With the NHL season rapidly being destroyed by CBA madness, Bryan Murray’s decision to keep Mika Zibanejad from joining Sweden at the World Juniors counts as significant news.

Yesterday, the Senators GM announced that the club would not be releasing Zibanejad from the Binghamton Senators of the AHL and will instead, allow Zibanejad to continue his adjust to the North American game under Luke Richardson and the rest of the staff in Bingo.

Luke Richardson has the Binghamton Senators on a heck of a run lately.  Winners of six straight, the BSens have caught the attention of fans around the AHL and in hockey-starved Ottawa.

While the team continues to rely on lights out goaltending from Robin Lehner, and the occasional gem from his back up Ben Bishop, the offence has shown signs of improvement of late, as the team has been able to roll four lines that can all contribute in the attacking end.

While Bill Daly suggested earlier today that he expects the league and the players to resume negotiations at some point this week, there are currently no formal talks scheduled.

As reported first by Pierre LeBrun, both the NHL and NHLPA have agreed to allow a Federal mediator to oversee CBA negotiations.  Where things go from here is still obviously unpredictable but it can’t hurt to have a mediator involved at this stage in the process.

All may be quiet in the National Hockey League these days but the Binghamton Senators are making plenty of noise in the American Hockey League.

Luke Richardson's team went three for three over the weekend and have now won six straight games. With last night's 6-1 win over the Bridgeport Soun Tigers, the BSens are just two points back of Syracuse for top spot in the AHL's East Division.
 

As the National Hockey League continues to spiral out of control, the Binghamton Senators remain the only game in town.

With that in mind, we welcome back Don Rieber from the Examiner in Binghamton to update us on last night's win over the Toronto Marlies at the Broome County Veterans Memorial Arena in Binghamton, New York.

After Gary Bettman and the NHL suggested the two sides take a couple weeks off, the fact that the owners and players were back at the table this week seemed like a step in the right direction.

And when word came out that the NHLPA might finally submit an actual proposal, again it seemed like both sides might actually start to take this negotiation seriously.  This morning Donald Fehr and the players presented that proposal and this afternoon the two sides will discuss where they go from here.

After a somewhat inconsistent start to their season, the Binghamton Senators had their most successful weekend of the season, winning back to back games against the Phantoms and the Rochester Americans on Saturday night.

The latest three game winning streak comes at a good time for the BSens who have a busy weekend ahead, with games on Thursday, Friday and Saturday night.  Luke Richardson’s team has posted a 7-4-1-1 record overall, good enough for second place in the AHL’s East Division.

If this lockout has taught us anything, it’s that during a time of such uncertainty, there really isn’t a whole lot of value to “inside information”.

As high up as Donald Fehr and Gary Bettman, there is still a sense of unknown to how this process is going to play out.  While you can be sure both sides know what their next move is, neither can really say for certain how the other side will react and when we’ll ultimately reach a resolution.

When Jared Cowen initially went down with what the organization called a lower body injury, few were overly concerned about the possibility of a long term injury.

But now after eight games on the sidelines, Cowen has opted for what appears to be season ending hip surgery.  If you’re looking for a positive in what has to be a devastating break for Cowen, at least the injury isn’t to the same knee that he had issues with in Junior.

(UPDATE 5:07 PM)-  The Ottawa Senators announced this afternoon that defenceman Jared Cowen will undergo surgery to fix a lower body injury that has kept him out of the Binghamton Senators line up for the last eight games.  There is no immediate timeline on how long the surgery will sideline the 6'5 defenceman but Bob McKenzie speculates it could be season ending.