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rubberdinghy

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In the Globe & Mail today (i guess Spezza doesn't like the bad media the team is getting ... kinda like Maurice?):

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080408.MACGREGOR08/TPStory/National/columnists

Senators latch on to role of underdog

ROY MacGREGOR

rmacgregor@globeandmail.com

April 8, 2008

OTTAWA -- What if Yogi Berra had played the Canadian game instead of the American pastime?

"Hockey," he might have said, "is 90-per-cent physical - the other is half mental."

Or something like that.

Consider, if you will, the head games going on in Ottawa yesterday at the Ottawa Senators' practice, as the team that fluked its way into the NHL postseason on another team's demise began pumping itself up for the playoffs.

The Senators, Stanley Cup finalists only 10 months ago, now speak of themselves as underdogs as they prepare for tomorrow's opening match against the Penguins in Pittsburgh.

Last April, again in the first round, it was exactly the opposite - the frisky young Penguins the underdogs as they went up against these same Senators, only then considered the best team in the National Hockey League.

Sit, now, and watch a brief montage of the year that followed: Senators squashed in the Stanley Cup final by the Anaheim Ducks; No. 1 goaltender Ray Emery to No. 2 and, if general manager/coach Bryan Murray could only figure out how to do it, banished far beyond No. 3; new players who added less than was taken away; the fastest start in NHL history to within a single (Carolina Hurricanes) victory this past weekend of the greatest regular-season collapse in NHL history ...

Add in jumpy goaltending by Martin Gerber, No. 1 goaltender by default, shallow defence, a missing forward line and injuries to heart-and-soul captain Daniel Alfredsson, among others, and you have ...

... an underdog so yippy that even the local paper says it has "a better chance of winning the 6/49 lottery" than beating Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, former Senator Marian Hossa and once-again-promising young goaltender Marc-André Fleury.

To stir such a pot, you need a big stick, so let us begin with coach Murray sitting at the dais yesterday afternoon, eyes clear as angel wings as he accuses the Penguins of "tanking" their final game of the season in order to get the soft and sore Senators in the opening series.

"I know what was going on," he said, innocent eyes widening to invite all gathered to nod knowingly.

"They wanted to play Ottawa. That was obvious from when they dropped the puck."

In this particular grassy-knoll scenario, the Penguins deliberately gave the Great Crosby the day off on Sunday as they went up against the hated cross-state rivals, the Philadelphia Flyers. It was the return match in what, days before, had been a brutal and bloody battle that many took to be a prelude of the playoff matchup to come.The Senators are aware that, from time to time, such things do take place in a game that likes to pretend it is beyond such devious manipulation.

At the end of Ottawa's first year back in the league, 1992-93, the Senators' organization pleaded with Boston officials to bring the best squad possible to Ottawa for the final game of the season. Meaningless to Boston, but not at all to Ottawa, who wanted to lose in order to claim Alexandre Daigle in the draft.

It worked, though Daigle didn't exactly work out.

Murray, a former teacher with a knack for inspiration, managed in only a few words to set tacks along the length of the Ottawa bench. If they can't get up for a team that has such obvious contempt for them, Murray's thinking must have gone, then they won't get up for anything.

That the Penguins themselves will be up is beyond debate. Last year they were a very young and inexperienced team that lucked its way into the playoffs. They fell in five games to the then mighty Senators and it was deemed a success in light of the playoff experience gained by the youngsters.

Now they are less young, less inexperienced. More significantly, Malkin, who looked lost a year ago in the playoffs, has emerged as one of the NHL's most lethal forces, coming second in the scoring race to the Washington Capitals' Alexander Ovechkin.

Malkin's emergence could also have a profound effect on Crosby, who is not only coming off a long injury but coming off the first experience in his life of not being considered the entire team. So proud and competitive is Crosby that he will be out to show more than the Senators that he is the top gun in Pittsburgh.

In the Ottawa dressing room after practice, the usual clichés flew and some were even caught and written down.

Defenceman Chris Phillips, who has a spring tradition of picking up his own game for the playoffs, probably put it best when he said the key thing will be to "not beat ourselves." The Senators, in recent months, have undeniably been their own worst enemy.

"We're getting a bad rep here," Jason Spezza added, "and everybody is ousting us in the first round and not giving us much of a chance.

"But we feel differently about our team. We feel we've got the manpower in here. If teams want to play us, we'll see what happens, I guess."

We shall see for sure.

As Yogi also once said, "You can observe a lot by watching."

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[color:purple]Oh, only if Pittsburgh didn't "tank" their last game by not dressing Crosby (against their hated rivals and dirty bastard Flyers) then everyone would be picking the Sens in the first round ... right Murray?

Blah, blah, blah... back to the Leafs thread trolls.

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For a team that's been accused of holding their sticks a little too tight when it comes to the playoffs maybe being heavily crapped on and counted out isn't the worst thing - then again Alfie and Fisher being out probably is.

(I almost bet against them last night but came to my senses - or lost my senses, not sure which)

Fucking Go Sens Go!

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