Pardon me for laughing out loud, but if Bryan Murray made the mess in Ottawa, why is Cory Clouston standing behind the bench?
Here's a joke: Guy walks into a bar … Sorry, I mean a general manager walks into his office in February 2008 and invites his coach to sit down. He tells him the team is underperforming and that it's not responding to the coach's directives and, for the betterment of the team and to move the team forward, he regrettably is firing the coach and replacing him with himself.
Punch line: Oddly funny to everyone except John Paddock (nobody thought coaching was the problem).
Here's the joke again: Guy walks into a bar … Sorry, I mean the same general manger walks into his office in February 2009 and invites his coach to sit down. He tells him the team is underperforming and that it's not responding to the coach's directives and for the betterment of the team and to move the team forward he's firing the coach and replacing him not with himself, but with a guy who has never coached a single game in the National Hockey League.
Punch line: Hilarious to everyone except Craig Hartsburg (few outside Ottawa thought coaching was the problem).
Memo to new Ottawa coach Cory Clouston: Assuming you keep the job into next season, avoid GM Bryan Murray's office in February. History has a way of repeating itself in Ottawa and you wouldn't want to be the butt of what is becoming the joke of the month club in the Nation's Capital.
I get the fact that Senators management had to do something after owner Eugene Melnyk started issuing ultimatums and warning to certain media members that they ought to go, "Blow themselves up." Things were nudging toward the unstable side of what had already become a dysfunctional franchise.
But this borders on the ridiculous, the superbly bizarre edge of ridiculous.
I also get, as colleague Mike Brophy pointed out elsewhere on this site, that this is a regular occurrence with the Senators having put a revolving door on the coach's office ever since Jacques Martin was spun out of it. And I get the fact that Clouston is an up-and-comer who probably deserves a shot in the NHL at some point in his career, so now might be as good a time as any (given that the Senators have clearly backtracked on the Melnyk prophecy that we will all be on the wrong side of history when this team makes that playoffs).
That's not going to happen; and assuming Melnyk is not hunkered down in a homemade shelter somewhere he might have to admit it.
I even understand why Murray didn't turn to one of the currently-unemployed-but-superbly-credentialed veteran coaches like John Tortorella, Pat Quinn, Bob Hartley or Doug MacLean to jump start his team. Why pay big money for a big name when you're already paying as many coaches not to coach as you are goaltenders not to tend goal?
But what I don't understand is why Murray, the architect of the current situation, didn't offer to go behind the bench and fix a mess largely of his making. And what I truly don't understand is why Melnyk didn't demand that he do so.
Murray's nephew and Senators assistant general manager Tim Murray told me on Monday during PrimeTime Sports that his uncle was probably a little too old for that kind of work right now. It didn't make a lot of sense given that Murray replaced Paddock with himself before stepping aside for Hartsburg, and he wasn't that much older then even if he's not any younger now.
But even with apologies to Bob Dylan if that were the reason it wouldn't have to be for the long term.
We're talking about 34 games here and if the organization is serious about restocking and developing players on the farm, one could make a strong case for having Clouston stay in Binghamton. There not only would he avoid a circus and a move that looks very much like a GM sidestepping a disaster, but he might even do the organization some good.
Clearly he wasn't that lucky.
Looking over a gauntlet that spans five coaches in three years, one could argue that coaching isn't the problem in Ottawa. That is, as the lawyers like to say, facts already in evidence.
The problem is talent, or lack of same. There may be other issues like dissention, finger pointing, frustration, other-worldly demands from ownership and the usual assortment of ills that come when high expectations meet abject failure. But the No. 1 problem with the Ottawa Senators is they aren't good enough to win on a regular basis.
That makes Clouston's task, whatever it might be, nearly impossible. More experienced men that came before him haven't been able to make that happen.
If they want him to "change the culture" in the locker room -- something that was at least hinted at in explaining the Hartsburg firing -- well how is that supposed to happen? Hartsburg couldn't do it in the 48 games he got and one could argue a part of the reason was that in Ottawa, people always blame the coach and the players get a pass. It's hard to imagine that firing another coach and replacing him with one that has zero NHL experience is going to make the players think they have to change their ways.
In truth, the only one from inside the organization who might effect change would be the general manager.
One could argue that Murray had his chance to do that last season and failed; but that's letting him off easy. This was a team that was supposed to return to the Cup final and finish the job. Murray was the man with the plan and that was the only thing that mattered.
That dream is over. For what remains of this season, there need only be a general accounting to the general manager; a period where players need only to show that they have a contribution to make and that they want to remain a part of whatever rebuilding needs to go on in Ottawa.
There is no better way for a general manager to observe that than to do if first hand, day-to-day, behind the bench and in the locker room. It wouldn't take long, about 34 games at best.
Clearly, Murray didn't want the job.
That says a lot about the state of the Ottawa Senators today. Even if you don't subscribe to the theory that this is not a mess entirely of Murray's making if you're an owner, you have to at least have the courage to say that your hand-picked general manager needs to fix it. The directive should have been that the best place to start would be behind the bench.
Clearly Melnyk didn't want to do that.
You can come up with your own reasons why. My take is that as long as Melnyk clings to the idea that coaching is the issue, he doesn't have to deal with the fact that he fired John Muckler -- a GM who got his team to the Stanley Cup final in 2007-- and replaced him with one who has reduced his team to a shell of its former self (not a bombshell mind you, more like the kind wrapped around a cannoli).
And as long as Murray isn't behind the bench, he is free from having to answer nightly for every loss that has come Ottawa's way and for all the losses still to come.
Instead, that falls to Clouston, a man who, one might argue, was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
In announcing the firing of Hartsburg, Murray said: "It definitely is on my shoulders. Everything that happens here I take full responsibility for - and I should."
Pardon me for laughing out loud, but if that's true, why is Clouston standing behind the bench?
Could it be because in the end, the joke is once again going to be on a coach?
If that's true -and history points that way-it isn't very funny.
Frankly, it's all rather sad.
