[lrt's friend]

I have been a big Sens fan since they first became a good team in the late 90s. I have found the Sens have become unwatchable. Countless times in the last couple of years, I have turned off games. That and the problems in getting to the CTC and I haven't gone to a game in the last few years. Yes, transit is available but you can count on it being a 1+ hour trek from my part of the city (near the airport). Transport is painful. It always has been and as a fan, it has become tiresome. Making it an evening of it with friends means leaving my job early to reach a restaurant enough in advance of game time. For a 7:30 p.m. start, I need to leave around 4:00 p.m. for a hurried dinner before the game. I can't guarantee getting to a Kanata restauant until 5:30 p.m. using that schedule because of traffic.

I am a big fan of EK and I know he is a great talent but one player does not make a great team. Last year, my impression was that the Sens was a 5 game losing streak away from crashing and burning. This has been born out this year.

I just get this feeling that we are not building to anything and with rumours that we are going to get rid of EK, where is this team going? Are they going to become the Oilers of the 2020s, with rebuild over and over again. In a way, this has been the case already for the Sens since 2010. This is why the team is in and out of the playoffs. Not quite as bad as the Oilers, but there is no indication that we are building towards a better team as was apparent in the late 90s.

My impression is that we are repeating history. Dump EK and it is like what the original Sens did when they sold their franchise player, King Clancy to the Leafs way back in 1930. That franchise did not survive for long after that move. A TV commentator has already said that disposing of EK could have disastrous impact on the future of the Sens. With the fan dislike of Melnyck, how will the Sens survive until a new better era arrives? This is how this could be worse than the Oiler repeated rebuilds and mishandling of top draft choices. Fans like myself see this as developing a culture of losing for the long-term.

I have seen disastrous ownership with the Rough Riders and Renegades so Ottawa fans are sensitive to this. Unless Melnyck makes some shrewd decisions quickly and demonstrates that he can make a go of the Lebreton project, I can see the Ottawa fan base bailing. They did eactly that with the last year of the Renegades with the Gliebermans treating the fans as juvenile bafoons. It is got to the tipping point with the Sens. If things go south over the summer and next season, the only choices may be new ownership or moving the franchise out of Ottawa (to Quebec City).