Sens as good as 1976 Habs?
It seems after the Sens have gotten off to an NHL record 13-1 best start ever, articles are popping up comparing them to the 1976 Habs.
Source (Sorry it’s from the Tabloid Sun, I saw it on TSN but can’t find the link anymore)
http://www.ottawasun.com/Sports/Senators/2007/11/07/4636750-sun.html
As a Sens fan (and I’m sure everyone else on this forum will agree here) I hardly doubt the Sens are even close to the 1976 Habs (yes winning ‘a’ cup would be a nice milestone first) but I have a different theory on why the Sens are off to an incredible start and should have a great year.
First of all I am going to state the current Sens team they have isn’t even the best team they’ve ever had talent/skillwise. I’d say 2 years ago when they had Chara, Havlat, Hasek (the later 2 when healthy) were a better team.
I believe there are 2 reasons for there success
1. CORE OF TEAM SIGNED LONG-TERM FOR AFFORDABLE PRICES
They’re doing well because when the lockout ended, they had the youngest team in the league and the bulk of there team was still in the rookie range of their contracts or in RFA status (except Redden and Alfie) whom were not all making there true market value. Hence they had a great team that they could fit under the cap, they lost 2-3 great players (Chara+Hasek+Havlat) the year after but were still able to keep a young core together with a small drop off in talent.
Now there is a snowball effect on this team of players signing long-term deals and big home-town discounts (Heatley+Spezza about 1-1.5 less than UFA would pay), Alfie believe it or not only has a cap hit of 4.4 million and has 4 more years on his contract, and Now Redden wants to stay for a big discount, it’s allowing Ottawa to keep a skillful team together which alot of other teams couldn’t afford under the cap if they were paying these players market value.
2) PARITY FROM SALARY CAP
As any NFL fan will notice since the inception of there salary cap, it eliminated the great cowboy+49er dynasties and evened out the league, the talent got dispersed evenly around the league and every season it seems every team had a shot at winning.
In the NHL you’re starting to notice this as well, the big market teams from before the lockout who signed all the big players (ie Flyers, Wings, Avs, Devs, Start, Rangers, Leafs are a shadow of there former selves (except Detroit), No longer are 5-7 (5+ million dollar players) on each of these teams thus they’re no longer in a league above everyone else who can’t afford these salaries, now most teams can afford 3-4 players over 5 million dollars and that’s it thus dispersing the talent more evenly around the league.
FINAL THOUGHTS
That being said I don’t think the Sens are so much a dynasty team as the overrated hype states they are, they’re just a good skilled team that no longer has to compete in a league with awesome big market teams, and some bad teams. It’s more a league with alot of average teams, above average teams, and below average teams but not too many amazing or really bad teams. There are no more great teams to compete with like:
- Devils (Brodeur, Stevens, Niedermeyer, Elias, Gomez, Gionta, etc)
- Wings (Yzerman, Federov, Lidstrom, Shannahan, Hull, Hasek)
- Avs (Sakic, Forsberg, Bourque, Foote, Blake, Drury, Tanguay, Roy)
The Sens are simply winning all the games they should win as they’re a very good team playing against alot of average competitive teams. Granted I’d also state they havn’t had any big challenges yet either as there are several good teams they’ve not visited yet.