Senators Getting Close

The Senators are moving closer and closer to a complete line-up this week, as they only have 26 players left in camp. After the deal that sent Dany Heatley out of town, the Sens also have become a lot more cap comfortable in the past couple weeks, opening up some space for some of their youth and depth talent. That space, as far as I can tell, will be used quite wisely this season, making faith that they'll rebound well and into the playoffs greater than the season before.

Forwards	Defense	Goaltenders
Daniel Alfredsson	Filip Kuba	Pascal Leclaire
Jason Spezza	Chris Campoli	Brian Elliot
Alex Kovalev	Chris Phillips
Milan Michalek	Alexandre Picard
Nick Foligno	Brian Lee
Mike Fisher	Anton Volchenkov
Jonathan Cheechoo	Matt Carkner
Chris Kelly	Erik Karlsson
Jarkko Ruutu
Ryan Shannon
Jesse Winchester
Shean Donovan
Chris Neil
Christoph Schubert
Peter Regin
Zack Smith

Included in the new faces for the 2010 season are: Pascal Leclaire, Alex Kovalev, Milan Michalek, Jonathan Cheechoo, Peter Regin, Zack Smith, Matt Carkner and Erik Karlsson. It's a group ripe with talent and hopefully some good chemistry as well. There is a lot of skepticism, and rightly so, that the Senators are not quite the team to pick from like seasons before, where you'd have three 100-point players coming from and there would be a bit of a trickle-down effect from there. No, this group will have to work pretty hard to score, but at least the team went in the right direction in the off-season.

With the 26 players they have listed above, they sit just a smidgen over the cap ceiling at $56.83 million, so their cuts will effectively bring themselves down below the ceiling and be compliant with the CBA rules. There have been some rumblings that there are more deals to come out of Ottawa, which does seem a little strange, especially on paper, this team looks fairly good, not to have played a game on the ice all together yet.

Jason Spezza, Alex Kovalev and Mike Fisher have all produced in the preseason and they could very well be ready to make the Sens a formidable force again this year, which is good news. I know, as a poolie, I like when the Senators are scoring, because they can be one of the more consistent teams to watch, when they're on. Fisher could be a sleeper of his own fruition this year, especially since he's coming off a sub-par season too. Peter Regin has played himself onto the team and he could be a pretty good sleeper at the end of your draft night.