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Written by Nichols
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Tuesday, 08 July 2008 16:25 |
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When you add Jason Smith to Ottawa's defensive mix, you're left with a defensive core that sees more rubber than the average Dalhousie Street harlot. Here's the breakdown of the 2008-2009 blueline unit, I've listed the respective players and their blocked shot total from last year. Here they are:
- Anton Volchenkov - 209 in 67 games
- Jason Smith - 204 in 77 games
- Chris Phillips - 151 in 81 games
- Andrej Meszaros - 100 in 82 games
- Christoph Schubert - 36 in 82 games
- Brian Lee - 7 in 6 games
That's a combined 707 shots as a whole and that is 5 stopped shots less than what Ray Emery stopped last season for the Sens.
When I look at the contract offered to Smith, I immediately think two things:
1) As a defensive defenceman, he's an upgrade on Mike Commodore who makes $1.15 million less per year.
2)Irregardless of salary inflation, at $2.6 per annum and I still feel that the Sens have overpaid for another one of those "character guys" and that tells me something.
Don't get me wrong, I like the Smith signing alot. I'll look past the fact that he isn't fleet of foot, nor does he possess the puck-moving skills that the Sens desperately need from the backend. However, Smith is more defensively responsible than Commodore and he's a stark contrast to #6 in the sense that this offseason, he won't require reconstructive surgery on his vagina. For the first time since Zdeno Chara, the Sens finally have a bruising defenceman who WILL punish opposing forwards in front the net.
If you can analyze Murray's offseason transactions and comments, it's obvious that he's willing to do anything (including overpaying; Please note that I'm not saying that Ruutu was overpaid) to bring in character guys to change a player and fan perception for what has been characterized as a bad dressing room.
Even after ridding themselves of two problems in McGrattan and Emery, Sens fans need to ask themselves why there is still a perception that people don't want to play here. Why is Ottawa quickly becoming the Edmonton of the Eastern Conference? Or are the Sens merely representative of a bigger trend in that players simply aren't attracted to signing in Canadian markets because of some combination of cold weather, media coverage and fan scrutiny? Or is there still ONE more problem within the dressing room that needs to be addressed?
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