Monday LNN: Canada Rolls On at Women’s World Championships, Kadri Celebrates and More
It’s the Monday edition of Links, News, and Notes
Welcome back for the last edition of Links, News and Notes for the month of August. While I rue the end of summer for many reasons, I am consoled by the fact that Ottawa Senators regular season hockey grows closer by the day. Soon September will bleed into October and it will all be underway. Soon.
- Not much by the way of Sens news these days, but on Friday Pierre Dorion went on TSN 1200 and said that he was confident Alex Formenton and Erik Brännström would be signed before the start of training camp. You can listen to the whole interview here.
- Ian Mendes has a Sens mailbag feature over at the Athletic that’s worth checking out. I will, however, respectfully disagree with Ian’s proposal to spread the forward talent over three lines — at least to start. Maybe that changes quickly. The wildcard here, of course, is Shane Pinto. If Pinto is up to the task offensively, there might be a window to slide one of the nominal top six forwards onto his wing to create a balanced attack. If he’s not, then I don’t see any sense in making three mediocre lines instead of two strong ones. Either way, the arranging of the talent up front will be one of the most interesting storylines of the first few weeks of the season.
- NHL.com is working their way through their yearly feature on all thirty-two teams, and Mike Zeisberger has the Ottawa Senators write-up. Zeisberger seems to suggest that Cam Talbot might be the primary starter next year, which would be a bit surprising to me!
- Speaking of goalies, the Vegas Golden Knights are in a real bad spot when it comes to who will be minding their crease. The top of that line-up looks as good as any out there, but it’s not hard to imagine the Vegas season being totally submarined by porous goaltending.
- The Canadian Women are off to a dominant start at the World Championships, with three wins in their first three games and a +15 goal differential. Following their 9-0 demolishing of Japan, Sonny Sachdeva had a good write-up of the team over at Sportsnet.
- Travis Yost had a nice piece over at TSN where he attempted to put some numbers behind what differentiates the contenders from the pretenders.
- Nazem Kadri spent his day with the Stanley Cup on Saturday, and he elected to bring it back to his hometown of London, ON., where he began at a local mosque. It sounds like it was quite the special day.
- Lastly, Corey Pronman has concluded his rankings of the prospect pools for each of the NHL franchises. The Buffalo Sabres finish in the top spot, while the Sens are fifth. Not bad!/