If there's one thing the hockey blogosphere can teach you, it's that team success and blog quality aren't necessarily connected. A great example of that is Sens at Land's End. While the Senators could face some tough times, SaLE is one of our favorite Ottawa blogs, so make sure you follow it like a blind Jason Spezza drop pass.
Some might ask what isn’t an issue for the Sens this year, and those people might not be wrong. What worries me most, though, is the defense. Behind three usually reliable veterans – stay-at-homers Chris Phillips and Anton Volchenkov and puckmover Filip Kuba – play three young “mobile” defenders – Chris Campoli, rookie Erik Karlsson, and Alexandre Picard (who started the season in the pressbox). These guys may be great someday, but right now they’re prone to brain cramps that will definitely give Pascal Leclaire a workout. I would feel better if the defensive pairings were more balanced; however, the Senators have always shown an inexplicable unwillingness to split up the shutdown duo of Phillips and Volchenkov. This makes the second and third pairings a bit, well, scary. The more physical presence of Matt Carkner may help to an extent, but he’s been a career-AHLer until now and who knows how he’ll fare during a full season at the NHL level. To all these problems add the fact that Volchenkov and Kuba (already injured, by the way) both missed over 10 games last season and the picture becomes even less pretty.
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