Now I’ve been hearing Regin and Foligno are in the rumour mill a lot lately which is sort of sad since they are the only two young guys with talent and promise on the team currently. To me, that completely makes no sense to look at moving these guys (unless you can get much greater back in return of course ie: prospects, draft picks, young NHL ready players) as its only mortgaging your future for some success right now. And let’s face it, the Sens will be lucky to make the playoffs much less really contend this year. Hell even next year. The best bet for this team is a mini blow up or a realignment. Basically it means to get the house back in order for once. I would start by trying to move Kovalev and Leclaire at the deadline to a contender for draft picks. Kovalev can be a huge liability, but someone may want to take a chance on his ability to take over and change a game which he still has - when he wants to. For this to work you may have to take another big salary (example Gomez in Montreal with the $7.46 ml a season - not that he'll be going back to Montreal anytime soon). Sure talent wise Pascale Leclaire is a number one in the NHL. Hell he’s the best talented goalie Ottawa has ever had. But he’s simply too injury prone. He’s probably sat more games than he’s been available to start since moving to the Sens (or atleast close enough). There was a reason Columbus felt he was expendible and not just because Mason was going to be big. Number 1′s don’t grow on trees, but they shouldn’t be hurt all the time either. His $3.8 mll salary won't make it an easy sell though and like Kovalev you may need to take on a salary as well. I would consider guys who are in the last year or 2nd last year of the contract as they're easier to buy out or let walk.
If it was me, I’d probably try moving LeClaire to someone like the Flyers who will contend and need/looking for an upgrade in goal. That opens the door to bring up Robin Lehner to play with Bryan Elliot and let the two kids run the clock the rest of the season to pick up experience. Elliot would be tradable as well, but I would rather keep him more because he’s been fairly decent all things considered by stepping into the starter job when asked and performing and is very cap friendly at 850k. However, given that he's an RFA this summer, if you could get a 2nd rounder or better, I’d take it, trade a 6-8th for a veteran goalie to finish the season out and run.
Then move Lee for whatever you can get (7th round if that's all) since his stock probably won't go higher in Ottawa given the relationship with management and their relentless shopping of him. He may have a career yet in the NHL but it won't be surfacing anytime in Ottawa outside of the visitors bench. I'd also check to see if there is still interest in Alfredsson (He may still pull in a good young top 6 or top tier draft pick). Sure this is unspeakable around here to suggest moving Alfie, but this is a business folks and a 38 year old is not going to help long term or be around when the team finally gets back on track. Look for Detroit to be interested if Murray gets the balls and brains to look into it. I'd also consider Jarkkp Ruutu to be dealt. He's in the last year of a $1.3 mill contract and would be a nice addition to a contender needing a pest. He'll only grab you a 6th rounder, but that's another cookie in the jar.

Much has been said about moving Mike Fisher and I would agree that at 30, this would be selling high. Despite this, he has a no-trade clause in place and he in many ways, is the heart and guts of this team. Moving him would leave a hole too far big in this lineup and his leadership and mentoring skills could be very useful to the young guys coming in. This would be similar to the Pens post lockout when they had guys like Recchi, Palfy and LeClair who mentored the future stars of the team.

Take your cap space and this summer make some savvy Free agent pickups to help round out the team for next year. Won;t be a great season, but the objective is to get on a 3 year plan where you improve a little bit more every year.

Ultimately, the objective here folks is as follows. Spezza is said to be a top tier, number 1 centre. If that's a serious statement, then shouldn't the Sens be trying to give Spezza someone to play with? To go further, why couldn't they do a mini-rebuild of the team by restocking the farm team with prospects and making smart F/A additions to round out the roster with reasonable success? If Murray doesn’t plan to do that, then he might as well start shopping Spezza too, since he’s just wasting talent and everyone's time here. as seen above however, running the show in Ottawa would have allowed me to potentially trim several million in cap space and bring in a bunch of prospects and draft picks, not to mention putting the team in the running for a high pick in the draft lottery. As much as Sens fans won't like it, in order for a contender to be iced, this unfortunately what needs to be done.

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?