John Muckler was fired as GM of the Ottawa Senators in mid-June 2007, despite his team making the Stanley Cup finals just weeks earlier. Bryan Murray, the coach that helped get them there and the former GM of the team that beat them, was seen as the true mastermind, succeeding despite Muckler rather than because of him. In what seems, four years later, like a change in the very culture of this hockey club, Murray was promoted to replace Muckler. In the intervening years, Ottawa never won another playoff series, missed the playoffs twice, and were swept once. They’ve had four coaches, including Murray’s second stint. In the kind of irony that can only happen in Ottawa, Murray, age 69, was renewed for three years. For all the clichés about how this is a results-based business, Stanley Cup Finals equalled “you’re out on your ass” and fifth last in the league an extension.

The governing thought seems to be that Murray is too respected, brings too many intangibles to the prestige of the club to let him go. His drafting record, or at least his choices in a scouting department, are lauded. The failures of this club to contend are Muckler’s, and Muckler’s successes were…someone else’s. Being just another hockey fan on the outside, I can do little else but concede that this might be the case. All I have is a record of transactions and public statements on which to base my skepticism. One thing can’t really be debated, which is that the culture of the Murrays is now inextricably tied to this franchise, and rather than make a huge cultural change, Melnyk decided to keep the same vision and plan in place for the foreseeable future. If Kanata sort of resembles a desert, Bryan Murray now sort of resembles Hosni Mubarek.

But in an attempt to restore some semblance of the results-based analysis, let’s look at Murray’s spotty transaction record up close. It ain’t pretty.

 So there you have it. Pretty middling, if you ask me. Combine this with his coaching hires, his UFA signings, and his inability to throw Cyril Leeder down some stairs for the SNES jersey, and I’m pretty ambivalent. He re-signed Chris Phillips after a brutal year, re-signed Craig Anderson to what will seem like a looooooooong deal if it doesn’t work out, and he picked up some decent looking NCAA guys, so maybe that’s a wash? Hard to imagine, with all the thirst for change in Ottawa, that three more years of this seems at all reasonable. Only time will tell if (*suddenly stops writing because this post took forever *)

Throughout this rebuild, I’ve been solidly pessimistic. For weeks I’d been writing about how this was the perfect year for a rebuild, even if the Sens were a playoff bubble team, but when the rebuild began I was afraid that it didn’t go far enough. Major pieces like Spezza, Phillips, Michalek and Alfredsson were left untouched. Secondary pieces like Chris Neil and Filip Kuba stayed, too. Anderson, a goalie we might have traded for a pick, was re-signed for four years, and Phillips for another three. While the team might be improved in a year or two, I didn’t think that the team did enough this year – or guaranteed a low enough finish next year – to truly load up and become a contender. Melnyk started his usual trumpeting, Murray looks like he’ll be staying, and all along I thought that this team was just setting itself up for some Leafs-style mediocrity. Which is to say, never quite mediocre enough, and never quite a contender.

Admittedly, Anderson has been standing on his head and there’s no guarantee that he can play this way for 70+ games next year. But after yesterday’s thrilling OT win over Montreal, I’m a convert: this team has a future, and it’s only a couple of years away.

Bobby Butler and Stephane Da Costa are two key prospects picked up without using a draft-pick; the Sens have five picks in the first 60 (possibly six, if Nashville’s conditional kicks in); David Rundblad and Jared Cowen are set to make the team next year; current rookies like Condra and Greening have surprised, and not looked out of place in the NHL; the team has a top five pick, and though they finished so low, they’re a full 13 points above last place and about eight wins from being a playoff team; the team has about $16M in cap space heading into next year; a new coach is due; Spezza looks dominant, and like he’s finally matured into the player this team always wanted him to be. (He also has 22 points in 14 games.)

With all of those factors in play, the Sens are still far from a shoo-in, and definitely are not contenders. But can anyone say that they can’t see this team, playing the way they’re playing now, winning eight more games than last year?  If a team with a bottom four on defense of Andre Benoit, David Hale, Derek Smith and Brian Lee (and an unimpressive top pairing of Phillips and Kuba) can win games like last night’s, a team with Karlsson, Gonchar, Rundblad and Cowen in the lineup can do more. Imagine if Da Costa plays at the level Bobby Butler is playing at now, if Peter Regin rebounds from his terrible season, if the team signs a new top six UFA, even poaches as RFA by offer sheet (Parise anyone?).

I never thought I’d say it, but could Ottawa return to the playoffs next year?

Edit: Sgarbossa is indeed drafted by the San Jose Sharks. So this entire post makes no sense. Good player, though, worth keeping an eye on, if only because we don’t have anything better to do.

A stacked, 2nd-seeded Ottawa 67s just suffered a pretty humiliating four-game sweep at the hands of the Sudbury Wolves. One name that should be on the mind of anyone who watched the series is Michael Sgarbossa, who was downright unstoppable. Even the 67s coach said that no matter who was assigned with shutting him down, Sgarbossa found a way. He finished the series with 4G, 8A, and 12P, in what were admittedly some pretty high-scoring games. Half of those points – 1g, 5A – came in Sudbury’s 8-7 OT win in Game 1. But what was even more noticeable was the way he scored and set up those goals. They were timely, clutch goals when his team was down. And in a league that features a lot of hot-dogging, fancy plays, and a sizeable talent gap, Sgarbossa seems comfortable with the hard-nose, ugly goals required in the NHL.

There isn’t a ton of information available on Sgarbossa, but it appears he was undrafted in his first year of eligibility. This might be because of his size – he’s listed at 175lbs, and in the NHL that’s at least ten pounds too light. But he has respectable numbers this year – 62 points in 37 games – and, as evidenced against the 67s, his hard-driving style of play is hard to shut down.

He doesn’t seem to be on the radar, and certainly isn’t projected to go in the first couple of rounds. But with the Sens having picked up a number of later-round picks, Sgarbossa might be worth a second look. He’s certainly worth keeping an eye on during the OHL playoffs.

Most of the game's score prediction brought to you by Steven

Conblad

Anywho, here’s my idea on how this goes and even possible pairings
Karlsson – Gonchar
Phillips – Rundblad (he’ll need Phillips for backup)
Kuba – Carkner (ugh, Carkner will start fights while Kuba looks for a light switch to flick on and off to get him to stop)
Lee – Wiercoch (I look for this pair to average a shift a game)

Okay so maybe I put those pairings together just to make those admittedly bad jokes. I don’t see Cowan making this club out of camp, big jump from the WHL to the big time. Murray’s boys don’t usually skip Bingo. What I’d really like to happen is to convert Carkner to a 4th line forward since he fights anyways and I’ve gone on record believing a top 6 defenseman shouldn’t be a fighter. Lee probably ends up bouncing between pairings and the press box.

Hale’s not coming back and if Gryba isn’t getting his shot now, when are we to expect it?

Jamesson

Hey, sorry Im late just sending your friend a Get Well Soon card after reading his incredibly well written / well eyes welling up with sports tears article on the Cleveland Cavaliers linked in the last post. Chin up little homie.
WHOOPS! im getting a page on my new two way pager! Let me call the number to check my mailbox to check the message *elevator music*

BREAKING NEWS: HIGHLY TOUTED COLLEGE PROSPECT STEPHANE DA COSTA SIGNS WITH OTTAWA! (verbosity all but guaranteed to follow!) WELL HON HON HON TO THAT!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway ignoring that incredibly interesting breaking news…I see the D comme ca:

The Ottawa Senators stink. Not as badly as some teams; not so badly as teams higher up in the standings, with lesser lineups but better luck; not even so badly as in their own worst seasons, which were, it need not be said, legendarily bad. But as undeniable as these truths are, there is also the undeniable truth of their current stinkiness. You don’t get the third overall pick in the NHL draft by being any good at almost any of the elements required to successfully win at hockey.

The Cleveland Cavaliers are, unfortunately for them, a legendarily bad basketball team right now. So much so that their fans, like an Ottawa fan base who has enjoyed the playoffs almost every year for the last dozen or more years, are faced with this new and alien feeling of finding some semblance of interest in the minutia of team building, the minor improvements of a depth player’s two-way game, NCAA player reports, and 3rd jersey designs.

Anyway, Colin McGowan is a guy I only sort of know, writing with him over at Cokemachineglow, and he’s written this really pretty awesome meditation on the nature of desire – desire so niggling and insistent – in the face of utter and soul-crushing mediocrity. Check it out.

Just wanted to link to a story that’s heating up a little bit, and some great reading on those Sens blogs who understand contract structures and the implications given the pending expiry of the CBA, etc. (i.e. not us.)

NCAA free agent Stephane Da Costa has declared his intention to go pro, and the Sens are considered a competitive destination with as many as all 30 teams having expressed an interest. He’s supposed to decide where he’ll go tomorrow, and Sens fans could see him in the lineup this season.

I don’t know much about Da Costa except that he’s a scoring center, is pretty small at 180 lbs, and is from Paris, France. No NHL player has ever come from Paris, but the city is the birthplace of post-structural literary theory, so you know Lessard is looking forward to some dense conversations with the young man while riding the Binghamton Bus. I guess his size, and perhaps propensity for quoting Derrida, is probably why he didn’t get drafted.

But we might see him as early as this season because playing time is one of the few things Ottawa can offer him that few other teams can’t. If he plays even one game, a year on his entry deal is used up and he’s one year closer to a real pay cheque (/check). Also, bonuses built into his contract will count against the cap. So the two things at the Senators disposal – cap space, and a lost season – give them an advantage in negotiations. No coincidence that the other teams thought to be competitive are Florida and Minnesota, who also stink horribly.

If Murray pulls this off, it will be notable, as we’ve caught glimpses of what Bobby Butler, a former NCAA alum, can do, and Winchester is a solid contributor. (I think Bozak in Toronto is another collegiate signee, and he centers Toronto’s top line. Not bad for a player Toronto didn’t even need to use a draft pick to get. Leafs suck.)

Anyway, a situation worth keeping an eye on. If only to appreciate some of the solid writing out there covering the developments.

Check here and here for some Ottawa blogger coverage. There’s also plenty being written through the trad media’s usual suspects.

Photo courtesy of – who else? – Icethletics

Conrad

So, after another improbably comeback – this time against Atlanta, to force OT – the Sens are third last in the league, four points up on Colorado for the 2nd overall pick, only one point back of Florida and four points back of the 5th-place Islanders.

I’m all for cheering the odd win – and it has to be said, it’s great to see 18.5k people make it to the game against Washington last week, even with the home team nowhere near the playoffs and Ovechkin sitting. But this winning is starting to get strange. Sens are making huge comebacks, and holding legitimate contenders off the board completely. It’s good to see, and I’m feeling optimistic for next year. But my question is – are we kind of fucking ourselves here a little? There’s six games left; why not sit Spezza and Anderson for a couple of those?

It looks like the only game-changers in the upcoming draft are Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, potentially an offensive star, and Adam Larssen, a blue chip defenseman. After them come a couple of solid two-way players with a lot of size in Gabriel Landeskog and Sean Couturier – good players, but not franchise quality. After that the quality falls off again, with good players like Brandon Saad, Ryan Strome and Ryan Murphy still up for grabs, but none of them are the type you can build around. I’ll be happy to have any of them, but it would be a shame to have suffered through so much mediocrity only to sabotage it when the games are meaningless.

There’s a big difference between tanking it for a whole season and tanking it for a few games. As one who was never a big subscriber to the whole “culture of winning” argument – or, who thinks lacking a culture of winning is outweighed by having good players on your team – these next few games could effect the franchise for years to come.

Pete

All very good points. I don’t think that management sees a player in this draft class worth tanking for. I doubt that at this time of year there are new points to add to any junior player’s scouting report. I say this full knowing that Murray told the media at the press conference following the Kelly trade that they’re targeting an NHL ready player with the first round pick. Kinda mixed messages if you ask me.

The other part is that there are quite a few guys who are playing for spots in the sens lineup. No one is really interested in  laying down if they think it could be the difference between riding the bus and flying on Meknyk’s margarita-ville 1. Not to mention Clouston coaching for his life.

Discussion points worth chewing on:

1. Pundits believe Murray may have saved his job with his deft stickhandling around the deadline. I understand that during the dark parts of this season a scapegoat had to be anointed and flogged. Now things are kinda looking up. We’re 5 points away from blaming the season on injuries and shaky goaltending instead of using the “rebuild” term.

2. Marek Svatos: Keep or toss?

Conrad

I’ve always kind of liked Svatos, and heard that the organization was interested in him when he was disappointing people in Colorado. Which is to say, good on them for finally getting to take a look and not having to part with anything to do it. But unless he’s willing to play here for a “prove yourself” contract I can’t see him sticking around. He’s only got about 4 points since the Sens claimed him off waivers, and during a period when he couldn’t possibly get more ice time. I think he finds a home next year, but I don’t know if it’s here.

As for Murray’s future, it’s looking more and more likely that he sticks around in some capacity. I mean, the guy just spent about $20M of Melnyk’s money on Anderson and Phillips. I think Tim Murray takes over next year with Brian in an advisory role. Could be worse, I guess. The Murrays are no Sather.

Prianka

It seems like we’ve pretty much torched our draft position. It’s strange to have spent the entire season complaining how the team couldn’t win a game to save their lives, and now being slightly disappointed when I check the scores. It is pretty amazing that we stopped super hot teams like the Rangers and the Capitals, but if we win the majority of our remaining games (there are only 6 games left, but even winning 3 of them is more points than we want), this entire terrible season really will be a write off.

Reading that Alfie is thinking of playing again, you have to wonder what they are doing. I agree that it would be a good idea to sit Spezza and Anderson for some of the remaining games, and it’s definitely not worth the risk to Alfie to have him playing in what are now more than meaningless games. Let’s have him rest and be back at 100% for next year. I realize we can’t sit too many people, otherwise we have to start stealing players from Bingo again, but maybe it’s also times to sit Karlsson who has consistently been playing 30+ minutes a game.

I don’t really see Marek Svatos sticking around for pretty much exactly the reasons Conrad said. It’s another case like with Cheechoo: sure Svatos can score 30 goals when he is on top of his game, but with 4 pts since he’s arrived, everything points to him not being on top of his game. I’m sure he would like to play somewhere where he is a legitimate top 6 forward, and with how much he is being outplayed even by the Bingo kids, that doesn’t seem likely with the Sens.

So when are they unveiling the new jerseys?

Conrad

I think they’re doing the new jerseys in the offseason. It would be cool to see them give one to our top five pick on draft day 🙂

And, appropriately, just as you sent that email, Icethletics updated with this post.

Not to overanalyze what is just a screen shot, but, uh….it looks a little like the black SNES jersey. Now we know it will definitely have the ‘O’ on it, and, unfortunately, will also have the draw strings at the neck. And it will be black and red again.

Pete

How the snap does a post about a possible 3rd jersey get 150 comments and we can’t get 150 comments total? Someone get me a bottle of bourbon and a RIF account cuz I’ve suddenly become my father and no longer understand the Internet.

James

Hi Brosephs and Brosephines,
 
I think it’s a sticky toilet of fish with the whole Tank for Tavares thing. Tanking in my opinion, can be a loose if seldom admitted strategy of a club but ultimately is more of a fan concept a lot of the time. I mean Pittsburgh is great (barf) now but almost lost their franchise in the process of getting some #1s. Do we want that, THAT bad? I’m still smarting over almost losing the team once. I mean look no further than the Kansas City Islanders for a more current example. Curious how the rebuild concept is quietly being challenged by the Chicago Blackhawks right now. Were awful for years and then picked up some amazing young players – and even speedily won the cup with a whateeeeeevs rookie goalie and one season later might miss the playoffs. NHL 2.0 is a weeeird world. Maybe Im stretching with the Blackhawks thing as I think they are still a pretty scary team with awful goaltending and have had a lot of baaad injury luck. Like it was aptly pointed out earlier, people in the organization are playing for jobs on next season’s roster and in some cases careers out there and could probably give a  Ryan “Ted” Nugent-“Sir Anthony” Hopkins about draft positioning. People are talking a gaaaang of shit about this years draft but I looked at the top 5 picks and I think they are all worth picking. I mean if we get “stuck” with Sean Coutourierererer Im not crying. Hopefully, it might look in the end like “screwing” yourself into having to pick Jordan Eberle. No matter what the pick, you might get Brian Lee’s pencil neck and Anze Kopitar’s broken ankle. Hang on folks its going to be a bumpy dfahsdfkljdfasdfablackeyespeassong.
Back to my point about fan perspective, as a fan of course I am a bit bummed to see this never say die brand of good play come this late in the season. Where was this whole shutting out the Caps mess when I went to games this whole season? – I think I saw ONE win this year at SBP(.wordpress.com). Either way, there seems to be no catching Colorado and Edmonton who have the draft time – luxury/ rest of the time-curse of being terrible but in the West. Anyway, yes, it is very bitter sweet to watch the team’s (couldn’t be) late(r) in the season surge coupled with the Florida implosion. Sooo….?….barfy barf barf?
Personally, I must also say that when Anderson came in and decided that he was going to let in fewer than 6 goals per game I knew that the Sens wouldn’t be going on anymore of those 10 game losing streak soul crushing hell rides and that Elliot would now make the Avs his new Viking Death Ship – Hey, Ells, hows that whole “Playing the Sedins on a regular basis thing going? Working out or not working out? He says “Depends on how you look at it.” Good point, McCain Ellio’s Pizza Pockets.
It does depend on how one looks at it. I am choosing to look at it as a more or less guaranteed top FIVE pick and a non-terrible goaltender (which is huge) moving forward. In addition, some very exciting draft picks (picked outside the top five) that have already been picked heading into camp for 2011-2012 – and BTW current “just lost his position in team scoring leader to a forward that makes SEVEN MILLION DOLLARS PER – Erik Karlsson was picked 15th so you know…all is not lost. It has been a frustrating year and I concede that watching all that MFing losing and not getting a top 3 picks is rough. Lets just move forward with new steady goaltender, exciting young defenders, US college signings who seem to be working out decently, maybe a forward signing in the off season? Why? Well, you have no choice for starters. Theres still excitement, maybe Murray will package some crud for your more coveted Landeskog (before time) type pick.
Speaking of moving forward, about Svatos? more like Dumpos. I’m pretty indifferent toward his play soooooooo I think we have enough of those dudes. Word on the street (internet) is that Svatos is to shoulder injury what Cheechoo is to sports hernia. So, lets use that cap space to buy Michalek robot knees and take a look at another prospect or whatever.
Before one accuses me over being overly optimistic HEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY im not feeling good about that new third jersey so far. Which third jersey am I talking about? I understand your confusion because IT ALREADY LOOKS SO MUCH LIKE THE THIRD JERSEY THAT NO ONE (ESPEEEECIALLLLLLLLY ME) LIKES. Cyril Leeder is my candidate for contract buyout / everything garbageout.