The Ottawa Senators today announced they have assigned goaltender Ray Emery to the club's American Hockey League affiliate, the Binghamton Senators, for a two-game conditioning stint.>> team release
by James Mirtle @ 3:35 PM
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A sportswriter at The Globe and Mail, James covers the NHL and the game of hockey. He is a member of the Professional Hockey Writers' Association, a senior editor with McKeen's Hockey and was the NHL network manager at SB Nation from 2008 to 2010. A graduate of Thompson Rivers and Ryerson universities, James grew up in Kamloops, B.C. — one of Canada's great hockey cities — and was a season ticket holder in the Blazers' glory years.
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12 Comments:
A Stanley Cup goalie playing in the minors.. sure, he's not that far removed from them, but could you see the Canes doing this with Cam Ward?
I'm a Sens fan, and I don't mind the move .. seems best right now.
But there's still something about this that makes it look really weird.
It's not that unusual. Even Dominik Hasek trained during the pre-season with Binghamton one year.
Conditioning, he's coming off surgery. If Roger Clemens can make a couple starts in the minors, so can Ray Emery. It's not like the Sens need to rush him back ... at 12-0-0 inc. pre-season, the Sens don't appear to need him at all. For sure they'll be fine without him for another week.
Cujo went on conditioning stints with Grand Rapids a couple years back when he was with Detroit. When asked about going to the minors, he said "if Derek Jeter can do this, so can I" or something to that effect. It really isn't a big deal. It just means that he's healthy but needs some game action to get up to NHL speed.
My prediction is that Emery won't handle this well. Might be the begginning of a team wrecker.
As mentioned above, this happens in Major League Baseball ALL THE TIME. The player should not see it as a 'demotion', but rather the team looking to ease their player into play slowly. With an injury such as Emery's, the last thing you want to do is rush him back. Obviously, Emery knows he'll be down there for 2-3 games and that is it.
The stigma of conditioning assignments needs to end, and it seems to be slowly doing just that.
I live in Utah, and we have a minor league team here. We've had guys like Todd Bertuzzi, Anson Carter, and even Scott Niedermayer come down and play two or three games as a conditioning assignment.
It may seem weird to fans of NHL teams, and a little demeaning to NHL players, but for minor league club fans, it's pretty awesome.
It should also be mentioned that the player needs to agree to any conditioning stint (which Emery has). The team is also sending him down for 2 games, Friday and Saturday. I think it is a logical thing to do with a goaltender who played 2 periods in the preseason due to his injury. Ottawa has also had a stupid schedule, so they havn't had good practices to get him work in either.
The Ottawa Citizen reports Emery himself asked to be sent to Bingo:
http://tinyurl.com/2kxh73
-Burninator
You also have to remember that Bingo will offer some humble pie to our Hummer driving egoist.
Emery played ok during the playoffs but you can also sat that the team carried him much more than he carried the team.
There's plenty to improve upon.
Don't forget Martin Gerber has been lights out in replacement. .934SV% and a 2.19GAA mean that Emery needs to show up in top form or lose his job.
Emery played ok during the playoffs but you can also sat that the team carried him much more than he carried the team.
It's clear now that he played very hurt throughout the playoffs. It's a team sport - when a key player is playing hurt, everyone else is suppose to step up. No shame in that at all.
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