Sens owner Eugene Melnyk is letting his locker room off the hook by faulting everyone except his players.
Here's a question for Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk: Could you possibly have screwed this season up even worse?
What's that? You fired your coach and replaced him with your general manager, the one you elevated from the coaching ranks after you fired the general manger who got you to the Stanley Cup final for the first time in franchise history?
What in the name of Phil Esposito were you thinking?
OK, I don't expect an answer, clearly you have more pressing items on your agenda than to find my Blackberry address, but you have to admit the entire hockey world is wondering if firing John Paddock was: A) necessary, and; B) likely to ignite change.
We'll say yes and maybe in that order.
In terms of firing Paddock, well one only needed to see the way the team was playing in recent days to make that decision. We'll put forth the usual platitudes here, yes he's a good man and yes, the mess was not entirely of his making. We'll even throw in the line about the players having to look in the mirror (something your team is quite good at actually) when they see Paddock and assistant coach Ron Low walking out the door, but we're not willing to put all the blame on those guys.
This falls on you Mr. Melnyk. You made the bad decision to fire general manager John Muckler last spring and your team hasn't been the same since.
Now since you're an owner, you might have a little trouble with that statement. After all, owners in most every business aren't used to being told they made a mistake let alone having it out there on the internet where even people who live on some remote island in the Caribbean can read it.
But you did make a mistake Eugene (you don't mind if I call you Eugene, do you Mr. Melnyk?) in fact you made several, but the biggest one was firing Muckler.
I know John Muckler, know him very well and it would be wrong for me to say he's a friend, we've butted heads too many times when we were both working in Buffalo to allow a real friendship to develop, but I can say he is a man who has my respect.
That comes from the fact that he knows hockey and he knows a few things about winning and he knows that when a team gets to the championship round and gets smoked like your team (and his team) did, the smart thing to do is to pick up the pieces, build on that smoldering pain that comes from an off-season of hurt and -- after a few adjustments -- redirect all those feelings into a cohesive effort to finish the job.
I've seen it happen with a lot of great teams, especially the Edmonton Oilers who had to be humbled by the New York Islanders before they learned how to pay the price in toil and effort and team building to truly be the best team in hockey.
You didn't let that happen, Eugene. You fired Muckler -- a huge part of all those Oiler championships -- and given that he can be stubborn and cantankerous and, at times, in your face, it's understandable to a point, but here's where you made the big mistake Eugene: in firing Muckler, you gave the players their excuse.
In listening to the siren song of your new GM and former coach Bryan Murray, you, by extension, told your team their horribly one-sided loss to the Ducks in the Stanley Cup final wasn't their fault. The statement that trickled down to a group that had always been fragile in the confidence department and almost never held accountable in the blame department is that they didn't fail, management did.
As a result, what should have been a focused and driven group of players, a collection of talent that with a few upgrades in leadership and some additional talent could grow and perhaps finally be focused into a team that could learn from its failure, build on it and achieve something that had long been anticipated but never accomplished. Didn't happen Eugene, instead your team went all soft again.
And that's the problem you created, Eugene. Teams are like kids. You have to guide them into adulthood. You didn't let that happen and as a result you don't have a team that's accountable for its actions.
Oh, you have some talent, you've had that for the better part of a decade, but there's no real team, not like one that would force goalie Ray Emery to deflate his head and get with the program or one that would hold players in the room accountable for not scoring a goal against a team it should beat playing with blindfolds on and sticks upside down.
You've got a collection of guys who really haven't won anything and don't know how and instead of listening to a guy who has won a championship -- actually, a handful of championships -- you went the way so many failed parents do. You refused to accept that your child could stumble. You refused to accept failure and the need to learn from it. Instead you fired the guy who ticked you off and that told the players they could just stay in their comfy little sand box. This was Muckler's fault. That's what you told them and that's what they easily accepted.
So now you've got nothing, Eugene. You've got a team without drive, a team without focus, a team without passion or purpose. Instead of having a goalie that was on the rise, you've got one who is on the slide. We don't absolve him of blame for most of that (nor does Muckler get a complete pass), but think how different it might have been if he had been challenged to get just that little bit better for the good of the team and even for his own still-emerging legacy. You can say that about a lot of the players on your team, Eugene. You gave them all a crutch and, like they have so many times in the past, they took it.
You blamed Muckler and that's your right, but in doing so you absolved them and you know what else Eugene? You're doing it all over again.
In firing Paddock and replacing him with Murray, you will get a boost, but you haven't really fixed anything.
You've told them what they've always known, that they aren't going to be held accountable.
The Eastern Conference is wide open Eugene and who knows, you just might make it back to the final again if Murray can change the direction of what is now his club. Good on you if you do, but know this: The West is better and when it comes to taking on a really difficult challenge, one in which the players know that if they fail it won't be their fault, which team do you think will win?
History says it won't be yours. It also says you will have only yourself to blame.
