Nichols goes over the unintended comedy of Pierre Dorion saying he has carte blanche to hire the best coach available with Eugene Melnyk immediately walking the comment back including this canard:
To put that kind of money out for one single person, that’s tough, even from a management point of view. You wouldn’t do that with an executive, why go crazy in the business of hockey to do that?
This is so absurd not even Melnyk believes it–an executive often does make absurd amounts of money in business (Melnyk seems to embrace Donald Trump’s emphasis on verbal diarrhea). The point is less about the specific comment and more about Melnyk’s refusal to spend money on his hockey operations (season tickets available folks!), so with Dorion’s hands tied it’s hard to imagine a top coach with a brain wanting to handcuff themselves into Ottawa’s situation. My guess is Dorion will roll the dice with an assistant coach (ala Paul MacLean). Incidentally, I never went into how much of a slap in the face it was to Luke Richardson to tell him he won’t even be considered for Ottawa’s head coach position–while it’s the right decision, often teams will at least formally go through the motions with their AHL coach when a change is being made–not so here, which is a welcome acknowledgement of how bad Richardson was in Binghamton.
Speaking of Nichols, it’s interesting to see someone as disinterested in prospects as he is noticing the Sens going big (as in size) since Tim Murray left. I agree with him wholeheartedly that skill is what should matter. One interesting thing Pierre Dorion said (via the same link):
did the guy that we had slotted 10 and he wasn’t in our top-12, well, why did he go there? And did the guy that went 14, he wasn’t in our top-10 and should we have had him there? And why is that? As staffs, we sit back and always reflect on, ‘Why didn’t we like this guy that’s turned out to be a player?’ or, ‘Why did we like this guy who hasn’t turned out to be a player?’ So it’s something that we do as an exercise quite often
This is excellent to hear, but I’ve seen no evidence that the Sens have shifted their drafting philosophy due to such exercises. There is an almost mindnumbing sameness to their drafts from 2008-2015 (with minor variations when Tim Murray was around). Dorian also mentions that they had Cody Ceci in the top-5 or 6 of the 2012 draft and it’s difficult to make sense of that in retrospect (for those who remember my 2012 draft preview no scouting service had Ceci any higher than 10th).
Worsteverything has a four-part series on the Sens, but what I wanted to address are his comments on Luke Richardson (which echo those around the blogosphere, as I went over previously):
Luke Richardson is an awesome and inspirational person who has been through unimaginable stuff. My respect for him and his family almost makes writing stuff like this objectively quite challenging … Luke seems like a positive guy and a very good communicator from what I can gather from interviews … I hate that the organization loses such a quality person but ultimately I support both a full coaching changeover as well as giving Richardson his best chance to advance his career
I really wish bloggers who are unfamiliar with something would leave it alone (or, at least, not try to assess it). Richardson seems like a good communicator from interviews? Wat? It’s the written equivalent of throwing up your hands and saying “I haven’t a clue!”–so why bother? I’m not sure what purpose is being served here, but I suppose at the least I can repeat: he’s a bad coach (as is clear from the statistical evidence available to everyone or by hitting up Google to find an assessment), but his charity work and personal tragedy seems to overwhelm anyone’s efforts to assess him as a professional.
DJ Powers wrote a piece about Ottawa prospect Christian Wolanin–it’s a basic Q&A, although it does cover who his primary defensive partners were this season (Tucker Poolman and Keaton Thompson–both drafted players and both with better numbers than the rookie, albeit not overwhelmingly so).
Chapin Landvogt puts Marcus Hogberg at the top of drafted goaltending talent in Sweden, although there’s not a ton of substance to this, but he does say:
Taking these decent, yet not entirely uncommon, SHL numbers into account, one must note that he manned the nets behind a defensive group that featured three regulars aged 19 or younger
And then wonders if he’d be better off with another season in Sweden. The Sens would have to sign him first for that to be a question (they lose his rights this year if they don’t), but currently there’s no place for him anywhere else, so that seems entirely probable.
My psychic powers paid off as Michael Keranen signed with Jokerit as fast as humanly possible (not, incidentally, his previous Liiga team–he was with Ilves when Minnesota signed him).
More FA signings: Sergei Zaitsev (aka Sergei Zaytsev; Toronto), Lukas Bengtsson (Pittsburgh), Linus Hultstrom (Florida), Michael Garteig (Vancouver), and Daniel Pribyl (former Montreal pick; Calgary).
This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)
2 Comments
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
eyeonthesens 
[…] Senators News & Notes […]
[…] comments is to pretend his options are open (the same reason, I believe, he was talking about being able to spend money last year). While the Sens might sign established Russian NHLers as free agents, there is no […]