The Ottawa Senators are currently struggling, but in this cover story from THN's January 17, 2003 edition, we listed all the reasons Sens fans had good reason to believe in their Stanley Cup hopes.
The Ottawa Senators are currently struggling, but in this cover story from THN's January 17, 2003 edition, we listed all the reasons Sens fans had good reason to believe in their Stanley Cup hopes.
The Ottawa Senators are sludging their way through another disappointing season, but in this cover story from THN’s January 17, 2003 edition (Vol. 56, Issue 19) – writer Scott Burnside wrote about the reasons to believe in the Sens twenty-one years ago.
(And here’s your daily reminder – for full access to THN’s 76-year archive, you can subscribe to the magazine by visiting http://THN.com/Free and signing up.)
The season this story was published was the first season the Senators in the modern era made it to the Eastern Conference Final. Three years after that, they’d play in their first Stanley Cup Final. And in Burnside’s story, Ottawa was to be reckoned with for many reasons, including their stellar depth.
“A lot of the younger guys have matured,” captain Daniel Alfredsson told Burnside. “We have the most depth we’ve ever had.”
“Part of the solution, or part of the process, has been gaining some experience, gaining some maturity,” added then (and current) Sens coach Jacques Martin.
Another element of Ottawa’s success was the play of goalie Patrick Lalime.
“I think he’s very similar to a Martin Brodeur,” Martin said of Lalime.
“He’s huge,” Alfredsson added. “He has been unbelievable the last two years really.”
The inter-provincial rivalry with the Toronto Maple Leafs dogged the Sens, but Martin didn’t sweat losses to the Leafs.
“Maybe because we’ve lost to the Leafs it gets more magnified,” Martin said.
THE REAL DEAL
By Scott Burnside
January 17, 2003
As good as they are – and these Ottawa Senators have never been better, ringing in the New Year with an Eastern Conference best 51 points – there remains about them the powerful odor of unfinished business.
Even as the Senators with their league-best 24 wins were inching away from the Eastern Conference pack, they continue to look over their shoulders at the dark shadow cast by their own past.
Rarely has a team delivered so little after promising so much.
Six straight years the Senators have qualified for the post-season. They have averaged 94 points a year over that stretch, twice topping the 100-point plateau. Yet in each of the past three playoff years, the Senators have been dispatched by arch-rival Toronto including an embarrassing seven-game loss last spring to a Leaf team missing a host of key players.
“I don’t think it’ll ever be erased until they go further than they did last season,” says long-time Senators broadcaster Dean Brown. “That’s kind of the litmus test for. this team.”
Still, there is something about this current edition that sets them apart.
“It’s definitely the best that this team has ever been,” Brown says. “There’s no question about that.”
Here are four reasons why you should believe the past is the past for the Sens (and one reason why the past is never as far away as you’d like to believe).
1. BOYS TO MEN
The names, for the most part, are familiar: Alfredsson, Bonk, Hossa, Redden, Phillips. So, is this team really any different?
“Both yes and no,” says captain Daniel Alfredsson, a Senator since being drafted 133rd overall in 1994. “A lot of the younger guys have matured.”
For years, the Senators have been forced by economic realities to follow a near-perfect blueprint for finding and developing their own talent. Thirteen players (if you count Wade Redden who was a draft year acquisition) are homegrown talent.
While cynics will cite stagnation as contributing to retarded development, this team holds to the belief the names may be the same, but the players are different.
“We have the most depth we’ve ever had,” says Alfredsson, the team’s undisputed leader and one of the league’s top scorers with 40 points in 35 games.
“Part of the solution, or part of the process, has been gaining some experience, gaining some maturity,” says coach Jacques Martin.
Young teams often have difficulty in making the monumental shift between regular season play and the post-season.
“You don’t know how to react,” Martin says.
The time for that excuse is now over.
2. THE COACH
Bob Hartley wins a Stanley Cup and less than two years later is out of a job. Ditto Ken Hitchcock. Darryl Sutter saw his San Jose Sharks improve every year for five straight years and got bounced.
Martin loses three straight years to Toronto yet you still find him in his same perch behind the Ottawa bench.
Has he changed?
“Not drastically, I don’t think so,” Martin says. “But I think I learn every year.”
Talent is nice, but Martin continues to preach hard work and a team approach as the cornerstones of success. This season he has urged more involvement from his mobile, talented defense, in particular the coaching staff has worked at encouraging Zdeno Chara to become a more dominant offensive presence.
The power play, 10th overall a year ago and 22nd at home, has improved dramatically and ranked third at the start of the new calendar year.
Teams succeed when they believe in their coach and respect his ideas or system, says Alfredsson.
"When coaches get fired, usually that trust and respect have been lost along the way. I don’t think that has been the case here.”
Brown points to players who thrived in Ottawa only to disappoint after departing. Lance Pitlick, Damian Rhodes, Jason York, or Alexei Yashin (sporting a minus-14 rating in Long Island), all thrived under Martin, but not elsewhere.
Similarly, unheralded Todd White, one of just four free agents on the Ottawa roster, has blossomed under Martin.
Likewise Patrick Lalime, cast off by Pittsburgh, is now near the top of most goaltending categories.
And Chara is among the best defenders in the league.
Coincidence? We think not.
3. THE MEDITATING MAN IN NET
It’s hard to imagine Lalime repeating his first round miracle of last season when he hung up three straight shutouts on the heavily favored Philadelphia. But he’ll have to at least come close.
After bamboozling the Flyers, Lalime found himself slowly out-dueled by Leafs netminder Curtis Joseph.
This year the St-Bonaventure, Que., native is poised to develop a game in the mold of men such as Martin Brodeur, Patrick Roy and Dominik Hasek.
Martin believes Lalime has the perfect mental makeup for a Senators team that boasts an impressive 8-1-2-0 record when being outshot.
“I think he’s very similar to a Martin Brodeur,” Martin says
“He’s huge,” Alfredsson says. “He has been unbelievable the last two years really.”
As for the unusual eyes-closed, head-lolling pre-game ritual sometimes employed by the good-natured Lalime, the captain says they used to give him a hard time. “But it’s working so we don’t bother him too much.”
4. CLOSING THE DEAL
Remember last spring when Alfredsson knocked Darcy Tucker through the boards then scored the winning goal in Game 5 to give the Senators a 3-2 series lead? Remember how that was supposed to have been the literal and figurative exorcism of Ottawa’s playoff demons?
Remember how that notion went up in smoke with the Senators’ Stanley Cup dreams?
There will be much debate come trade deadline time about adding grit, character, heart, all of those nebulous intangibles that are hard to find, but which every championship team possesses. The Senators need look no further than their own dressing room.
Former Sudbury scoring star Mike Fisher (21 points in 36 games) has earned praise from teammates and opponents alike as the kind of burr under your saddle player the Senators have been without at crucial times.
“He leads by example,” Alfredsson says. “Those kinds of players are invaluable.”
When the Senators unraveled versus the Leafs last spring it coincided with the departure of Fisher to a knee injury.
Likewise, the Senators could not overcome the loss of Chara, who gives the Senators the imposing physical blueline presence.
“That’s the least of our worries, to be honest,” Alfredsson says of the ‘grit’ issue.
And speaking of exorcising playoff demons, now for the devil’s advocate point of view:
TORONTO BLUES
Once is a coincidence, twice is a pattern, three times is a curse.
And so it was after three straight demoralizing playoff losses to Toronto that Ottawa fans responding to an off-season poll suggested they would rather beat the Leafs in the playoffs than win the Stanley Cup.
Toronto has the Sens’ number.
“Maybe because we’ve lost to the Leafs it gets more magnified,” Martin observes.
Maybe, but the Senators cannot be the team they envision themselves until they vanquish the Leafs or the Leafs selfdestruct before the Senators can finish the jobs themselves.
The Hockey News Archive is a vault of 2,640 issues and more than 156,000 articles exclusively for subscribers, chronicling the complete history of The Hockey News from 1947 until today. Visit the archives at THN.com/archive and subscribe today at subscribe.thehockeynews.com