Well, that went a lot better than it could have.No, really. I liked what I saw. Ottawa stood pretty firm in the opening frame of the game, and the first two goals came from small lapses in discipline which can be fixed with a little work. Ottawa ran up the shot clock pretty well, even if most of those shots never really had a serious chance.
I liked what I saw of the Ranger's powerplay -- which means the fact that they went 0-5 is a huge achievement by the Ottawa penalty-kill. Obviously LeClaire was a huge part of that, but since the power play is a big part of scoring in today's NHL, having a competent PK is a big part of being able to stay in a game.
Spezza and Alfredsson rang up the first goal to bring the Senators back into the game -- somehow the Captain always seems to be in the right place at the right time.
After watching Kovalev go to work for an entire game, I think that his puck-handling is going to infuriate the same people who love to ride Spezza. When it works it is going to be brilliant, but when it doesn't...
So overall, I'm optimistic after having watched all that.
