Two reasons to smile
Alfie feels good about Swede success, NHL progress
KEN WARREN
Daniel Alfredsson had good reason to smile as left the arena on Day 6,000 of the NHL lockout late Thursday morning — OK, it has actually only been 110 days, but the Groundhog Day scenario feels that long, doesn’t it? — despite being on his way out into the -17 C chill.
The good mood wasn’t all about the possible return of the NHL. More on that later. Rather, he was bursting with pride following Sweden’s 3-2 semifinal shootout victory over Russia at the world junior hockey championship, setting up a gold medal showdown Saturday against the United States and fashioning a Team Sweden sweatshirt. When Alfredsson hit the ice for a practice with fellow Senators and other NHL players, Sweden held a commanding 2-0 lead, seemingly in complete control of a game that ended with a nailbiting finish.
“They pulled through,” he said. “I only saw the first half of the game and the first half was unbelievable. (Sweden) played so well. And being able to pull it off in the shootout, I’m really happy about that.”
While there’s plenty of second-guessing going on here about the selection process and development of Canadian talent following Thursday’s 5-1 loss to the U.S. in the other semifinal, the Ottawa Senators captain is ecstatic at the state of the Swedish junior program.
“As far as top talent, Sweden’s program, in the last five or six years, has shown potential each year, and is in a good spot right now,” he said. “We have a very good program overall in the country which allows us to have success at this level.”
There were no Russians for Alfredsson to gloat in front of, but he’s gambling on a gold medal victory over the U.S., and he has made a “small” wager with Erik Condra, the Senators native who hails from just outside Detroit.
Alfredsson, however, wasn’t willing to gamble on when the NHL might be back in action — unlike Teemu Selanne of the Anaheim Ducks, who has boldly predicted to Finland’s MTV3 that the lockout will end on Monday, that training camps would be operating on January 10th and that games would begin on Jan. 18 or 19. If Alfredsson or any other player has heard the same thing, they’re not saying.
All the Senators captain was willing to say Thursday is that if the puck drops soon, he’ll be ready. In a perfect world, he would prefer two weeks of training camp over one, but he understands the need to start quickly to salvage as many games as possible.
“I’m hoping, like everyone else, that it gets solved and we get back on the ice and we would probably have another week before we’re ready to go (for training camp),” he said. “I’m in decent shape. I don’t know if I’m in as good shape as I was at the end of September. I think I’m going to be in the same boat as pretty much everybody else.”
While NHL owners muddle through the fine details of how to split their differences on what the salary cap and escrow should be and try to figure out a workable pension plan, many Ottawa-based players are, once again, tempering their enthusiasm.
“I like to say I’m being carefully optimistic,” said defenceman Marc Methot. “We know now with the way history has gone over the past few months, not to get ahead of ourselves. I know I’m repeating myself right now, but I’m hoping we can come to something. It looks like they’re pretty deep into talks right now.”
For now, though, Groundhog Day is still playing.