After Elliotte Friedman first reported on Hockey Night In Canada ofrumblings Ottawa Assistant GM Tim Murray may get get an interview for the Buffalo Sabres' vacant GM position, Bruce Garrioch confirmed today that this will indeed be happening.
Confirmed Sabres have received permission to speak to Sens AGM Tim Murray about GM job. Not sure when those talks will take place. #Sens
— Bruce Garrioch (@SunGarrioch) December 2, 2013
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
But now that the Senators have given the Sabres permission, a hiring may not happen, but we will be one step closer to seeing it come to fruition.
At the risk of getting ahead of myself, should Tim Murray leave, I can speculate or infer how this reflects on the stability of Ottawa's ownership situation, but hey, what's the worst that can happen?
It's like not anything happened the last time an Ottawa Assistant GM left the organization to take a Division rival's GM gig.
Oh, right.
Assuming Ottawa is willing to let Murray take the gig, I'm assuming that they would only let him go provided they were compensated for letting Murray out of his current deal.
There is precedent. In 1999, the Senators dealt Andreas Johansson and then-GM Rick Dudley to the Tampa Bay Lightning for Canadian Olympian Rob Zamuner and the profits from two preseason games.
Okay, so technically the NHL abolished compensation for seeing hockey ops staff leave.
From ESPN's Pierre Lebrun:
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman abolished the practice of compensation for teams losing front-office personnel in the wake of Peter Chiarelli’s controversial promotion from the assistant general manager of the Senators to GM in Boston in the spring of 2006. The two teams quarreled over the proper compensation.
Starting with the 2006-07 season, there was no longer any compensation. If you allowed someone to accept a promotion elsewhere, so be it; you got nothing in return.
Considering the volume of picks that the Sabres have accumulated via trade, perhaps there's a match to be made that sees Buffalo send some futures to the Sens and then Pierre Dorion gets promoted from his Director of Player Personnel gig to the Assistant GM position.
But then again, I'm just getting ahead of myself here. There's still the possibility that Tim Murray will remain in Ottawa.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
