Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Put another loonie in the jukebox baby and play us one of them hurtin’ songs


They were singing at Scotiabank Place on Tuesday night, the usual serenade from the crowd as the home side went on to victory….. Hmmm, wait now, Scotiabank Place that’s the Senators rink, right?

You never would have thought that by the end of Tuesday’s 3-0 loss to Montreal

If the Senators were a juke box, then it’s nothing but angst on the way per play.

So do you push A1 and select Tom Petty’s, Freefalling, or maybe B3 and that familiar sound from Paul Simon, Slip Sliding’ Away. C4 features an old time Ottawa favourite, with Bruce Springsteen and I’m going down.

Oh the choices are endless on the Senators countdown parade, right Bruce, they’re going… down…. down… down…

Faced with the latest in their must win games, the Senators couldn’t come up with the two points that would at least help to secure their place in the lower levels of the Eastern Division playoff race, now with the loss, they are but two more games away from major soul searching.

Tuesday night, not only did the Habs take over the skating rink but their fans took over the arena, relishing in the solid control that Montreal showed over their regional rivals.

Sailing on a ship missing their captain Saku Koivu, but propelled by their young goaltender Carey Price, (who picked up his third shutout so far in his short time as numero un in Montreal), the Habs seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the flow of the play and the roar of the crowd.

Montreal collected their 100th point of the season, the first time they’ve reached that plateau since 1992-93, with the win they also took the Northeast Division title and climbed back into a tie for first place overall in the East, with an equal amount of games as Pittsburgh, the claim for first could go to the very last minute of the last game of the season.

Roy MacGregor of the Globe and Mail has dropped in on the Sens swoon at a timely point of their troubled days, his columns of Tuesday and Wednesday give as good an account of things in Ottawa as we’re going to get.

The way that the Senators have imploded through the last three months of the season, the choice on the jukebox surely has to be something in the country vein, a real down home tear jerker, when you’re feeling blue, it has to be a country song!

The last selection of the night, Willie Nelson’s timeless tune, Funny how time slips away

Indeed for the Senators there are but two games left to avoid a full and complete meltdown, a Thursday game with Toronto, followed by Friday night’s Last Dance in Boston..

While it still seems hard to fathom that a team that was the toast of the league in the first few months of the season may actually finish out of the playoffs, it’s a possibility, something that Ottawa fans probably never factored into when this season got underway.

If Ottawa can’t find a way to win in these next two games, then all that may be left on the juke box will be the blues…

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