Dear MSM and Bloggers: Stop Gravitating to the Extremes October 12, 2010, 12:53 PM ET [ Comments] Travis Yost

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My thoughts on Monday night's game, overblown reactions by the media, and some quick hits below.



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It took the Senators three games to notch their first point of the season, but Ottawa is finally out of the Eastern Conference cellar. While the Senators could've and should've been able to stand in for sixty minutes against Buffalo and Toronto, no one really expected this team to go to Washington and not get thumped. Even at their best, Ottawa's an inferior team to the Capitals - period.



By going into the Verizon Center and stealing a point, I thought Ottawa made its first stand of the season. Sure, this team has an almost endless list of problems, but if you can control the ebbs and flows of the game against the odds-on favorite in the Eastern Conference for more than sixty minutes, you deserve a point. Pascal Leclaire's first blunder of the season gave the Capitals the victory just seconds before the shootout, and he was distraught in the post-game.



The best part about having a veteran team, of course, is their ultimate resiliency in times of struggles. A younger team would take Monday's gut-punch of a loss and follow it up with another stinker, but a more seasoned team will build on their success and come out playing with fire.



What's my point? Well, the effort against Buffalo and Toronto was inexcusable. If Cory Clouston wasn't throwing chairs around the locker room, he simply wasn't doing his job. Ottawa's strong effort on Monday meant that this team's season finally started (albeit three games late), and it looks by all accounts that the Senators have finally woken up.



Of course, don't tell that to the 80-90% of people who work in MSM or the blogosphere. Their chance at penning a piece about the Senators missing the playoffs by country miles is golden, as the Senators are now 0-2-1, and quite frankly there's no way a team can climb back from such a deficit.



What makes the issue even worse is that Ottawa's always been the red-headed stepchild in Canada. With every loss, another writer or blogger gets to pile on the Senators, all while praising other teams starting out with two victories (e.g. Toronto, Edmonton).



Instead of writing an objective piece about how the Senators stood toe-to-toe with a far superior team for sixty-four minutes, we continue to hear about how this is the start of the great downfall of the Senators. I think my problem lies with the fact that far too much stock is put into wins and losses - while surely this is the one statistic that decides a team's fate in the end of the year, there's much more than simply looking at a 3-2 game and dubbing it a loss.



Anyone can pick up the paper and see that the Ottawa Senators (or any other team for that matter) lost a game 3-2. It's up to those who cover the team in some way, shape, or form to qualify it - sometimes, wins are undeserved, and even though the team earns two points, there's reason to seriously worry. Conversely, sometimes losses are much better (or worse) than they appear on the surface.



An example: The Edmonton team I've been pumping up all year long played miserably against the Florida Panthers, but the Oilers still emerged with the victory. The casual fan and hack writer will pump up the victory, but the studied fan will know that there was much to be concerned about.



Ottawa can't continue to string along moral victories and expect to be a playoff contender, but writing off a one-pointer against the Washington Capitals as "yet another loss" is simply foolish at best. Wins and losses in general is very black and white, but the game of hockey is so much more than that.



So, for the love of God, stop tending to the extremes and telling me how bad this team is in losses and how good they are in wins. This Ottawa team, officially written off by a large portion of hockey media after a whopping three games, is one win away from starting the season with three points in four games. What an unbelievably poor start!



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Some quick hits:



-No official Daniel Alfredsson news yet, but it doesn't look like he'll miss an extended period of time. There's a chance he could sit against Carolina, but by his own account, it's not too serious.



-Pascal Leclaire needs to shake off that overtime goal and continue to play at the same level he's maintained all year long. One blunder does not a goalie make, and thankfully the Senators fan base didn't blaspheme Leclaire after the weak Ovechkin score.



-I think it's time to give Peter Regin some top-six minutes. The Milan Michalek and Jason Spezza tandem isn't working right now, and Nick Foligno hasn't been as effective as he was in the preseason - surprise, surprise. Regin had his best game of the year against Washington, and he's lookling a little more confident in the offensive end.



-Erik Karlsson needs to wake up. Amongst a sea of disappointing players in Ottawa, Karlsson has stood out the most. His struggles in the defensive end continue to plague his game, and the offensive element just hasn't clicked for the youngster. Have to imagine he'll turn it around sooner rather than later, but the first few games haven't been real convincing.