Sens Goaltender Controversy? Bah Humbug!

Posted: 17th October 2008 by Luc "Sandman" G. in Hockey

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With only 4 games into the regular season, some Ottawa Senators fans are already whining about fixing the ‘goaltender situation’. To the fair weathered fans, take a deep breath, relax and stop panicking. You’re making all Sens fans look like morons.

Gerber isn’t going anywhere. He’ll either be hot like he showed he can be in the first 3 months last season and will continue to play. Or he’ll be cold and won’t be tradeable as no other team will want him at his current salary. At least he won’t be tradeable for anything better, we’d probably get someone of the same caliber in return (this includes Khabibulin. We wouldn’t be getting an upgrade in goal if he were to come here. I strongly believe that Khabibulin would not be an answer for Ottawa). That being said, Gerber is most probably going to be a Senator until his contract runs out.

Goaltending has always been an issue with Ottawa. The only time we had some stability is when we had Hasek between the pipes. Other than that, we often had goaltenders that showed random signs of being great but were too inconsistent (Gerber, Emery, Lalime, Rhodes, Tugnutt, Prusek). Elliot in Binghamton shows some promise but won’t be ready for another year or two, but I still don’t see him being an elite goalie. Unless we make a huge trade (not saying this year, but in the next 2-3 years and losing important parts of our O and/or D corps due to the cap), we won’t be seeing a goaltender of Luongo or Kiprusoff caliber between our pipes.

Lets face it, there’s no great goaltenders currently available on the market, and the Sens can’t afford to get a ‘great’ one with this year’s cap situation. So no matter how much we fans cry and whine, we have Gerber and Auld as our goaltenders for the foreseable future.

EA NHL09 Dirty Disc Problem

Posted: 11th October 2008 by Luc "Sandman" G. in Games, Hockey

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There’s an issue being experienced by quite a few owners of Electonic Arts’ NHL 09 game for the XBox 360. I am one of the unlucky ones who was hit by this bug.

I’ve been playing NHL09 since the day of release. I’ve really been enjoying the new Be A Pro gameplay. Last night I go to load up the game and to my dismay an error popped up on the screen stating “The disc is unreadable. Clean the disc with a soft cloth”. I found this really strange as the game was still in the drive from when I played it the night before. It as also strange that it was at not at a point in the game where the disc spins up to load anything. How can it report a dirty disc error when its not even trying to load off the disc? I popped out the disc, inspected it and saw absolutely no traces of dirt, dust, scratches or fingerprints. I re-inserted, the game loaded up to the point where I selected the type of game I wanted to play and boom, the error re-appeared. I ejected the disc once again, re-inspected it, and tried again… and again.. and again. I must have tried a dozen times without any changes. I even tried wiping the disc down a couple of times in case it was something I wasn’t seeing. No cigar. This morning I even picked up a disc cleaner from the local Future Shop but alas, it would not fix the dirty disc error message.

I decided to google the error specifically for NHL 09 (NHL 09 dirty disc) and after a few minutes of digging around I found some rather interesting information on a burried EA news release. It appears that the DRM for the game is causing this exact issue for some players, and that the fix is to clear the cache on the hard drive.

I followed the instructions (listed below) and hooray!, the game loaded an played flawlessly. Was I glad to hear that I wasn’t alone with this problem and that I didn’t have a defective disc on my hands.EA claims it will fix this issue on an upcoming patch but until then there’s a work around. Follow these steps to clear your XBox 360 cache:

  • Turn on your Xbox 360 with no disc in the drive so you get the dashboard.
  • Go to the hardware blade (last blade) and select memory.
  • Select your hard drive and press Y to access to device manager
  • Press the following buttons in order: X,X,LB,RB,X,X. This will clear your memory cache.
  • Once its completed, insert your NHL09 disc and play away!

Ottawa Senators 2008-2009 Wallpaper Calendar

Posted: 8th October 2008 by Luc "Sandman" G. in Graphics and Wallpapers, Hockey

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It took about 10 hours of work and revisions, and finally the 2008-2009 Ottawa Senators wallpaper calendar for the 2008-2009 season is ready for primetime! If you post this elsewhere, please indicate the source. And thank yous will be gladly accepted 🙂

December 2008 Sens Desktop Calendar

Posted: 6th October 2008 by Luc "Sandman" G. in Graphics and Wallpapers, Hockey

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The December 2008 Ottawa Senators wallpaper calendar is now finished after a week of toying around with different ideas. If you post this calendar elsewhere, please kindly indicate the source.

November Sens Calendar Wallpaper

Posted: 27th September 2008 by Luc "Sandman" G. in Graphics and Wallpapers, Hockey

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The November Sens calendar wallpaper is finally finished after modifying it quite a few times. I hope you enjoy it! If there’s a need for any different sizes not shown here, please let me know via a comment to this post, and I’ll see what I can do.

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