The Sens have tossed coach John Paddock overboard -- but even before word came of the firing, Jean-Pierre Allard said the onus belonged squarely on the suits upstairs, not the one behind the bench.
When cracks began to appear in the Senators' armour last month, president Roy A. Mlakar commented that the media coverage was overdramatic.
I beg to differ.
Serious fans sense there are far bigger issues with the Senators than their on-ice struggles and deserve the right to know what is going on. This is where the media must assume its role of reporting facts as they see them, no matter how much this may displease the Senators management.
Faithful subscribers are still smarting from last year's disappointing effort in the Stanley Cup final and are naturally upset that the team has lost its focus of late.
Now that another trade deadline has come and passed with GM Bryan Murray having once again failed to address what has been Ottawa's Achilles' heel for 11 years now, namely, the lack of a genuine No. 1 oalie, hopes of a Stanley Cup victory in 2008 are fast fading.
How soon before the Senators’ solid and loyal fan base get fed up with a bunch of highly-paid, underachieving players who continue to tease them with promising results in the regular season, only to swoon in the spring playoffs because management still has no clue what type of players are needed to win a Cup?
Mind you, at the rate that the Senators are delivering stinkers since the games started getting tough in December, in the process collectively turtling like frightened little boys, missing the playoffs has suddenly become a distinct possibility for this spineless squad.
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As a sens fan it is dissapointing that they didn't do something about their goltending situation. However everyone should have seen this coming. When you sign both your tenders to 3+ million contracts and they are both good backups your kind of stuck. I feel that what the sens should do is flip a coin and pick GERBER cause he is not a loose canon. No more of this lose and your out garbage. Goalies dont lose, the team does.
One critisism that I am frustrated by is that every year people try and find a reason to critisise the sens management. Last year they didn't do much at the deadline and it worked out well even though they didn't win the cup.
This year the sens did make a deadline ish deal in getting Stillman and Comadore. IF it had been at the deadline then eveyrone would praise the sens... maybe.
In a way the sens are starting to remind me of the leafs, they can't do anything right unless they win the cup.
THe way i see it if they keep competing during the regular season, eventually things are going to end with a big silver mug.
There might be an argument that Murray is better dealing with guys such as Emery who are a little "individual."
Murray is definitely on the hot seat because he preferred keeping his first round pick to put on a 5-minute cheap thrill show for the natives this coming June than sacrifice it by getting help, whether that was on defense or in goal.
Hosting the draft with no first- or second-rounder would be odd, but so is prioritizing the draft over winning the whole schebang-a-bang.
Wait a second...goaltending has been the Senators' number one problem for 11 years?
Really?
Because at various times, we remember their "number one problem" being lack of secondary scoring, lack of grit, that they were bad on faceoffs, that they didn't have enough veteran leadership, that they had too many Europeans on the team...
It's a bit of revisionist history to suddenly say that this has been their number one issue for that long.
Moreover, you can't point to the free agent top-flight goalie that they let slip through their fingers in the last two years, because there hasn't been one.
I agree with Tao of of stieb 100%.
When you dont win the haters always have some sort of excuse.
As for Murray not giving up a first rounder... Maybe i'm wrong but I dont think anyone gave up a first rounder? mainly 6th and 5th
Ok, so any time now, someone please give me the name of a genuine number 1 goalie that played here.
Ok, maybe 1A, with 1B being the lack of a genuine major league GM.
Face it, these guys still have no clue what the heck they're doing.
Oh, and I was spinning these theories, whether the team was playing at a 15-2 clip, or winning the East in 2000.
Ok, so any time now, someone please give me the name of a genuine number 1 goalie that played here.
Dominik Hasek. There, you're welcome.
Hey, Hasek was here almost a full year...
Still remember moving here in 2005-06 and seeing speculation about dealing for a certain Roberto Luongo... that never came to fruition.
Good points, all around. A good question too is, 15 years into the modern era of the Senators, and why is that Ray Emery is the best homegrown goalie they've come up with?
San Jose came in at the same time and it's had Nabokov and Toskala (and Miikka Kiprusoff, who they let get away). Even the Tampans had Khabibulin. Anaheim came up with J.S. Giguere, Florida had Luongo (originally an Islanders draft, IIRC) ... what is it the Sens are getting wrong with drafting and developing goalies?
Say what you will about him in retrospect, but when Lalime was putting up numbers like 2.29/.905 and 2.16/.911, there wasn't a hue and cry to mortgage everything for a goalie.
Same with Tugnutt in his 1.79/.925 season when he was named to the All-Star team.
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