rareexample

Perhaps, what isn’t wrong should be the question because not much seems to be clicking over the past 2 years. Everyone’s been blamed from GM’s, coaches, goalies to players. Shit trickles downward, perhaps starting at the top of the pyramid? Mr. Melnyk seems like a great dude but in all honesty how much attention can you pay to your NHL team when you have a dozen other million dollar ventures going at the same time?

I think the team started right from 96 to 04 with Jacques Martin who had the great essential building blocks. His goal was to build solid defense first which he certainly did. Chara, Philips, Volchenkof, Redden (when he was good)etc… Unfortunately, the defense has been ripped out and replaced with rookies who can’t handle the puck or break out of their own zone.

Mistakes

• Trading Hossa and Devries for Heatly. Hossa is consistently a top player in the NHL. Heatly stands around with his stick in the air waiting for a pass and never helps the Defense. Laziest player of the game, highest paid. Doesn’t make sense.
• Ray Emery. He was never the great goaltender everyone thought he was, his defensemen kept his stats up, primarily Volchenkof who made the majority of the big saves. He should have been discarded early as the warning sings were quite apparent to fans let alone staff.
• Loosing Chara instead of Redden. Chara vs Redden, this is a no brainer. A giant warhorse who can move the puck, destroy people’s faces with one punch and has the hardest slaptshot in the league making defense turtle their heads vs a coke head with confidence issues. This one blows my mind, what the fuck are you thinking?
• Gerber. Should have never been on the team let alone the NHL.
• Joe Corvo for Mike Commodore? No words needed.
• Now that all Defense is gone, they get rid of , Wade Redden….
• Moving Murray to GM. Murray as coach took the team to the Stanley Cup playoff.  Murray as GM took the team to the bottom of the league.
• Jason Smith, a two-year, $5.2M contract. He’s ok, but not that ok…
• Throwing Rookie goalies in Net to try and fix the team’s shortcomings. Elliot and Auld, thrown to the wolves. I think the coache’s decision here may have hurt these promising goalies career. Absolutely skilled, much potentials but the absolute lack of defense has to be demoralizing especially when the weight of fixing your team’s moral is put on your shoulders. It’s like ” Hey kid, get in net and see if you can fix this shitty team.”
• Ruutu. 3 years/$3.9 Million. Sens already have a pain in the ass and that’s Chris Neil. His shenanigans are not helping the team’s woes in any way and if you’re going to get a pain in the ass, get one that can fight and not chew on people’s fingers.
• Firing of Coaches.  If a team sucks fire a Coach. If the new Coach can’t fix it, it probably means the team sucks and not the Coach… Throw another Rookie Coach (Clouston) to the wolves

Ok, so enough with the negative, what about the positive?

What or who is working right now for the Ottawa Senators?

Stats wise, nothing or no one.  Most of the team is in the negatives for +/- with the the exception of

• Kuba +6
• Donovan +1
• McAmmond +1
• Carkner, Zack Smith and Peter Regin who are all at 0, primarily because they have yet to play a game.

That’s correct, the rest of the team has negative +/-.

While Elliot and Auld plays as fantastically as possible, I think it’s incredibly unfair to them that the rest of their team sucks asshole. You can only goal tend so well until your brain turns numb from watching your team turn over the puck, create odd man rushes, can’t break out, can’t connect a pass, can’t skate and most of all can’t score. If I was one of these goalies, I’d do whatever it takes to get off the Senators because they’re going to ruin their potential to become great.

So you have 5 players who play well for the team. While it may not show in statistics I think there are a few more that have a good work ethic and deserve to be salvaged. Fisher, Alfie, Vermette, Kelly, Philips and Foligno give their best each game. Unfortunately for some of these guys, their best is still sub par.

Conclusion

You can blame goalies, players, GM’s, coaches all you want, but when a company sucks, it starts with the CEO. If the CEO doesn’t realize that his staff suck, the company dies and this company is a downhill spiral.

Problem with the Sens is the inability to realize that everyone is collectively sucking. It’s not a slump, it’s not the goalie, it’s not the GM, it’s not moral.  I keep hearing ” This team is bursting with talent, what’s wrong?”

It comes down to this. Yes, these players were good, past tense. Many of them are simply no longer good, so this team is no longer bursting with talent. You have to keep the positive, and rid the negative starting with the defense. With rules, contracts, salaries there will be no quick fix to this problem as the only fix is to blow the team up and that takes time. So if you’re a Sens fan like me, we may be waiting quite some time before we see this team get to another Stanley Cup playoff. I’d love to hope, but if you’ve watched the team play this year you’ll know as I do, this is currently a very sad hockey team.