Silver Nuggets Late Edition: Poor Jared Cowen

Jared Cowen had himself a very fine rookie season in the NHL last year after a long road to get there. He had battled back from the knee injury that had partially derailed his plans of making the NHL in his draft year to have himself a couple more strong WHL seasons. Once there was nothing more for him to accomplish at the junior level, he played a key role in the Calder Cup run made by Binghamton a couple seasons ago.

Last season, playing primarily with Sergei Gonchar on the second pairing and seeing some serious time on the penalty kill. He was everything many of us hoped he would be: big, strong, bruising. He lead the team in hits and became more and more comfortable as the season went on. He even looked perfectly capable of playing big minutes alongside Norris Trophy winner Erik Karlsson for a stretch of games.

Coming into this season, it was pretty obvious he would have to take a step back to play with the Binghamton Senators. The idea was that it would be great to see him play first pairing minutes and to get to play in all situations, much like Jason Spezza did during the last lockout.

Now? Who knows. Even if his surgery goes well, the prevailing thoughts out there are that he won't be back on the ice this season. This is bad news for Sens fans who would love to see him playing games at this stage of his career and development. But hey, at least he's not missing any NHL games, right?

Worst. Bright side. Ever.

Sens Links

• A) Best headline ever B) Nichols covers Cowen's misfortune. [6thSens]
• Ryan is BACK! This is an excellent, funny and comprehensive history of Pascal Leclaire's time in an Ottawa uniform. [SSS]
• In case you missed it, Bobby does his public service by whetting our prospect appetite with a recent Bingo round up. These are always great reads. [SSS]
• After putting up EA Sports numbers in the third tier German league, Erik Condra moves on to bigger and better things. [SSS]
• Lockout isn't over (or anywhere close) but the Senators organization is getting prepared to bribe us to come back to them. [SensExtra]
• Mikael Wikstrand has had an insane start to his year, and now looks poised to join Frölunda. Cool! [SteffeG]