Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Chris Stevenson

Chris Stevenson is one of the sport writers for the Ottawa Sun. I actually don't have any problems with him (Don Brennan is another story) and was just wondering out of two articles he wrote, he hardly mentioned anything about call up Brian Lee who played his first game last night against the Sabres. Maybe I was overrating Lee's performance and I just wanted his opinion:

Chris, you barely mentioned Brian Lee in today's Sun after he played a great game in his Sens debut, even picking up the third star on RDS. Did he not leave much of an impression on you up there in the press box?

Response:

I guess when the team you cover scores five goals in the last eight minutes to win the game, that becomes the story.

Well I'm not going to sit here and say that WASN'T the story. It looked like the game was turning into another Ottawa Senators self-destruction, falling 3-1 at the start of the third with more defensive gaffes once again being the cause of their woes. But, they didn't quit, scored five goals in a row and took it 6-3.

Now you might have noticed there hasn't been as nearly as many Senators posts as there was last year, mainly because it's hard to write about the same problems that have been plaguing your team for the last 3+ months, much less trying to find anything good to write about. With a shortage of this "good" material, seeing 21 year-old Brian Lee excel in his Sens debut was exciting for a Sens fans.

Now it's a double-edged sword in some ways. When you call up a rookie for his very first NHL game, he really shouldn't be seeing too much ice time, as a playoff bound team like the Senators should be giving more ice time to the veterans to prepare accordingly for the post-season. BUT HE PLAYED 18 MINUTES LAST NIGHT! To give you perspective on that, Luke Richardson played less than 12, while Chris Phillips and Anton Volchenkov logged about the same amount of time. Really, Lee should have been playing Richardson type minutes, but since the defensive corps have been struggling so much, he was given all this time to show what he could do. What was nice to see was how cool and calm he played including making a nice stop with his skate blade on a puck that trickled behind Martin Gerber and was heading towards the net. He made simple plays (which the others should be doing more often instead of trying to go through four opponents on their own) and looked confident.

So, Chris Stevenson wrote two articles about last night's game, he mentioned it was Lee's birthday and the skate stop, but that was pretty much it. I thought, sure, Ottawa rallying from behind is the main story, but why not talk more about Lee, especially since he played so well Bryan Murray said he'll stay with the Senators when Redden returns which will likely mean someone else (Richardson) will be scratched? I just thought he deserved more accolades. The Ottawa Citizen gave him more kudos...I don't know. The Sens are a struggling team right now, and no one is expecting them to do anything in the post-season. But this Lee kid, maybe if he keeps this up he can provide some sort of steadiness to a defense that has been anything but since the the new year.

# posted by SBP : 8:36 PM
Comments:
I also don't have a problem with his stuff most times, and he's pretty good when filling in on the afternoon-drive show on the Team, but yeah, I thought that Lee did a great job in his debut and deserved a little more press than he got. I guess we'll have to wait for another solid performance or two from him before the media'll really get behind him.

Shameless plug for a new, sports-less Stanblog!
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 8:43 AM, March 27, 2008
 
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