Since this is my inaugural post, I felt it made sense to bring up something that's been bothering me for awhile about the hometown Sens - Bryan Murray.
I have never seen someone make such rash desperation moves to keep their job than I have in the last 2 years of his management. It became especially apparent in the Danny Heatley debacle where clearly, someone in his front office leaked this story to the press, causing the whole to-do around here in the first place.
That said, I think this has been a sinking ship since the 07 cup run and it will only be getting worse as time moves forward. Murray has done clearly little to reverse the teams fortunes with the exception being promoting coach Cory Clouston.
Take for example how Murray has been doing everything short of literally getting down on his knees and begging his counterpart Scott Howson in Columbus to make a deal for Bryan Lee. Lee of course has done little to help raise his stock value in the last year playing very mediocre when he is in the lineup. Unfortunately for Bryan Murray is that he's the only one who hasn't yet figured out that no one wants Bryan Lee. Mr. Hoswon of course is probably still laughing after ripping off the Sens for the Vermette/Leclaire trade a couple years back where despite Leclaire's superior talent level, Columbus got the better player at the end of the day. Murray's next laughing point is his insistance to replace players that either were traded away or walked during the free agent period with overpriced veterans. Guys like Kovalev (who was signed to a $5 mill deal literally 2 months after his public benching in Montreal), Sergei Gonchar ($5 mll)who at 36 is not going to be getting any better (especially not his piss poor defence which is why the Pens took a pass on him) and even the lovable Daniel Alfredsson ($4.87 mll) who again at 38 on the 11th, is pretty much at the end of his rope. If I was in charge when he signed his last 4 year extension, I would have simply moved the guy to someone like the Red Wings (Reportedly were every interested at the time) for a couple draft picks since that was the highest his stock would have gotten, but I digress. Combined this group of 35+ makes just under $15 million or around a quarter of the overall cap hit this season. And considering that if anyone of these 3 were to retire randomly, the cap hits would continue for the duration of the contracts as they were over that magical age of 36 when they signed up. Sure that is likely not going to happen, but its a hell of a liability to have sitting around as a possible, much less than at least two of the three are arguably drastically overpaid.
That leads me into the next point in part 2 - what does Bryan do from here?
I have never seen someone make such rash desperation moves to keep their job than I have in the last 2 years of his management. It became especially apparent in the Danny Heatley debacle where clearly, someone in his front office leaked this story to the press, causing the whole to-do around here in the first place.
That said, I think this has been a sinking ship since the 07 cup run and it will only be getting worse as time moves forward. Murray has done clearly little to reverse the teams fortunes with the exception being promoting coach Cory Clouston.
Take for example how Murray has been doing everything short of literally getting down on his knees and begging his counterpart Scott Howson in Columbus to make a deal for Bryan Lee. Lee of course has done little to help raise his stock value in the last year playing very mediocre when he is in the lineup. Unfortunately for Bryan Murray is that he's the only one who hasn't yet figured out that no one wants Bryan Lee. Mr. Hoswon of course is probably still laughing after ripping off the Sens for the Vermette/Leclaire trade a couple years back where despite Leclaire's superior talent level, Columbus got the better player at the end of the day. Murray's next laughing point is his insistance to replace players that either were traded away or walked during the free agent period with overpriced veterans. Guys like Kovalev (who was signed to a $5 mill deal literally 2 months after his public benching in Montreal), Sergei Gonchar ($5 mll)who at 36 is not going to be getting any better (especially not his piss poor defence which is why the Pens took a pass on him) and even the lovable Daniel Alfredsson ($4.87 mll) who again at 38 on the 11th, is pretty much at the end of his rope. If I was in charge when he signed his last 4 year extension, I would have simply moved the guy to someone like the Red Wings (Reportedly were every interested at the time) for a couple draft picks since that was the highest his stock would have gotten, but I digress. Combined this group of 35+ makes just under $15 million or around a quarter of the overall cap hit this season. And considering that if anyone of these 3 were to retire randomly, the cap hits would continue for the duration of the contracts as they were over that magical age of 36 when they signed up. Sure that is likely not going to happen, but its a hell of a liability to have sitting around as a possible, much less than at least two of the three are arguably drastically overpaid.
That leads me into the next point in part 2 - what does Bryan do from here?
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