The Ottawa Senators will have a new general manager in place before the start of the 2016-17 season.
It is big, but not really surprising news given Bryan Murray’s well-publicized battle with stage-four colon cancer. The 72-year old Murray admitted to the CBC’s Hallie Cotnam that this upcoming season will be his ninth and final season as the general manager of the Ottawa Senators.
It is truly the end of an era.
Regardless of how you feel about Murray as a general manager, it’s essentially impossible to dislike him as a person. Thanks to his candour and storytelling abilities, mixed in with some dry wit, Murray’s an incredibly likeable guy. The fact that he’s also a local product from Shawville just adds to his aura.
Looking at Murray’s record as a general manager on paper, it is weird to think that the manager responsible for overseeing this organization still holds onto his job despite missing the playoffs (three times) or losing in the first round (four times) in seven of his eight seasons.
Of course, when you’re just examining outcomes, the numbers are completely stripped of context.
When John Muckler was fired at the conclusion of the 2006-07 season, the Senators’ farm system was in disarray. Years of amateur scouting neglect and some deplorable trades fostered a situation in which Muckler single-handedly mortgaged the future and inadvertently closed Ottawa’s window of contention with it.
Murray may have help saddle Ottawa’s top heavy lineup with significant contracts, but with the owner and the fans raising their own expectations, there was little that could be done in quick amount of time to restock the farm system. Preserving a competitive lineup was all that really mattered.
In the years that followed, the scouting staffs were revamped. Better draft selections were made. Bad trades were also made, but they were interspersed with some good ones as well.
When Murray took over, the Senators quickly became a bubble team and all these years later, they can still be categorized as a playoff bubble team today.
Even though Murray has struggled to assemble a cast of players that can take the next step, I still find it incredibly hard to evaluate Murray’s body of work given the circumstances that he works under.
Operating under a constricting budget would be difficult for anyone. Doing that while adhering to the whims and pressures placed upon him by ownership makes his job that much harder.
Now as he enters his last offseason as the general manager, ‘restraint’ is going to be a recurring theme for the Senators. With limited financial resources available to him, internal budget restraints are going to influence what Murray can do. And with Murray acknowledging that this will be his last year as the general manager, will he be more inclined to aggressively put the organization’s short-term interests ahead of its future interests?
Maybe he won’t.
As Bruce Garrioch indicated, Murray will still have two years remaining on his contract at the conclusion of the 2015-16 season. Murray will transition into an advisory role for those final two years. The list of frontrunners for Murray’s job begins his two current assistant general managers Pierre Dorion and Randy Lee. Whether they also represent the end of the list remains to be seen, but since both AGMs will be around for the foreseeable future, hopefully their input and vested interest in future iterations of the Senators will factor in on what the organization elects to do.
Other News and Notes:
– Bryan Murray made an appearance on CFRA with Mark Sutcliffe. Much of the interview focused on the contributions and lives that Murray has saved through his willingness to come forward with his cancer diagnosis, but a few hockey-related questions arose at the end of the interview. The whole thing is a good listen, so give it a listen.
– Bruce Garrioch penned an article detailing how one of Lehner or Anderson will be traded. Like many other hockey experts, the general consensus seems to be that Lehner will be the one to go.
– Elliotte Friedman published his latest ’30 Thoughts’ column. Although it’s not directly related to the Senators, I took interest in one passage that identified teams like Colorado and San Jose as ones that are looking for defencemen. Considering the Senators have been linked to the Sharks in talks involving one of Ottawa’s goaltenders, maybe there’s an opportunity to explore a package that sends Jared Cowen there as well.
– Today is Erik Karlsson’s birthday.
– Tonight marks the conclusion of the Memorial Cup. Senators prospect Tobias Lindberg’s Oshawa Generals take on the Kelowna Rockets at 7:00 pm on Sportsnet.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
