Go Sens Go - Fan Forum 08/09

[Whitey]

48 games= Fired

Changes had to be made but...

When are they going to make the players accountable?

[AD]

Ottawa Sun - "word is Binghamton Senators coach Cory Clouston will take over as head coach."

[Booche]

When are they going to make the players accountable?

Or the GM?

[Whitey]

You are correct sir.

[ollie]

I don't really have the energy to care one way or the other about this.

[Booche]

Bandwagon jumper. Confirmed. Again.

[rubberdinghy]

biiiiiiiiiig mistake....

How much longer can Murray get away with this.

[MrBigTime]

What happened to Pat Quinn?

[Booche]

With the firing of Craig Hartsburg, the Senators have thrown in the towel.

It is official.

With the firing of Craig Hartsburg, replaced by up-and-comer Cory Clouston on an interim basis, the Ottawa Senators have officially given up on this season.

Clouston, who has enjoyed success coaching at the junior level (much like Hartsburg) could be the second coming of Scotty Bowman, but he isn't going to make chicken salad out of this chicken do-do. Not a chance!

For those of you not keeping tabs, the Senators are on their fifth coach in the past three seasons - Murray, John Paddock, Murray, Hartsburg and now Clouston.

Less than two years after appearing in the Stanley Cup final, where they were clearly overmatched by the Anaheim Ducks, the Senators are sinking fast. Sinking toward a much-needed lottery spot in next June's draft.

That said, the choice of Clouston, in his second year in the organization, is a bit of a head-scratcher. With experienced coaches like Bob Hartley and John Tortorella out there, not to mention Pat Quinn, Murray elected to go with an unproven (at the NHL level) coach comparing this opportunity for Clouston to his own NHL debut in 1981-82 when he moved up to the Washington Capitals from the American League after a good run in junior in the Western League.

Murray admitted the cupboard is a little bare in Binghamton in terms of blue-chip prospects, but was impressed with the job Clouston was doing nonetheless. Binghamton was 25-16-3 under Clouston this season.

"When I watched them play, I saw players who respected the game and players who tried hard," Murray told HockeyCentral@Noon. "That's what I want to see here."

Another thing Murray would like to see is a puck-moving defenceman. That, perhaps more than anything else, has dogged the team this season. Over the past few years the Senators have lost the likes of Zdeno Chara, Joe Corvo, Tom Preissing, Andrej Meszaros and Wade Redden. Alexandre Picard leads the Sens' blueline in points with 14. For the record, that is not good.

Goaltending is also a concern. Alex Auld has not been the answer and while Brian Elliott has been OK since his recall from the American League, he is still very much in the development stage of his career. One assumes Murray must target a bona fide No. 1 goalie for next season, assuming he is still managing the team at the end of the year.

I like the fact owner Eugene Melnyk and Murray agree there is a foundation within from which to build upon. Half the teams in the league would love to have Daniel Alfredsson, Dany Heatley, Jason Spezza, Mike Fisher and Chris Phillips. The supporting cast? Well, that is what really needs addressing.

Murray signed free agents Jarkko Ruutu and defenceman Jason Smith and their impact has been minimal. My guess is Murray will be allowed to take one more shot at turning things around, but if it doesn't happen soon, he's the next to go.

[ollie]

It was just pointed out on The Team that today is Groundhog Day. Perfect.

[rubberdinghy]

Maybe someone should do there research...

Another thing Murray would like to see is a puck-moving defenceman. That, perhaps more than anything else, has dogged the team this season. Over the past few years the Senators have lost the likes of Zdeno Chara, Joe Corvo, Tom Preissing, Andrej Meszaros and Wade Redden. Alexandre Picard leads the Sens' blueline in points with 14. For the record, that is not good.

Filip Kuba GP 40 G 1 A 24 P 25.

It would seem Kuba has more points.

[rubberdinghy]

It should also be noted

Redden- 17 points

Corvo- 22 points

Preissing- 7 points

Mezsaros- 16 points

So....

why does it matter that we traded/lost any of those players.

[Booche]

It would seem Kuba has more points. It should also be noted:

Redden- 17 points

Corvo- 22 points

Preissing- 7 points

Mezsaros- 16 points

So....

why does it matter that we traded/lost any of those players.

Alfie, Heater, Spazz, Fish and Vermette arent doing very well this year, are they?

[rubberdinghy]

Never said they were.

Whomever wrote that article made it sound like we've lost alot.

[Thorgnor]

They should lose their GM.

Edited February 3, 2009 by Guest

[Booche]

Let me try again Dinghy.

No puck moving defenceman + Alfie, Heater, Spazz, Fish and Vermette arent doing very well this year = ?

[dave-O]

I like how the article lists Tom Preissing as a loss. The guy's been a healthy scratch for all but 4 games since Dec. 1 for LA.

[Booche]

So....

why does it matter that we traded/lost any of those players.

Sens problems run deeper, hockey analysts say

By Chris Yzerman, The Ottawa CitizenFebruary 3, 2009

Changing coaches isn't likely to fix the Ottawa Senators, say National Hockey League analysts, who believe the struggling team's problems run deeper than the man behind the bench.

After an informal survey conducted following yesterday's firing of Craig Hartsburg, the consensus is the troubles lie with the players on the ice or, more accurately, the players not on the ice.

"Coaching's not the problem in Ottawa," TSN's Pierre McGuire said after the Senators fired the 49-year-old Hartsburg 48 games into his stint in the nation's capital. "Player personnel is the problem in Ottawa."

Sportsnet's Nick Kypreos said the Senators' biggest problem "is the depth they've accumulated over the last few years has disappeared, especially on the back end from the goaltending out."

Cory Clouston's promotion from the team's American Hockey League affiliate in Binghamton makes him the fourth coach of the Senators since the team reached the Stanley Cup final in June 2007.

Hartsburg, 49, lasted even less than John Paddock, who got 64 games before being fired Feb. 27, 2008, and was replaced for the remainder of last season by general manager Bryan Murray.

With so many different voices, TSN's Bob McKenzie says, it's hard to believe that coaching is the Senators' fatal flaw.

"Given both Paddock and Hartsburg have not been able to get anything going with this group, the problem runs deeper," McKenzie said. "But it's a mystery to many in hockey how it has fallen so far, so quickly. It's one thing for this group to lose, but to not score any goals doing it? That's weird.

"I thought Hartsburg was a good choice. I thought at the time that if the Sens ended up with either Hartsburg or Pete DeBoer, they got themselves a good coach. I couldn't have imagined Hartsburg being fired after 48 games."

That leads to questions about the guys wearing the jerseys, not the suits.

"I definitely think there's some player issues here and some personality issues here," Sportsnet's Garry Galley said.

So what is wrong? Many things, so here's a sampling: The best place to start, according to the analysts, is in the Senators' own end, where the lack of a bona fide No. 1 goaltender is still a cause for concern.

"It's one of those things they thought they had nipped in the bud with Ray Emery," Kypreos said.

Even more crippling, however, is the depletion of the defence corps. The loss of Zdeno Chara more than two years ago was the start of a talent drain from which the Senators have never recovered and the subsequent departures of other players has had a snowball effect.

"I think you've got to go back to the Chara thing. That was a big piece of the puzzle," Galley said. "You replaced (the others) with some guys that aren't as adept at moving the puck.

"When you're a puck-possession team that's used to having the puck on their stick, they don't know how to go get it."

Adds Kypreos: "You could put Toe Blake behind the bench, but it's not going to help you move the puck out of your own zone. No, but a quality, A-plus defenceman would."

McGuire said there was "no other team in the Eastern Conference that's easier to forecheck than the Ottawa Senators."

The list goes on from there. Somewhere down the line, coaching may eventually come into question in only that Hartsburg wasn't able to get the best out of what he had to work with.

"Can you pin this solely on Craig Hartsburg? Absolutely not, but he didn't squeeze the most out of them," Kypreos said.

© Copyright © The Ottawa Citizen

[Freak By Night]

I like Kypreos' idea of putting Toe Blake behind the bench.

[rubberdinghy]

The team is in a shite place right now.

[Whitey]

UPHEAVAL IN CAPITAL

Senators' talented roster in need of major overhaul

CHRIS WATTIE/REUTERS

Ottawa Senators' new head coach Cory Clouston and general manager Bryan Murray (background) leave a news conference in Ottawa February 2, 2009. Clouston replaced Craig Hartsburg, who was fired after less than eight months in the job.

It's going to be fascinating to watch the two stumbling combatants in the Battle of Ontario in the coming years as they both seek to restructure and reorganize.

Those who support the Ottawa Senators, of course, couldn't have imagined that they'd not only be trailing the Maple Leafs in the Eastern Conference standings at this point in the season, but that both teams would be among the worst in hockey.

All that money lavished on all those star players, yet the Sens find themselves truly lost these days, barely a shadow of the 2007 Stanley Cup finalists.

Two very good hockey men in John Paddock and Craig Hartsburg, who was fired yesterday as head coach, have failed to get this oddly built team to play at a competitive level over the past year.

You could argue one or the other was a bad coach. But not both.

Instead, you have to look a little deeper in Ottawa, at ownership, management and the playing roster, to try to understand what has gone so horribly wrong.

Funny, but suddenly it's the Leafs, really, that appear to be the NHL team in Ontario with stability and a plan. The MLSE suits have been shamed into silence, and new president and GM Brian Burke, armed with a lucrative six-year contract, essentially represents a firewall between the erstwhile meddlers and hockey office.

Head coach Ron Wilson, meanwhile, is also in the first year of a multi-year deal. Like Burke, Wilson isn't universally adored but has a strong record of success.

The good news, of course, pretty much ends there. Luke Schenn is a building block, and otherwise every other player on the roster is effectively for sale heading towards the March 4 trade deadline.

This team looks nothing like Burke wants it to look like, and the process of transforming it into a big, mean hockey club will begin this summer.

By comparison, the Sens have far more talented individual players. But coaching is now in the hands of an untested rookie, GM Bryan Murray is being pilloried in the nation's capital for his decisions over the past two years and owner Eugene Melnyk's proprietorship suddenly seems less sure-handed.

Where are the Sens headed? Nobody seems quite sure, only that getting rid of several supposed malcontents came too late and has done nothing, and that what appears to be left is a clutch of very rich stars surrounded by disconnected support players.

Ottawa does have more assets at this particular time than the Leafs, but that will only mean something if Murray is prepared to make some hard decisions.

The Sens, to put it mildly, are a strange looking team. If they were a football team, they'd be all running backs, wide receivers and cornerbacks, with no offensive line, an erratic kicker and uncertainty behind centre.

The time has come, quite clearly, to break up the Big Three comprised of Daniel Alfredsson, Dany Heatley and Jason Spezza. All the firepower represented by these fellows has become meaningless because of the team's lack of mobility and talent on the blue line and the black hole in net that, really, has been there for a decade now.

Ray Emery filled that void for a while, but he's busy punching out trainers in the KHL right now and isn't expected back any time soon.

The idea, of course, was to win with the Big Three, not to turn them into the Big Two. Moving one, then, will require a bold, new and proactive action plan from Murray and Melnyk, and there's been little evidence so far that they're ready to blame anybody but coaches.

So who would you rather be today, the Leafs or the Senators? The Sens, surely, but only if those in charge of running that squad are prepared to make the assets they possess work for them to aggressively restructure the team.

[Booche]

Whaddya know? There it is again Dinghy.

All the firepower represented by these fellows has become meaningless because of the team's lack of mobility and talent on the blue line and the black hole in net that, really, has been there for a decade now.

[Booche]

New joke, same punchline

Pardon me for laughing out loud, but if Bryan Murray made the mess in Ottawa, why is Cory Clouston standing behind the bench?

Here's a joke: Guy walks into a bar … Sorry, I mean a general manager walks into his office in February 2008 and invites his coach to sit down. He tells him the team is underperforming and that it's not responding to the coach's directives and, for the betterment of the team and to move the team forward, he regrettably is firing the coach and replacing him with himself.

Punch line: Oddly funny to everyone except John Paddock (nobody thought coaching was the problem).

Here's the joke again: Guy walks into a bar … Sorry, I mean the same general manger walks into his office in February 2009 and invites his coach to sit down. He tells him the team is underperforming and that it's not responding to the coach's directives and for the betterment of the team and to move the team forward he's firing the coach and replacing him not with himself, but with a guy who has never coached a single game in the National Hockey League.

Punch line: Hilarious to everyone except Craig Hartsburg (few outside Ottawa thought coaching was the problem).

Memo to new Ottawa coach Cory Clouston: Assuming you keep the job into next season, avoid GM Bryan Murray's office in February. History has a way of repeating itself in Ottawa and you wouldn't want to be the butt of what is becoming the joke of the month club in the Nation's Capital.

I get the fact that Senators management had to do something after owner Eugene Melnyk started issuing ultimatums and warning to certain media members that they ought to go, "Blow themselves up." Things were nudging toward the unstable side of what had already become a dysfunctional franchise.

But this borders on the ridiculous, the superbly bizarre edge of ridiculous.

I also get, as colleague Mike Brophy pointed out elsewhere on this site, that this is a regular occurrence with the Senators having put a revolving door on the coach's office ever since Jacques Martin was spun out of it. And I get the fact that Clouston is an up-and-comer who probably deserves a shot in the NHL at some point in his career, so now might be as good a time as any (given that the Senators have clearly backtracked on the Melnyk prophecy that we will all be on the wrong side of history when this team makes that playoffs).

That's not going to happen; and assuming Melnyk is not hunkered down in a homemade shelter somewhere he might have to admit it.

I even understand why Murray didn't turn to one of the currently-unemployed-but-superbly-credentialed veteran coaches like John Tortorella, Pat Quinn, Bob Hartley or Doug MacLean to jump start his team. Why pay big money for a big name when you're already paying as many coaches not to coach as you are goaltenders not to tend goal?

But what I don't understand is why Murray, the architect of the current situation, didn't offer to go behind the bench and fix a mess largely of his making. And what I truly don't understand is why Melnyk didn't demand that he do so.

Murray's nephew and Senators assistant general manager Tim Murray told me on Monday during PrimeTime Sports that his uncle was probably a little too old for that kind of work right now. It didn't make a lot of sense given that Murray replaced Paddock with himself before stepping aside for Hartsburg, and he wasn't that much older then even if he's not any younger now.

But even with apologies to Bob Dylan if that were the reason it wouldn't have to be for the long term.

We're talking about 34 games here and if the organization is serious about restocking and developing players on the farm, one could make a strong case for having Clouston stay in Binghamton. There not only would he avoid a circus and a move that looks very much like a GM sidestepping a disaster, but he might even do the organization some good.

Clearly he wasn't that lucky.

Looking over a gauntlet that spans five coaches in three years, one could argue that coaching isn't the problem in Ottawa. That is, as the lawyers like to say, facts already in evidence.

The problem is talent, or lack of same. There may be other issues like dissention, finger pointing, frustration, other-worldly demands from ownership and the usual assortment of ills that come when high expectations meet abject failure. But the No. 1 problem with the Ottawa Senators is they aren't good enough to win on a regular basis.

That makes Clouston's task, whatever it might be, nearly impossible. More experienced men that came before him haven't been able to make that happen.

If they want him to "change the culture" in the locker room -- something that was at least hinted at in explaining the Hartsburg firing -- well how is that supposed to happen? Hartsburg couldn't do it in the 48 games he got and one could argue a part of the reason was that in Ottawa, people always blame the coach and the players get a pass. It's hard to imagine that firing another coach and replacing him with one that has zero NHL experience is going to make the players think they have to change their ways.

In truth, the only one from inside the organization who might effect change would be the general manager.

One could argue that Murray had his chance to do that last season and failed; but that's letting him off easy. This was a team that was supposed to return to the Cup final and finish the job. Murray was the man with the plan and that was the only thing that mattered.

That dream is over. For what remains of this season, there need only be a general accounting to the general manager; a period where players need only to show that they have a contribution to make and that they want to remain a part of whatever rebuilding needs to go on in Ottawa.

There is no better way for a general manager to observe that than to do if first hand, day-to-day, behind the bench and in the locker room. It wouldn't take long, about 34 games at best.

Clearly, Murray didn't want the job.

That says a lot about the state of the Ottawa Senators today. Even if you don't subscribe to the theory that this is not a mess entirely of Murray's making if you're an owner, you have to at least have the courage to say that your hand-picked general manager needs to fix it. The directive should have been that the best place to start would be behind the bench.

Clearly Melnyk didn't want to do that.

You can come up with your own reasons why. My take is that as long as Melnyk clings to the idea that coaching is the issue, he doesn't have to deal with the fact that he fired John Muckler -- a GM who got his team to the Stanley Cup final in 2007-- and replaced him with one who has reduced his team to a shell of its former self (not a bombshell mind you, more like the kind wrapped around a cannoli).

And as long as Murray isn't behind the bench, he is free from having to answer nightly for every loss that has come Ottawa's way and for all the losses still to come.

Instead, that falls to Clouston, a man who, one might argue, was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In announcing the firing of Hartsburg, Murray said: "It definitely is on my shoulders. Everything that happens here I take full responsibility for - and I should."

Pardon me for laughing out loud, but if that's true, why is Clouston standing behind the bench?

Could it be because in the end, the joke is once again going to be on a coach?

If that's true -and history points that way-it isn't very funny.

Frankly, it's all rather sad.

[rubberdinghy]

Everyone keeps talking defence.

You know...things would also be alot better if their goals per game was better than 2.4....good for 29th in the league...

At least they are 18th in goals against with 2.88

[TheSloth]

I think the point Booche is trying to drive mercilessly home is that the Sens deficiencies on defense are resulting in piss poor offensive play whether it be outlet passing, cycling, or just keeping the damn puck in the zone thus resulting in a lower GPG.