The sun is shining, the commute was perfect, my water tastes delicious, and the senators have been exposed in front of an entire country. It's a spectacular day. Obviously, Leafs Nation's phone bill was sky-rocketing last night as they sought to explain just what had happened to their senators' friends (your team sucks, your stars are chokers, and you don't have enough cap space!). Today, the e-mails are flying about...actually, I am just firing them off and I imagine that they are going right into the trash folder. That's why you have to copy some Leaf fans. Without further ado, some schadenfreude-y goodness:

Since Nov. 15, this team was 28-33-8, including the four postseason losses, which is equivalent to a 76-point team over 82 games (which, if you don't mind my funny math, would tie them with Atlanta as the third-worst team in the NHL).

The question is what the future holds now for this franchise. The window for a team that had so much talent has now officially closed.

There will be time enough in the next few days to pick at the scab and come to grips with the question of how exactly a season that started so strong could come to this. But for now, we’ll have to settle for the obvious. A group of incredibly talented athletes started to play badly, and none of them thought to work hard enough to fix it. Worse, they didn’t seem to care enough to try.

  • Ben, Sens Army/

Couple weak goaltending with porous defence and invisible offence and you've just defined the Ottawa Senators 2007-08 playoffs.

Oh, and to end it on a nice note: Goodbye Wade Redden. I hope you die.

Call it a collapse, call it poor work ethic, call it Ray Emery (and everyone will), but the Senators were merely following a recent historic trend when they fell to the Penguins last night and ended their season from hell.

Like the Carolina’s, the Edmonton’s, the Calgary’s, the Tampa’s and probably this year’s Ducks, the Senators found it too hard to live up to expectations after a long playoff drive the previous year.

Ed.'s Note: Wrong. They were following their historical trend of collapsing in the playoffs regardless of what they did the year before. See: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004 for other examples.

A fitting end to the type of play we produced this year. A team that wasn’t able to live above their own hype last year in the final, found themselves facing the same problem this year after attaining the NHL’s best start to a season.

Murray said this game mattered when it comes to the future of the hockey club.  We’ll see if this pile of feces leads to a bit of a wipe or multiple flushes.

I’m not going to try to take the stink off this turd.  I’m not going to do much of anything where it comes to the Senators, for awhile.  I did my "bleeding" after the last game.

I find your tears of pain delicious! Onto the rest of the NHL and some Leafs news:

  • Just kidding! One more sens link: The Pensblog. Check out the photoshops. My favourite is the Amber Alert for Heatley and Spezza. Good thing they are signed for 7 more years.
    Godd Till is back! About time. There was so much crazy going on here that I don't know which team to pity more. If he could only hit Cathal Kelly next for calling TFC "FC". Seriously, he may wear glasses but I will pop him in the face if I meet him.
    No 84 game season. Thank God. The playoffs end in June man! ENOUGH!
    Eyebeleaf believes that sometimes pictures can tell the whole story.
    And finally, Steve is your Marlies man. Clemmensen is starting!?!?! Tlusty the Hero! Also, thoughts on the Nonis firing and a dig at the sens./

Phew. That was a lot. And that's all she wrote. I'll put a Game Day Thread up this afternoon as the Caps try to avoid following the Pens' script from last season too closely.