Sportnet‘s Elliotte Friedman (and boy does it still feel weird to write that) published his latest ’30 Thoughts’ article and for the benefit of hockey fans in the nation’s capital, there were four thoughts pertaining to the Ottawa Senators.
Shockingly, all of them had to do with the situations involving the uncertain futures of Marc Methot and Bobby Ryan.
So let’s just jump right into things.
7. Asked a few other executives what they thought about Bobby Ryan’s decision to wait before committing further to the Senators. Response: several variations of, “That’s a bad spot for Ottawa.”
No kidding that’s a bad spot for Ottawa, but not let’s not pretend that the organization did not play a role in that. Management and ownership knew full well when it acquired Bobby Ryan that it had two seasons (or maybe depending on whether or not they felt that they had to move him before the 2014/15 season) to get him acclimatized to playing in Ottawa and like it enough to want to commit to a long-term extension.
It never helped that Ryan’s first season was marred by a sports hernia injury that limited him on the ice or that because of the CBA, the Senators could enter formal negotiations with Bobby Ryan until there was one season left on his deal – otherwise known first day of unrestricted free agency.
Due to this restriction and Ottawa’s willingness to work out a deal for Ryan, the trade market dried up as teams complemented their rosters with free agents and through trades. Meaning, even though Ottawa’s prepared to enter the regular season without an extension in place for Ryan, even if they felt compelled to move Ryan now, the trade market has shrunk.
It’s a point that Friedman notes in his tenth thought.
10. The tough thing for the Senators is there “isn’t much money in the system right now,” as one capologist said. Teams are tight to the cap and/or their budget, so it’s harder to make deals.
As more time passes and teams become less happy with the state of their rosters, maybe their interest in Ryan grows and they begin to express interest in making a move for Ryan, but there’s also this duality to Ryan’s situation in that the longer Ryan goes without signing a deal, the likelihood of teams perceiving Ryan as a rental player for the remainder of the season increases. Looking at the putrid prices paid by teams at last year’s trade deadline, maybe teams have finally wizened up to the cost/benefit analysis of overpaying to acquire players at the trade deadline.
With all these considerations in mind, you can’t really blame the organization for entering the season with Bobby Ryan unsigned. They could still hold out hope that Ryan could re-sign or even if they wanted to move him, the likelihood of them maximizing value now is remote.
Now with that being said, the Senators have to be honest with themselves and the possibility that Ryan simply won’t pass up the opportunity to test unrestricted free agency, no matter what his role is and how he’s utilized by Paul MacLean.
8. It’s critical for organizations to be honest with themselves in these moments. That can be very difficult, because you’re excited about a new season, the moves you’ve made, the optimism that comes at this time of year. But you have to ask yourself some honest, hard questions. The first is: Why do we think he’s hesitant now and can that really be repaired in enough time to get a new deal done? If the answer is no, then you’ve got to ask when the player’s trade value is highest.
Ottawa’s in a holding pattern with Bobby Ryan and to be fair, there have been situations in the past — like the ones in Toronto involving Dion Phaneuf and Phil Kessel that Pierre Dorion alluded to — in which significant players signed extensions during the course of the regular season, but you have to wonder how far or how long Senators management will be willing to let this situation play out.
In the past, current management has shown a resistance to trade impending UFAs when the club is competitive and flirting with a playoff position. Even in instances when the organization probably should have cashed in on veteran defencemen like Anton Volchenkov and Filip Kuba, they didn’t. Hell, even with last season’s improbable playoff odds, management went for it by acquiring Ales Hemsky.
If the Senators continue to stay in the playoff hunt, I just don’t know how realistic management, sorry ownership, will be with their current predicament. Given everything that Ryan and the Ottawa Senators have said publicly, it sounds like the Sens have entered the friend zone with Bobby Ryan.
Senators: “Listen Bobby, we really like you and we’d love to take this relationship to the next step.”
Ryan: “Ohhhhh, you’re really cool and all, but I just don’t know. I mean, I still like you and stuff, but I just don’t know if I’m ready for that kind of commitment right now.”
As @Senturion joked on Twitter, maybe it’s okay to be friends with benefits. Certainly not. Who wouldn’t want to see the Sens go all the way and win the Cup with Bobby Ryan (with or without contract) this season?
Nobody would have any problem with that, but in this case, I think fans are a little more realistic about the business side of sports – especially since the Senators have lost their last two captains in consecutive offseasons.
9. That said, the Senators’ brief public spat with Marc Methot shows they are being realistic. There’s frustration because he wants to stay and they want to keep him, but there’s always a limit to how much guys are willing to leave on the table, even for a hometown discount. Methot is like Ryan. You can’t let him go for nothing, and other clubs took it as a sign that if Ottawa can’t get this done, they will deal him, as a defenceman is likely to be moved from that roster.
Are the Senators being realistic?
Here’s a hometown player who really wants to stay and has allegedly already come off his $5.5 million per season request. On the other hand, the Senators are vehemently against coming up from their reported $4.5 million per season offer – a raise of $750,000 from what Methot made in real dollars last season.
Just a reminder, this is the same Senators team that willingly gave Chris Phillips an inexplicable $2.5 million, two-year deal to keep the veteran defenceman in the fold – despite the presence of younger, cheaper, better (?) left-handed shooting defencemen on the roster and in Binghamton. From a payroll allocation standpoint, it doesn’t makee sense for a small budget team that praises its own fiscal responsibility to operate this way only to play hardball with a better and more talented option in Marc Methot.
It’s nonsensical.
Interestingly, Friedman believes that the Senators, who already have eight defencemen on one-way contracts, will move Methot to correct this log jam. It’s difficult to believe that the same front office that congratulates itself on a regular basis for spending smartly would make its defensive corps worse by trading arguably its second or third best defenceman because of an insurmountable financial cost of a few hundred thousand dollars per season when this same management/ownership group was too worried about the public backlash from the fans had they walked away from Chris Phillips at last year’s trade deadline or in free agency.
Lebrun Discusses Bobby Ryan’s Situation
Like many of the other hockey experts, ESPN’s Pierre Lebrun made an appearance on TSN 1200 yesterday and commented on Bobby Ryan’s unwillingness to enter into contract negotiations before the start of the season.
Via Chris Nichols, here is what was said by Lebrun:
“In the case of Bobby Ryan, and I know it got reported different ways last week, but I think it’s a lot of different ways that is underlining the truth, which is this: I think that the Senators are willing to do a long-term deal with them and I think the response from Newport, at this point, was it’s not so much they rejected it, it’s that they just, I don’t think, ready to have that serious discussion yet.
“Now, does that raise a red flag? Maybe, down the road, as this continues throughout the season. But it also may just mean that hey, maybe Bobby wants to see how he does first couple months of the year. How the team does, life after Jason Spezza, you know, before making that kind of decision. And frankly, probably don’t blame him.”
Prior to the start of Monday night’s split squad game against the New York Islanders, Bob McKenzie tried to quell any concerns by downplaying the significance of entering the season without Bobby Ryan under contract since there is what he perceives to be enough time for the Senators and Bobby Ryan to come to terms on agreement.
While completely fair to point out that there’s plenty of time left between now and the end of the season, I don’t ever think it’s too early to point out the risks associated with the player’s situation.
As much faith as I have in the assumption that Ryan is being completely truthful when he says that he’s willing to negotiate in good faith with the Senators once the season is under way and he can properly evaluate his role and how comfortable he is with the organization at that time and with an eye at the future, I also recognize the possibility of Ryan hitting unrestricted free agency regardless of his role is also very much in cards.
I certainly don’t encourage the Chicken Little mentality because there’s still plenty of time for things to work out — whether that’s via a trade or by re-signing their impending UFAs — but the red flags with Ryan’s situation were as present then as they are now and I personally don’t see the harm in acknowledging that they exist.
Other News and Notes
– The Senators have released their 25-man rosters for tonight’s split squad exhibition game versus the Toronto Maple Leafs. Interestingly, Bobby Ryan is back in the fold and Mark Stone, a player who’s had some measure of success filling in on Ryan’s line with Clarke MacArthur and Kyle Turris, will be playing in the other game.
Here are the breakdown of the lines courtesy of @TSNSteveLloyd:
Senators Lineup in Ottawa:
MacArthur-Turris-Ryan
Greening-Legwand-Neil
Puempel-Lazar-Robinson
Guptill-Grant-Mills
Methot-Karlsson
Borowiecki-Gryba
Claesson-Mullen
Anderson/Driedger
Senators Lineup in Toronto:
Michalek-Zibanejad-Chiasson
Hoffman-Smith-Stone
Dziurzynski-Dzingel-Condra
Kramer-Pageau-Prince
Cowen-Ceci
Wiercioch-Grant
Phillips-Johnson
Lehner/Hammond
– The Senators returned Nick Paul (North Bay), Ben Harpur (Guelph) and Matt Murphy (Halifax) back to their respective junior teams.
– Conspicuously absent from the Senators’ mural that adorns the glass on gate one is Senators defenceman Marc Methot. Methot, who was included on the same artwork that adorned the Senators’ season ticket package box, had his image removed from the same photo. The Senators’ Chris Lund did point out that Methot’s photo graces the side of the building and that there is also a “large poster of him on the walkway across from the main gate.” So maybe his exclusion from the main photo has nothing to do with the organization’s stalled contract negotiations…
– Buried at the bottom of a Don Brennan article that states David Dziurzynski is a better Matt Kassian (note: Dziurzynski is a much better hockey player, but it was the ass kicking that Dziurzynski received from Frazer McLaren that prompted the Senators to move future assets for a “heavyweight” fighter) is a nugget of information pertaining to the Methot negotions. According to Brennan, “all is quiet on the Marc Methot front, as negotiations between the team and the veteran defenceman remain at a standstill.”
– Apparently the Florida Panthers are borrowing a page from the Senators’ box office and will stop giving away free tickets for their games. The end result are expectations of even lower attendance figures than they have had in the past – which makes Ottawa’s game against them on Monday night even more intriguing. Will there be more players on the benches than fans in the stands? Stay tuned.
– Nothing’s really changing on this front, but I suppose it’s worth mentioning since Curtis Lazar is in a similar position. Arizona Coyotes general manager Don Maloney openly complained to ESPN‘s Pierre Lebrun about junior eligibility in regards to Max Domi. Under the current NHL CBA, teams are required to send junior eligible players back to their respective junior teams. In situations like Lazar’s and Domi’s where players have already played three junior and have little left to prove at the junior level, Maloney is proposing that such players should be eligible for play in the AHL. Interestingly, Bill Daly told Lebrun that the idea has not warranted enough support from the league’s GMs to merit further consideration.
– The Ottawa Senators have changed their smoking and bag policies:
As of this evening, guests will be able leave and re-enter the venue at Gate 1 until the drop of the puck at the start the third period. Following that time, any patrons who leave the arena will not be permitted to return to their seats. Those already outside smoking at Gate 1 as of the drop of the puck will be allowed back inside the building.
This is in addition to the current policy whereby fans are able to scan out of the building to smoke starting with puck drop in the first period. Between puck drop in period one and the puck drop of the third period, fans have the opportunity to visit the smoking area at their convenience.
Effective Sept. 24, any bags sized 12 inches x 6 inches x 12 inches or smaller will be permitted into the arena – anything larger will not be allowed. Patterned after the successful implementation of a similar policy in the National Football League, this allows for all bags in the arena to be placed safely underneath arena seating.
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