Senators management fired coach Paul MacLean today. They were tired of his propensity to make his players skate more slowly than the other team’s players.

Also, sometimes when Ottawa Senators players shot the puck it was too high or too low or just right, but mostly too high or too low. It could have been the slow skating. They should have skated faster and followed through.

The back-to-back losses to the Islanders were the last straw. They could no longer stomach MacLean’s insistence on playing four lines for different minutes. With players on each line. Into the zone.

We at WTYKY wish Paul MacLean all the best, and hope that in his next gig he remembers that the glass goes all the way around the rink. Except in the places where it stops. So the players can get off the bench. A-doi. And that he figures out the correct proportion of grit to mix into his skill pie.

MacLean’s replacement will have a big job ahead of him. He’ll have to untrain the Senators in their current system of up-tempo sideways-skating low-tempo bullish sheepish Event Hockey and institute a strong 1-3-4-1-goalie setup until you pull the goalie when there’s time left on the clock until there isn’t anymore. As is the style in NHL 3.0.

All I know is that when we see David Legwand do what he’s known for doing–which is breaching the zone with his left leg and then his right leg, the other team will think, “Ok: these guys know what they’re doing now.”

And then this team will win the Stanley Cup.