Pick of the Day: Lightning vs Senators

I guess tonight's NHL pre-season game at Brandt Centre between the Ottawa Senators and Tampa Bay Lightning would be worth seeing. Rosie's doing an article on the upcoming NHL season, and some of the challenges the league faces, for our Sept. 24 issue, and was supposed to secure press access to the game. Whether he did or not, I don't know.

As I've opined before in the pages of prairie dog hockey really needs to shorten its season. Played with the requisite skill and intensity, it's a compelling sport. But you can't expect teams to sustain that competitive fire game after game during a season that regularly stretches from mid-September to early June. Tens of thousands of kilometres of travel, multiple time zone shifts, nagging injuries and illnesses -- all conspire to make it difficult, if not impossible, for teams to put forth an honest effort every night. The end result, a sub-par product that turns off fans and, at the minor league level in particular, causes player burn-out.

Being as this is a rare opportunity for the NHL to showcase its product in Saskatchewan, I expect both Ottawa and Tampa Bay to ice quality line-ups. So as far as exhibition games go, it should be a pretty good tilt. Tampa has a young, mobile defence plus some top-notch forwards. Ottawa, meanwhile, will be looking to rebound after a disastrous 2008-09 campaign that saw them miss the playoffs for the first time since the 1995-96 season.