Summer With the Sens

There hasn't been a whole heck of a lot of change for the Ottawa Senators this summer. They've traded a guy (Alex Auld, to the Stars). They've signed a guy (Alex Kovalev, to a two-year, $10 million contract). They've drafted some guys (including giant Jared Cowen in the first round). But for the most part, the roster remains exactly the same as the one that missed the playoffs last year. Raise your hands if you're excited about that, Sens fans.

I didn't think so.

All this stagnation comes despite the promise of some pretty drastic change for the team this summer which came in the form of a trade request from a certain player -- we'll just call him Dany Doucheley. A lack of interest in this player (I don't know why; possibly because of his assfacedness, but that's just a guess) has put the Sens' organization and the team's fans in a holding pattern all month.

With the lack of movement from the real Sens, I'm passing my time with the fake Sens: I am the team's General Manager in the big NHL Re-Draft going on at Cycle Like the Sedins.

In case you don't know, the concept of the NHL Re-Draft is this: we are, as the name suggests, re-drafting the league one player at a time, with the ultimate goal of building a new roster for our teams that works within the NHL's current salary cap. The new teams will then face off in an NHL 10 simulation. The idea came out of a post by James of Cycle Like the Sedins, who asked: if you could build your team around one player, who would you pick? From there, the re-draft developed into a full on 30-team fantasy draft, with each team represented by one fan/blogger GM. I was reading some of the blog posts about this and I noticed that no one had stepped up to claim the Sens, so I volunteered.

And now here I am. CLTS held a draft lottery to determine the order of picks, and the Sens ended up with pick #24 (the order will snake in round two, putting me at #7). On Monday, I used my first pick to take Rick Nash. I see him as exactly the type of player I'd like to build my team around and his cap hit is a very reasonable $5.4 million (his new deal kicks in for the 2010-2011 season), which I hope will give me plenty of room to build around him.

I think my next priority will be to get a solid goaltender, if I can. As a Sens fan, I am far too familiar with the stress, pain, and losing that comes with having a weak spot between the pipes. I'm also hoping to build a more balanced offence than the real Sens have, and ideally a more mobile defence too. The problem, of course, is how I'm going to brainwash the 29 other GMs into giving me the players I want. :)