Trevor Shackles asks the obvious question of whether or not Bryan Murray should remain GM of the Sens. I think he’s far kinder to Murray than I would be at this stage, with it becoming clear Murray is unable to identify talent–either externally or internally. I think Trevor and I are essentially on the same page, but just to make my point, here are some decisions by Murray over his tenure:
-signed Luke Richardson as a FA (yes kids, as a player)
-signed Randy Robitaille to provide scoring depth (he was back in Europe the following season)
-hired John Paddock (fired that year and has regressed to a WHL coach)
-traded a 6th (Ben Smith) for Martin Lapointe (he retired when the season ended)
-signed Jesse Winchester (advertised as an offensive talent–here are his numbers as a Senator: 233 games, 11 goals, 41 assists)
-re-signed Shean Donovan
-signed Jason Smith (he retired mid-contract)
–re-signed Luke Richardson who retired after two games
-hired Craig Hartsburg (fired during the season with no subsequent head coaching jobs above the WHL)
-traded Dean McAmmond and a 1st round pick (Kyle Palmieri) for Mike Comrie and Chris Campoli–the former was awful and the latter was booed out of town two seasons later)
-traded for Pascal Leclaire
-signed Alexei Kovalev as a FA
-signed Matt Carkner to a two-year, one-way deal
-signed Bobby Butler as a scorer
-traded a 2nd round pick (Kent Simpson) for Andy Sutton
-give up the chance to draft Vladimir Tarasenko to acquire David Rundblad
-re-signed Jesse Winchester
-re-signed Bobby Butler
-traded a 3rd round pick (T. J. Tynan) for Nikita Filatov
-brought back Alex Auld
-signed Mike Lundin
-gave Jim O’Brien a one-way deal (two years!)
-traded a 6th round pick (Pontus Sjalin) for Matt Kassian (!)
-traded Ben Bishop for Cory Conacher and the pick that became Tobias Lindberg
-brought back Joe Corvo (!)
-signed David Legwand (for two years)
-etc, etc, etc
He also waived Mike Hoffman through the league, was going to trade Patrick Wiercioch for a 3rd round pick, and on and on (Francis Lessard played NHL games under his watch). It’s clear that if it weren’t for the scouts and Tim Murray in particular the team would be starving for talent and loaded up with broken down, ineffective veterans. Obviously there have been successes, but the above (going back to an era without an internal budget) illustrates an inability to properly assess talent.
The Sens prospect update is a little funny in that Tim Boyle is included despite the organisation cutting ties with him over the summer (amusingly, he couldn’t maintain a roster spot in the ECHL and is plugging away in the SPHL). The main takeaways from the report: all the prospects in the QMJHL are doing well (Tomas Chabot, Francis Perron, Filip Chlapik), the non-goaltending Swedes are not (Filip Ahl, Christian Jaros, Andreas Englund), and the collegiate players are a mixed bag (Colin White and Christian Wolanin are the standouts). Marcus Hogberg has a poor save percentage (.896), but is winning a lot (7-2-1). The org must be high on Englund–no points, but leading the team in hits….
Evansville lost the re-match to Wheeling 4-2 on Sunday; former AHLer Matt Hussey was either scratched or injured (I couldn’t determine which, but the former wouldn’t surprise me as one assist in eight games and a minus eight is no return on the investment). A look at the goals (Bengtsberg had to leave the game early in the second due to injury; Asmundsen came in and earned the loss):
1. Moon takes a dumb penalty and on the PP Torquato bangs in a rebound
2. Just a minute after Asmundsen got into the net he’s beaten on a nice three-way passing play as Rutkowski lost his check leaving Krause wide open
3. Dunn scores from the dot as he was left wide open
4. Just 21-seconds later Strandberg floats a puck from just inside the blueline through a crowd in front
5. Asmundsen is beaten on a wrister through a screen five-hole
6. Lazy backcheck by Moon leaves Burton wide open who makes a nice pass for Brace‘s second goal of the game
A pretty consistent theme for Evansville where their veterans are guilty of selfish play–most of those players are the fault of the Evansville braintrust, but Leveille is the Sens fault. Other book keeping: veteran Lukin has been out due to injury, as has rookie Zay (the former in practice the latter in game play). Scott Greenham‘s injury is described as day-to-day, but we’re at the two week mark at this point (the BSens have recalled him, but there’s been no indication if he can play yet or not).
This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)
1 Comment
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
eyeonthesens 
[…] at least he’s better than John Muckler. I agree with the general thrust of his opinion (cf here), including Murray’s continuing crutch of blaming his coaches when things go wrong. Where I […]