For most people, it's like he's already gone.
With the Senators down in their first-round playoff series against the Penguins 0-3, and with the great possibility that they'll be swept tonight in Game 4 on home ice, many people have already forgotten him.
But I haven't. In fact, today, while most Sens fans are praying for a miracle, or already counting our team out and thinking ahead to the post-season changes that are bound to occur, all I can think about is him.
Tonight could very well be Wade Redden's last game in a Senators uniform.
It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it, but it's true. Earlier in the season, I had hopes that he'd return to the player he was 2 or 3 years ago, carry the team on his back, and lead them to a Stanley Cup this Spring. A few weeks into the regular season, he announced to the local media that he'd even consider taking a pay cut to stay with this team once the season was over. On that day, my hopes soared to new levels.
However, since then, he's had a rather dismal season, and has been the biggest whipping boy on this team, perhaps only bested in that department by the wayward Ray Emery. He's even had to use his no-trade clause twice to thwart GM Bryan Murray's attempts to ship him out of here before the end of his contract.
It's been hard to be a Wade fan this season, but I've hung in there. I'll never cheer for another player the way I have cheered for him.
This morning, all the papers are already saying their good-byes. As the guys on TGOR said this, it's like reading his obituary. Chronicling the ups and downs, the good times and bad, the great things he has done for the community (like "Wade's World", the luxury suite he has purchased every season he's been here where kids from CHEO get to go to watch games), the sad times like the year his mother battled cancer and passed away during the Sens first-round match-up against Tampa Bay.
By stark contrast, I can't help remembering the newspaper I picked up eleven years ago, on the eve of the modern Senators' first appearance in the playoffs, which had row upon row of pictures of each member of the team at that time. I remember scanning the photos, and one of them literally jumping out at me.
"Holy smokes, that guy is hot," I said, pointing out this one picture to my mom.
I watched that playoff round, and became absolutely obsessed with the Ottawa Senators, and that rookie who's photo I had seen in the paper: Wade Redden.
I haven't stopped following his career since, and today, little memories of Wade keep coming back to me: Watching him in that first playoff series vs. Buffalo; meeting him at the 65 Roses Sports Gala (when I got to shake his hand and get my picture taken with him, but could barely speak a work); feeling crushed when he was the last man back on the goal that Jeff Friesen scored in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals when New Jersey beat us; watching him singing "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" on TV during one of the Sens' Christmas visits to CHEO; tearing up when he scored and received first star honours in the game after his mother's funeral; feeling complete and utter joy when I found out the Sens had chosen to keep him over Zdeno Chara two years ago; meeting his brother Bart at a game earlier this season...
I could go on and on.
But I hope I'm jumping the gun. I'm hoping the Sens fight hard tonight and win, so that Wade will live to don the Red, Black & Gold at least one more night.
'Cause I'm just not ready to say good-bye...Not yet.
With the Senators down in their first-round playoff series against the Penguins 0-3, and with the great possibility that they'll be swept tonight in Game 4 on home ice, many people have already forgotten him.
But I haven't. In fact, today, while most Sens fans are praying for a miracle, or already counting our team out and thinking ahead to the post-season changes that are bound to occur, all I can think about is him.
Tonight could very well be Wade Redden's last game in a Senators uniform.
It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it, but it's true. Earlier in the season, I had hopes that he'd return to the player he was 2 or 3 years ago, carry the team on his back, and lead them to a Stanley Cup this Spring. A few weeks into the regular season, he announced to the local media that he'd even consider taking a pay cut to stay with this team once the season was over. On that day, my hopes soared to new levels.
However, since then, he's had a rather dismal season, and has been the biggest whipping boy on this team, perhaps only bested in that department by the wayward Ray Emery. He's even had to use his no-trade clause twice to thwart GM Bryan Murray's attempts to ship him out of here before the end of his contract.
It's been hard to be a Wade fan this season, but I've hung in there. I'll never cheer for another player the way I have cheered for him.
This morning, all the papers are already saying their good-byes. As the guys on TGOR said this, it's like reading his obituary. Chronicling the ups and downs, the good times and bad, the great things he has done for the community (like "Wade's World", the luxury suite he has purchased every season he's been here where kids from CHEO get to go to watch games), the sad times like the year his mother battled cancer and passed away during the Sens first-round match-up against Tampa Bay.
By stark contrast, I can't help remembering the newspaper I picked up eleven years ago, on the eve of the modern Senators' first appearance in the playoffs, which had row upon row of pictures of each member of the team at that time. I remember scanning the photos, and one of them literally jumping out at me.
"Holy smokes, that guy is hot," I said, pointing out this one picture to my mom.
I watched that playoff round, and became absolutely obsessed with the Ottawa Senators, and that rookie who's photo I had seen in the paper: Wade Redden.
I haven't stopped following his career since, and today, little memories of Wade keep coming back to me: Watching him in that first playoff series vs. Buffalo; meeting him at the 65 Roses Sports Gala (when I got to shake his hand and get my picture taken with him, but could barely speak a work); feeling crushed when he was the last man back on the goal that Jeff Friesen scored in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals when New Jersey beat us; watching him singing "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" on TV during one of the Sens' Christmas visits to CHEO; tearing up when he scored and received first star honours in the game after his mother's funeral; feeling complete and utter joy when I found out the Sens had chosen to keep him over Zdeno Chara two years ago; meeting his brother Bart at a game earlier this season...
I could go on and on.
But I hope I'm jumping the gun. I'm hoping the Sens fight hard tonight and win, so that Wade will live to don the Red, Black & Gold at least one more night.
'Cause I'm just not ready to say good-bye...Not yet.
