Senators Awards Night

As Hollywood gave out their own golden statues last night for the year's best performances, it only seems fitting we do the same for the Ottawa Senators.

With Erik Karlsson likely to be the only Senator with an actual NHL award this season when the league heads to Las Vegas to hand out the hardware, it's only fair we just include the team as nominees for our awards.

Vezina Trophy - Best Goaltender: Craig Anderson

There are only a handful of candidates, but Craig Anderson has been the Senators' best goalie this year. While some actually argue Anderson should be the team's MVP, there's no doubt he's easily overcome the slight goaltender controversy that surrounded the Senators after Andrew Hammond's historic start to his NHL career. And this season, Hammond has been anything but impressive as Anderson continues to shine as the team's outright No. 1.

Runner up: Andrew Hammond

James Norris Memorial Trophy - Best Defenseman: Erik Karlsson

It almost seems inappropriate to hand out this award, seeing as there is no defenseman even remotely close to the level of play Karlsson has been able to put forth this year (or in the past five years, for that matter). Easy choice.

Runner up: None Worthy

Hart Memorial Trophy - Most Valuable Player: Erik Karlsson

Guess who.

Karlsson will almost definitely win the league's best defenseman award, and has a legitimate shot at the Hart, so it's no surprise he's the Senators' MVP, as well. Leading the team with 67 points - and no one else even close to that number - the Swedish sensation has been one of the few reasons why the Senators are still a bit of an exciting team.

Runner up: Mark Stone

Calder Memorial Trophy - Best Rookie: Chris Wideman

Chris Wideman just signed a two-year extension worth $1.6 million. That's reason enough to believe he's had enough of the AHL and has proven himself as a solid NHL defenseman. The former Eddie Shore Trophy winner - for the AHL's best defenseman in 2015 - is fitting in just fine, playing on the third pairing with Mark Borowiecki. Wideman apparently passed Patrick Wiercioch on the Senators' depth chart this season. It's been quite the year for the 26-year-old.

Runner up: Shane Prince

Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy - Player That Best Exemplifies Perseverance: Kyle Turris

It was just disgusting.

A human's leg isn't supposed to bend that way. In early December against the New York Islanders, Kyle Turris' leg was gruesomely contorted on a - wait for the irony - broken play. After hobbling off with the help of his fellow teammates and the training staff, amazingly, Turris played the next day. The next damn day.

Runner up: Patrick Wiercioch

Lady Byng Memorial Trophy - Most Sportsmanlike Player: Mark Borowiecki

It's rather difficult to gage what players truly are the best leaders and most sportsmanlike, but his fellow players and the media surrounding him overwhelmingly deems Mark Borowiecki as that kind of player. That has to be worth something, right?

Runner up: Erik Karlsson

Frank J. Selke Trophy - Best Defensive Forward: Mark Stone

Mark Stone should actually be getting Selke consideration in the NHL as a whole, but with Patrice Bergeron, Anze Kopitar, Jonathan Toews and Pavel Datsyuk being absolute stars in this league, it's hard for others to shine. But Stone has done exactly that. He leads the NHL in takeaways with 103. Second place is Jeff Skinner with 61. That's reminiscent of Wayne Gretzky leading the scoring race against whoever finished 400 points behind him 10 straight years, it seemed.

Runner up: Jean-Gabriel Pageau

Unusual Tales From the Rink

People are weird, but hockey fans are weirder. And when you group 18,000 of them together on numerous occasions, weird things will happen.

From the passionate misunderstandings to the downright embarrassing squabbles, these are a few unusual (but true) tales from the rink.

The Heckle Heard 'Round the World (Section 14)

March 14, 2012.

A few years ago, I spent March break on a golf trip with my family in Virginia. Well, they went to the beaches, the malls, the parks, and I golfed.

One afternoon, we went into Norfolk to eat at this popular drive-in diner. My parents were on this Food Network kick at the time, so it only made sense to them that we visit a restaurant that Guy Fieri yelled about on TV once.

As we were leaving the greasy 80's style diner, I saw two older woman in hockey jerseys walk in. I asked them if they were hockey fans (which, now, when I look back, is a really dumb question) and they told us that the local hockey team, the Norfolk Admirals, was playing in a couple hours. The Admirals were currently on a 15-game winning streak (they went on to win 28 in a row) and apparently the city had really started to pack the arena.

Hoping the game wouldn't be sold out, we rushed to the arena a couple hours before puck drop.

Tickets were $16 in the lower bowl and there were thousands left. Nonetheless, we got in.

The Admirals were playing the Wilkes-Barre Scranton Penguins, the AHL affiliate of the Pittsburgh Penguins and before we dive into the punchline of this story, you should know that Wilkes-Barre is five hours outside of Pittsburgh.

Surprisingly, Wilkes-Barre had quite a few die-hards make the trip to Norfolk.

Now, at an AHL game in Norfolk, Virginia, you'd assume that a fair amount of fans would be equally involved with consuming alcohol as they were the actual hockey game.

And if you are currently assuming that this was the case, you'd be right.

As the game dragged on and the Wilkes-Barre fans became more public with their opinions on the Admirals' players, one Admirals supporter had finally had enough.

With the home crowd behind him and the likely alcohol consumption boosting his confidence, the man, probably 6 feet tall and pushing 250 lbs., stood up, turned around to face the Penguins faithful and delivered a heckle like no other.

"Pittsburgh is an awful city with too many rivers!"

To his and everyone one else's surprise, a gentleman sitting behind us took offence to the verbal jab (if you can call it that) and replied "That's why we have, y'know, boats and bridges and stuff!"

Thus broke out a rather long and surprisingly well-debated shouting match about the city's water transportation.

With out a doubt, the strangest argument I've ever witnessed.

An Awkward Skirmish in the Seats

December 30, 2013.

I'm not a fighter.

During Christmas break in my first year of university - and only year of university - I was home in Ottawa taking in an Ottawa Senators game with my pals Stuart and Vini. The Washington Capitals were in town for a weeknight matchup that was actually a very important one in the playoff race.

As you usually are at Sens games, my friends and I were seated around dozens of young children and their mothers and fathers. The Canadian Tire Centre isn't really home to rowdy fans unless the Leafs or Habs are in town, or if it's playoff time. Neither of those scenarios were present in suburban Kanata that night, so as it was customary, the arena had its normal atmosphere. A church. Or a library.

But there was one fan who clearly stood out amongst the quiet family affairs.

A scrawny, Russian fellow (at least, I think he was Russian) sitting with his girlfriend two rows of seats below us made it quite obvious he was a Capitals fan early on.

Barely minutes into the game, Washington struck first, and as I foreshadowed just a second ago, the scrawny Russian stood up and made himself the centre of attention.

After the regular cheering with his hands in the air, exuberant his favourite club had scored a goal, he turned around and taunted the rest of the crowd, shooting them with an imaginary machine gun. Seriously. That's exactly what happened. He also flipped off numerous fans throughout the game, but that was all background noise after his first enthusiastic jibe.

People didn't take too kindly to him post-machine-gun jeer.

Luckily for the home fans, the Senators came back and won 3-1, with Clarke MacArthur sealing the game with an empty netter which ended an extremely long goalless drought for the then 27-year-old.

Everyone around the only Caps fan in our section was poking fun at him during the entire game after his shenanigans, but it seemed to take an awful turn after the Senators were set to beat his favourite team. Whilst the home fans were giving him well-deserved verbal jabs, Stuart might have taken things too far and reached down to fiddle with his hat.

This was our skinny friend's breaking point.

He quickly whipped his head around, looked dead into my eyes and said "you." Stuart had turned his face and was acting like it wasn't him who poked the dragon, as I was caught in the cross hairs, laughing my head off.

He then began to climb the seats, pushing people out of his way as he made a beeline for me. I then understood instantly that this was very real and I was about to be in my first fight post Grade 7. He grabbed my coat with one hand and my collar with the other, attempting to hold me up like Darth Vader strangling an incompetent Death Star employee. As I held my arms in the air, yelling "I didn't do anything!" I could hear parents all around screaming "for God's sake, there are children here!"

Finally, Stuart helped pry the feisty nuisance off of me and he started to return to his seat.

But then someone to our right gave the guy a push from behind and the exact sequence of events that had just happened, happened once more.

Thankfully, this time a group of lads down below grabbed him, calmed him down and sent him on his way. Turns out the crime stoppers were from Antigonish, Nova Scotia, so being a maritimes boy myself, we got along just fine.

They ended up inviting my friends and I back to their hotel to have a couple drinks, but I replied politely "No thanks. My mom wants me home."

Q & A With Former Ottawa Senator Matt Carkner

A few weeks ago, I chatted with former Ottawa Senator Matt Carkner for a long read on Silver Seven.

The 35-year-old is currently with the New York Islanders' AHL affiliate in Bridgeport, four years after an exciting career in the nation's capital.

This is the best from our talk.

How did the idea of becoming a player-coach with Bridgeport come to fruition?

“I was with the Islanders when I had a back surgery and those are never good for hockey players. I tried a comeback and at the end of the year, decided to come down to Bridgeport and try to see what I could do. I finished the season – not too many problems - and I decided I didn’t want to end my career with an injury, so I wanted to sign another deal and try to play. So I talked with Garth Snow and I came up with this idea of transitioning from playing to a coaching role so I could be down (in Bridgeport) mentoring the young players and eventually turn my attention towards coaching.”

How has that been working on a day-to-day basis this season?

“Right now I’ve been mostly a player. I have sat out quite a few games, I think 10 games. During those games I’ll still go through the game day routine – I’ll still skate as a player and keep myself in shape for games and whatnot, but when it comes down to before the games, I’m in on the meetings and I’m kind of just there to take it all in and see how things are done. I’ll write up the game lineups on the official sheet, just simple things like that to get my feet wet. I’ve had a cool experience seeing the other side of it, the decisions the coaches go through, the decisions they have to make, what players they have to play, what kind of dynamic they want in their lines. It’s been fun in that sense, but in the other sense I love playing and I want to be a player. I want to be a player until I’m 90, but the fact is that you can’t do that, your body can’t keep up. Doing this, starting as a player-coach has been a good transition. I’m not totally transitioned into coaching obviously. I want to play out this year and see how it goes. I just knock on wood everyday and hope that my back holds up because it was a pretty good surgery that I had there. I’m just happy every day that I get to go on the ice and hang out with the guys.”

Take me through the triple OT goal in Pittsburgh. That must’ve been pretty special.

“That moment was obviously the highlight of my career. It’s one of those moments you always dream of as a kid, getting in the playoffs and scoring a big overtime goal to win the game. I remember that game. It was a tough battle. I think everyone was just spent. We all played, that night, triple overtime so it’s never easy. I hopped over the boards and basically I was just praying that I could get through that shift, fortunately Alfie passed me the puck and it went in the net after I took a quick slap shot. That was quite a moment.”

A couple years later, in the Rangers series, you had quite a big impact. First off, with the Boyle incident in Game 2. Did you guys go into that game with a plan after seeing how Boyle was treating Karlsson?

“Me and Zenon Konopka were watching (Game 1) and we saw how Boyle was trying to rough up our future Norris Trophy winner at that time. Karlsson played a skilled game and they were trying to rough him up and we didn’t like that at all. The next game we were inserted to the lineup and we had a talk amongst ourselves. I didn’t know what I was going to do, to be honest with you. The moment presented itself to hit him and I knew I wanted to try and start something. And he’s a big guy, so I thought he might actually try to fight back, but that wasn’t the case. So emotions took over and I did what I did. The craziest thing about it was my teammates, they got a lot of energy from it. They were high-fiving me after the game and saying ‘that was unbelievable.’ I was just super excited that they pulled it together and killed off my penalty and they ended up winning the game. We played great the rest of the series. I had some knee issues at the time and I had a little bit of a flare up going into Game 7. I really wanted to play that game, but everybody with the Sens, the coaching staff, all the players were like ‘we’re going to win this, we’re going to the second round, so get some rest and we’ll use you in the next round.’ And unfortunately that didn’t happen.”

The other big postseason moment for you must be the pass to Michalek in Game 4.

“I think that was the game I came back, because I remember I was suspended for a game in that series. I came back and I wanted to contribute. I wanted to be a little bit of a difference maker. I’m not the point guy, I’m usually the shutdown guy and the physical presence, but the moment presented itself. I came out of the penalty box and it wasn’t a real breakaway, the guys were catching me so I just stopped up and saw Michalek come through the middle. When he put it in the net it was kind of a surge of energy and it was a real exciting moment for me, too. The team played hard and I really did think we could’ve done great things. Sometimes you end up on the wrong side of it.”

You obviously did some great work around the community in different areas, but being a part of the Capital City Condors is what a lot of people remember as one of your greater gifts.

“It was one of the fun things I got to be a part of. The Condors are a great organization run by great people. Jim and Shana Perkins started it and they’ve kept it running and built it into an incredible organization for special kids. I was just happy I was lucky I stumbled upon it. I like to give back a little in every community I’ve ever played in and so I talked to my agent and they hooked me up with Jim. They said there was a cool little thing going on. The team, at the time, was around 20 or 30 players and they said they could use some help with some gear or some mentoring or maybe just showing up and raising awareness for it. It was really cool when I first met Jim and met all the kids there. It was a really awarding experience, being a part of special needs hockey. And I continue to keep my hand in a little. In Long Island I was with the Long Island Blues, another great organization. Here in Bridgeport, I’m with the Southern Connecticut Storm. So just simple things like tickets and locker room tours. We like to get them out on our ice with some of the pro players and do a little bit of a clinic and some shinny hockey. It’s just a lot of fun for us players and it’s a lot of fun seeing the smiles on their faces.”

And then you handed off the duties to Kyle Turris in 2012.

“When I left Ottawa, I didn’t want the thing I was doing to die out - the kind of mentoring I was doing within the NHL team and the special needs team – so I talked to Kyle Turris about it. I mentioned that there were some great people involved and he took over. He’s like a part of the family now. He’s there as much as he can be and he’s done an incredible job continuing to be the honourary captain of the Condors. Funny enough, I did the same thing when I left Long Island with Thomas Hickey. He took over with the Long Island Blues and he’s doing the same program.”

Do you still keep in touch with the Condors to this day?

“We work through email and text messages and I catch up once in a while and I see the articles. I talk more closely with Jim Perkins, who is the president, and he fills me in on everything we’re doing and how everyone’s doing. Kyle took over for me and I think Erik Condra was involved pretty heavily and I know Patrick Wiercioch has been as well. Great families, great people and I couldn’t be happier for the Condors to be left in such great hands.”

Who was your biggest influence during your career with the Senators?

"I was with the Sens organization for about five years, I was in the minors for two. I had Cory Clouston through that time and he got to know me pretty well. I like to think he gave me my opportunity there. Some people like to say I played my way into the league, but sometimes you need a door opened. My first training camp I was playing as a forward, trying to fill the toughness role and whatnot, and one game one defenseman was playing rather poorly and obviously Cory knew I was a good defenseman so he put me back there and that’s when I made the team. So I like to think that he gave me an opportunity."

Who were some of the players that helped you along the most in Ottawa?

"I grew up in Ottawa and I remember watching Alfredsson play and watching Chris Phillips coming into the league, so to actually make it and play with those guys was an amazing experience. Obviously I hung off of every word that they said, they had great advice for me. Chris Phillips, especially, being that defensemen had just a solid, solid influence on me on and off the ice. The Ottawa Senators, they do a good job of picking character guys. Chris Neil was the other element. The toughness role, he helped me through that. He was my roommate my first year. Me and Neiler got along great. He grew up on that side of the game so he really helped me along. It was great having such great people giving me advice."