Preseason Musings

The day after the Senators first preseason game and some interesting topics have emerged from an otherwise dull training camp. The first is the signing of Mike Fisher to a five-year contract extension. The fact that Fisher will be around for some time is great. After initially balking at the 4 million dollar a year price tag, I started to consider both Fisher's position with the team and the other players in the league making that kind of money. Fisher is certainly as valuable a player as Michael Handzus, Bill Guerin or Jason Blake, each of whom will receive a similar salary in the coming years. He brings a wide variety of attributes to the table beyond his offensive production. He is, like Rod Brind'amour or Brendan Morrow, a truly complete player. He brings speed, physicality, leadership and maximum effort to everything that he does. He is an elite penalty killer, strong defensive player, character guy and offensive producer. Fisher had 48 points (in 68 games played) compared to 55 from Shane Doan and 60 from Jamie Langenbrunner, two other guys who play similar roles and given the opportunity to play most of a season with Daniel Alfredsson on his right wing, Fisher should be able to better those numbers. He is also averaged 20 goals per season for the past three full seasons that he has played. Brind-amour is an excellent example of his scoring potential as he has had back to back career years playing with young, offensively-skilled players like Justin Williams and Eric Staal. In some ways, what Fisher brings to the table is harder to replace than what Heatley does. Every team in the league has a scoring star or too (though they are obviously not all at Heatley's level), whereas every team in the league is looking for the kind of complete player who can do it all and lead the team. Projecting to be that kind of player got Brandon Sutter drafted 11th overall by Carolina this past summer.

As to the happenings on the ice, a few players showed really well in last night's game against the Flyers. Martin Gerber stopped a lot of pucks, 52 shots, and looked like the strong positional goaltender the Sens thought they were signing. He's still a long way from being attractive to another team or usurping Ray Emery's spot but it is a good start and last season showed what can happen to a player in the event of a bad start. Nick Foligno responded to the gauntlet thrown down by coach John Paddock and played like the Mike Fisher-like player the Sens thought they were getting. He matched the great effort put forth by his linemates Chris Kelly and Patrick Eaves, who is himself auditioning for the plum task of riding on the right side with Heatley and Spezza come game one. Almost overlooked because of those two performances was the strong outing from Ilya Zubov in his Senators debut. He scored a goal by driving the net and being physically involved and held his own with regulars Dean McAmmond and Chris Neil. It seems determined that he will play in Binghampton to start the year but he is certainly giving fans reason to believe that the Senators scoring future remains pretty bright. All that said, it was only the first game of the preseason and a lot can change in the two weeks before the games start to count.