EDMONTON — The polite way to say it would be that the Ottawa Senators don’t match up really well against the Edmonton Oilers.
That Ottawa’s young, mistake-prone roster — outscored 5-2 on average over seven consecutive losses to Edmonton — is the wounded wildebeest to Edmonton’s pride of hungry lions. Or that the Senators’ creaky goaltending is the hanging curveball to the Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid’s green light on three-and-oh.
In reality, a season that has given us many unique visuals has given us one more: One team manhandling another seven times inside of 30 NHL games, beating them by an aggregate score of 34-15 while leaving a dent in the Senators’ pride the size of Marcus Hogberg’s 5.28 goals-against average versus Edmonton.
Even in the playoffs, they stop after four straight wins.
“I thought we played, for the most part a pretty good game,” said Brady Tkachuk after the latest massacre, a 6-2 thrashing Friday night in Edmonton. “There are always stretches where momentum shifts, but it definitely wasn’t a 6-2 game.”
It wasn’t?
“I don’t see a 6-2 game tonight,” echoed head coach D.J. Smith. “We can’t take that many penalties, against this power play, and they got some timely, lucky goals, I guess.
“We didn’t manage the puck the way we have to, but our effort was there.”
Look, I’ve covered the Oilers since about 1991. I’ve seen teams that own another team — specifically, the old Oilers — but the schedule never put the Sedins’ Vancouver Canucks, Nicklas Lidstrom’s Detroit Red Wings or Mike Modano’s Dallas Stars up against Edmonton seven times in a half-season of hockey.
Seven times in 29 games this year for Edmonton — nearly one-quarter of their 2021 campaign has been played against Ottawa, the sad-sack club that is responsible for 14 of Edmonton’s 36 points.
Yet, somehow, 6-2 on a Friday felt a whole lot better than 7-1 on Wednesday for the Senators.
“We learned a big lesson in the last game. We got out-worked, out-competed, and that should never happen,” said Tkachuk. “It was a big moment for us to step up and make sure we’re the team that worked the hardest.”
There is a fine line here, with due respect to a roster full of inexperienced young talents in Ottawa. An improved effort and competitive level in loss No. 7 is, we guess, in the parameters of a rebuild, a sign of progress.
But losing 6-2 two days after losing 7-1 can’t be something you clap yourself on the back over, though we understand how Smith is trying to build up his team’s confidence, not verbally dismantle it.
“Say whatever you want, those kids worked out there tonight. They competed hard,” he demanded, post-game. “We didn’t get the result we wanted, we just didn’t take care of the puck. But the effort and will to win was there.
“I think we deserved better tonight,” he said, before adding, “Their big guys — again — continue to give us major issues.”
Ya think?
Oilers head coach Dave Tippett would never admit it, but he was conducting a bit of an experiment this week. After more than a season of proving how effective they can be on separate lines, Tippett wanted to see what it would do to the overall balance, or the “rhythm” as he says, of his lineup if he put McDavid and Draisaitl back together.
Would he have done that if the week-long opponent was the Winnipeg Jets or Toronto Maple Leafs? We doubt it, and we won’t be surprised if they are back centering their own lines as soon as Monday in Calgary vs. the Flames. Or tonight in Vancouver.
But against Ottawa, Tippett gambled that his two superstars would bury the Senators all on their own, while the rest of his lines figured things out.
He was right: In seven games Draisaitl (seven goals, 10 assists) and McDavid (three goals, 13 assists) piled up 33 points.
A giveaway-prone Senators club just kept putting the ball on the tee for the NHL’s two leading scorers, and they kept striping it 300-plus down the middle of the fairway.
“In Edmonton, we’ve had our struggles (against them), but I thought we played right with them at home, where we could get a hard matchup,” Smith said. That’s fair — the scores were 3-2 and 3-1 in Ottawa, where the matchup was not nearly as lopsided as in Alberta.
“You also can’t take four penalties against that power play, and allow them free ice and feel the puck and feel good about themselves,” said Smith, considering the question about the bad matchup again. “That’s a fair assessment, but as our young guys continue to get better we’re going to be the guys that people are going to have a tough time checking.”
They will, to be sure.
That’s what they used to say in Edmonton, back in about 2010.
PARIS (AP) — French judicial authorities are investigating the disappearance of two Paralympic athletes from Congo who recently competed in the Paris Games, the prosecutor’s office in the Paris suburb of Bobigny confirmed on Thursday.
Prosecutors opened the investigation on Sept. 7, after members of the athletes’ delegation warned authorities of their disappearance two days before.
Le Parisien newspaper reported that shot putter Mireille Nganga and Emmanuel Grace Mouambako, a visually impaired sprinter who was accompanied by a guide, went missing on Sept. 5, along with a third person.
The athletes’ suitcases were also gone but their passports remained with the Congolese delegation, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation, who asked to remain anonymous as they were not allowed to speak publicly about the case.
The Paralympic Committee of the Democratic Republic of Congo did not respond to requests for information from The Associated Press.
Nganga — who recorded no mark in the seated javelin and shot put competitions — and Mouambako were Congo’s flag bearers at the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games, organizers said.
An investigator gave the World Anti-Doping Agency a pass on its handling of the inflammatory case involving Chinese swimmers, but not without hammering away at the “curious” nature of WADA’s “silence” after examining Chinese actions that did not follow rules designed to safeguard global sports.
WADA on Thursday released the full decision from Eric Cottier, the Swiss investigator it appointed to analyze its handling of the case involving the 23 Chinese swimmers who remained eligible despite testing positive for performance enhancers in 2021.
In echoing wording from an interim report issued earlier this summer, Cottier said it was “reasonable” that WADA chose not to appeal the Chinese anti-doping agency’s explanation that the positives came from contamination.
“Taking into consideration the particularities of the case, (WADA) appears … to have acted in accordance with the rules it has itself laid out for anti-doping organizations,” Cottier wrote.
But peppered throughout his granular, 56-page analysis of the case was evidence and reminders of how WADA disregarded some of China’s violations of anti-doping protocols. Cottier concluded this happened more for the sake of expediency than to show favoritism toward the Chinese.
“In retrospect at least, the Agency’s silence is curious, in the face of a procedure that does not respect the fundamental rules, and its lack of reaction is surprising,” Cottier wrote of WADA’s lack of fealty to the world anti-doping code.
Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and one of WADA’s fiercest critics, latched onto this dynamic, saying Cottier’s information “clearly shows that China did not follow the rules, and that WADA management did nothing about it.”
One of the chief complaints over the handling of this case was that neither WADA nor the Chinese gave any public notice upon learning of the positive tests for the banned heart medication Temozolomide, known as TMZ.
The athletes also were largely kept in the dark and the burden to prove their innocence was taken up by Chinese authorities, not the athletes themselves, which runs counter to what the rulebook demands.
Despite the criticisms, WADA generally welcomed the report.
“Above all, (Cottier) reiterated that WADA showed no bias towards China and that its decision not to appeal the cases was reasonable based on the evidence,” WADA director general Olivier Niggli said. “There are however certainly lessons to be learned by WADA and others from this situation.”
Tygart said “this report validates our concerns and only raises new questions that must be answered.”
Cottier expanded on doubts WADA’s own chief scientist, Olivier Rabin, had expressed over the Chinese contamination theory — snippets of which were introduced in the interim report. Rabin was wary of the idea that “a few micrograms” of TMZ found in the kitchen at the hotel where the swimmers stayed could be enough to cause the group contamination.
“Since he was not in a position to exclude the scenario of contamination with solid evidence, he saw no other solution than to accept it, even if he continued to have doubts about the reality of contamination as described by the Chinese authorities,” Cottier wrote.
Though recommendations for changes had been expected in the report, Cottier made none, instead referring to several comments he’d made earlier in the report.
Key among them were his misgivings that a case this big was largely handled in private — a breach of custom, if not the rules themselves — both while China was investigating and after the file had been forwarded to WADA. Not until the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD reported on the positives were any details revealed.
“At the very least, the extraordinary nature of the case (23 swimmers, including top-class athletes, 28 positive tests out of 60 for a banned substance of therapeutic origin, etc.), could have led to coordinated and concerted reflection within the Agency, culminating in a formal and clearly expressed decision to take no action,” the report said.
WADA’s executive committee established a working group to address two more of Cottier’s criticisms — the first involving what he said was essentially WADA’s sloppy recordkeeping and lack of formal protocol, especially in cases this complex; and the second a need to better flesh out rules for complex cases involving group contamination.
The French league’s legal commission has ordered Paris Saint-Germain to pay Kylian Mbappé the 55 million euros ($61 million) in unpaid wages that he claims he’s entitled to, the league said Thursday.
The league confirmed the decision to The Associated Press without more details, a day after the France superstar rejected a mediation offer by the commission in his dispute with his former club.
