SENShobo
Hartsburg Out, More Binghamton In
by SENShobo on 02/02/09 at 12:11 PM ET
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Well ain’t that something; Hartsburg gets his pink slip.
Show of hands, anyone surprised? No?
Must be that economy, no one gets spared, but a fresh-faced replacement is already in place.
Updated with press conference video - 4:00 PM EST
For anyone keeping score, that’s now five separate coaching stints the Sens have had in less than two years.
First, Murray takes the team three wins short of the ultimate prize. Come September 2007, Paddock is the new familiar face to take over the reins, blitzing Ottawa to a League record start, but being removed as the team slumps in the latter two thirds of the season, Murray doing double duty to help hold the team in playoff position, facilitating a Pittsburgh sweep (though that glorious image of the Sens’ victory over the Pens a year prior by the visiting locker room couldn’t have hurt either). This season, Hartsburg takes over, spirits buoyed, if only slightly. Compiling a 17-24-7 record, worse than Paddock’s at the time of his firing, it was no real surprise to see Hartsburg’s three year coaching deal done in early. Melnyk doesn’t like paying NHL salaries to AHL players, or buying out players and effectively wasting that money; I suppose it doesn’t matter with the off-ice bankroll.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is that Murray won’t be stepping behind the bench once again. Binghamton head coach Cory Clouston will spend the rest of his season in Ottawa after guiding Ottawa’s prospects to their most successful first half ever, according to pressconnects.com (no better choice of source for that news, either). If you’re going to reward the players with time in Ottawa for their travails in the AHL, what better way to continue that reward system than to bring up the man who orchestrated it all?
At the same time, you can’t be sure it’s all that much of a reward. If he can somehow miraculously turn the team around, there just might be a spot for him come next season. That he has no NHL coaching history for players or any of us to look to for our conclusions only helps in giving him a blank slate and pulpit from which to law down the law. If he fails, though, there’s no shortage of boys looking to get back in the club.
Sure, you can look back now and say that Melnyk should have tried harder to get De Boer, but he took over a strong defensive team that had its back end pumped up, with a pair of stud goalies ready to work and a Canadian back-end marvel looking to set himself up nicely for his oh-so-young UFA status. Nothing much was there to make you worry, and his success, while great, is not news to floor anyone who’s been living under a rock.
Again, if Clouston can’t law down the law, Melnyk’s likely going to look for someone who won’t go so quietly into the job, a man who’ll fight both Melnyk and Murray for the control he gets over the team. Maybe denounce Melnyk’s Kool-Aid mixing a bit to show he means business, even as that drink may have been more a last chance for Hartsburg to force something out of this unwilling group of men. The talent is there, the battle is not.
If I had a gun to my head (or a bomb strapped to my chest, sorry, can’t resist), the two most obvious potential answers would come out: Torts and Quinn. Torts was allegedly despised enough by Lecavalier that he simply had to go, and yet he still has a Cup ring to his name; where better to find those rings than on the coach’s hand? TSN has done its fair share of toning the man down, which more than anything should give you some excitement to see what he can stir up when let loose, unmuzzled and unbleeped, on a bunch of guys who have only shown that they know the term ‘battle’ as it applies to a RISK board.
Quinn, of course, has shown he could get good years out of those blueshirted men down the 401; the double-Ontario-duty holds enough interest, but that show piece is far from all he’s got to bring. All the rumours swirling after the WJC Gold could come to fruition now. The feat was impressive in that the fifth straight gold boasted the weakest of the five Canadian squads, while facing stiff competition from both the big name teams and the lesser known lights hiding amongst the rest.
Too many veterans not showing veteran leadership, I would be anything but surprised to see a rash of Binghamton callups and benchings more significant than Fisher. Clouston knows his boys down in Binghamton, and has squeezed excellent play and hard work out of all four lines. Let him squeeze hard enough, and while I wouldn’t suggest an A-bomb, Murray will have every bit of knowledge he needs to make accurate decisions about what parts of this team may need to be strategically blasted away.
The Senators have effectively destroyed years of two men’s careers, and set them back in a most painful way. Time to shape up, now, or the final bell for you will toll, and Alfie may remain the only Senator to play 900 games for Ottawa for a long time to come. Murray has over a month to decide who will stay and who will go, and time still after that to do more chiseling before the draft and July 1st. Melnyk, too, has lots of time, just as Toronto did in their GM search, to decide what direction the coaching department will take.
Change is the only constant here, from the coaching to the strategy to the players themselves. A rushing river is forming, and if you don’t start swimming with it, you’ll soon find yourself shipwrecked and swept away.
Update - 4:00 PM EST, enjoy the press conference video (or read about it here), I’ll be mulling over all this and taking a deeper look tomorrow.
Filed in: NHL Teams, Ottawa Senators | SENShobo | Permalink
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