile, the Sens have been off since a 5-2 pecker slapping at home at the hands of the Sharks, and have not been on United Center ice in nearly three years, since January of 2011.