As the season now winds down to 8 remaining games and with games getting into play-off intensity the senators managed a 1 goal win against the St. Louis Blues. The sens coach Bryan Murray had emphasized the importance of winning games against lowly ranked teams to show consistency and tonight’s precious win only proves that point. Vermette, Schubert and Spezza(Winning goal) scored for the sens. Once again Martin Gerber looked solid in the goal with 24/26 saves with many of them being tough, key saves. At one point he dropped the stick to grab on to the puck that came close to the net. On the Blues side lack of scoring remains a big concern with forwards Paul Kariya and Keith tkachuk having another goalless game. Paul Kariya has been the worse of the two by going goalless in his last 18 games.

Next up for the sens are the Toronto Mapleleafs on Saturday who for some reason are trying to look good by going after their statistical chances of making the playoffs instead of more reasonably just tanking the season and going after the number 1 draft pick of the 2008 draft. Tonight’s game marks a point in the season when the sens will be playing all of their remaining 8 games against divisional rivals with two of those games being against the Canadiens  who they are up against for the North-east division title if not the Eastern Conference title.

 
Sens Win Big! 03/11/2008
 

Sens won 4-1 over the divisional rivals bruins with goaltender Martin Gerber doing a great job and Dany Heatley getting a hat-trick. Sens haven't looked this solid since their early season games. They did a great job killing penalties (5 of 5) and scoring off power plays (2 of 3). With this win Murray has now become 3-3-1 since taking over. Most impressively the sens won this one with the captain Alfredsson out of the lineup for the 4th successive game due to back spasms.

 It looks like Murray is backing Gerber all the way to the playoffs - and rightly so. He has looked ever so solid since  Murray took over.

 
 

Yesterday sens managed a 4-2 win against the Phoenix Coyotes in their 4 game road trip.

 
 

Even though Bryan Murray has replaced John Paddock 4 games back, nothing seems to have changed for the senators. Murray is 1-2-1 in his last 4 games. Senators present road trip is not going to get any easier because Daniel Alfredsson is out of the line up with back spasms that he encountered after getting cross checked by Anaheim defenseman Fracois Beauchemin.

At this rate they might not even reach the playoffs. I don't know what can change between now and then to make it any different.