A Couple More Thoughts on This Week’s Events

Thanks to the start of NHL free agency, there is a bevy of Senators-related information to get to, so there’s no better place to start than by looking at the Eric Condra fallout.

Condra’s departure was the culmination of three factors: player evaluation, money, and a willingness to create opportunity for the organization’s prospects.

Guess which way the story was spun the following day?

In the wake of Condra signing a three-year, $3.75 million pact with the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Senators predictably spun Condra’s departure by alluding to the opportunity it creates for its young players to compete for his roster spot. One headline in the Ottawa Sun even read, ‘Ottawa Sens making room for prospects to flourish’.

In other words, check out the shiny new toys to distract you from what amounts to a bizarre hockey ops decision.

The same Sun article piece discussed how the Senators had erred in the past, giving extensions to redundant veteran forwards who congested the bottom six forward ranks – providing minimal contributions while boxing out a number of cheaper and more efficient young players. The example within outlined how David Legwand essentially blocked Jean-Gabriel Pageau out of a full-time role at the beginning of the 2014-15 season.

As I wrote about on July 1^st, the concern I have regarding Condra’s departure is that unlike some of the other veterans who project to fill bottom six/depth roles for the Senators, Condra’s actually a unique puck possession driver and valuable contributor to the Senators’ bottom six and penalty killing units.

Speaking on TSN 1200 yesterday, Condra talked about how the contract negotiations unfolded.

“It was actually probably after the July 1^st 12 o’clock timeline hit. The whole time, I kept telling Steve (Bartlett), my agent, that ‘Call Ottawa and see if they’d come up,’ and I thought at the end of the year, I would be back in a Senators, but you know what? Things didn’t work out that way.”

When asked whether that meant that he told his agent explicitly to go back and ask Ottawa to match anything that he could fetch on the market, Condra responded by saying, “Yes. Definitely.”

In other words, the Senators made a conscious choice to walk away from a modest contract. That’s on them. Regardless of whether it’s an evaluative strike against Condra or a realization that they simply cannot shed players like Chris Neil, Zack Smith, Colin Greening or even an Alex Chiasson easily, that’s on them. They put themselves in a position to lose Erik Condra at the expense of other bottom six players who should have been shown the door.

I’ve received some crack back on social media for belabouring the Condra point and in a broad sense, it should be relatively easy to replace a bottom six forward. Thanks to his possession-driving skills however, Condra’s a different breed than the rest of the veteran forwards that will comprise the bulk of the bottom six and more importantly, Condra’s absence raises concern for whether Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Curtis Lazar could be less efficient.

Here is a look at Pageau and Lazar’s ‘With or Without You’ numbers relative playing with Erik Condra:

As great as it is for the Senators to recognize and acknowledge their mistakes, justifying the decision to walk away from Condra because of these experiences is frustrating because while the GM is trying to placate the fan base by waxing poetic about the prospects coming up through the ranks, these same prospects are still largely boxed out of roles by the acquiring an Alex Chiasson as a throw-in in the Spezza trade or by being unable (or unwilling) the “gritty veterans” like Chris Neil, Zack Smith or Colin Greening.

But here’s management talking about their prospects anyway:

“I shouldn’t say this but (Paul) might be ready to play within the first couple of months of the year,” said Murray. “He looks like that kind of player that you send him to the minors, let him play some pro games down there and by the second half you’ll be saying ‘why isn’t he on our team?’

“There’s a few guys like that I see out there. Buddy Robinson, it looks like he’s made great strides, Colin White … I don’t know why he can’t play on our team right now. He looked like a really good player this morning.”

Mix in a Shane Prince or a Matt Puempel and there’s enough there to get the hearts of the prospect porn indulging fans puemping.

To management’s credit, the idea of creating opportunity for prospects will always resonate with fans because these players haven’t reached their projected ceiling. Fans love to dream on unfulfilled upside and there’s nothing wrong with that.

The thing is, it’s the time of year where there’s inevitably going to be a lot of tire pumping for the prospects. It’s just part of the cyclical nature of the sports season where the negativity and uncertainty is replaced during the summer by renewed optimism and hope for the future. (Well, unless you’re a Bruins fan.)

If the organization doesn’t go a couple of steps further to clear out some deadweight, barring an injury or two, there simply will be limited opportunities for these players to play at the parent level. And if there’s no opportunity to play at the parent level, I’d rather see a more useful player like Erik Condra boxing them out than some of the other bottom six veterans that the organization may keep around.

Andre Tourigny Announced as New Assistant Coach

It has been rumoured for weeks now, but this morning the Senators officially announced the hiring of Andre Tourigny as their new assistant coach. Tourigny held the same position with the Colorado Avalanche for the last two seasons before resigning from Patrick Roy’s staff at the conclusion of the 2014-15 season.

Tourigny has some history coaching alongside Dave Cameron. The two developed a rapport while working together on the 2010 and 2011 Canadian world junior teams.

Touching upon the Tourigny announcement via Twitter, Don Brennan confirmed that the Senators have also signed Luke Richardson to a one-year extension as the head coach in Binghamton.

Other News and Notes:

– The Senators re-signed RFA Cole Schneider to a two-way, one-year deal worth an NHL salary of $700,000 and an AHL salary of $100,000.

– Ken Warren had a nice little write up on Nick Paul in the Citizen his interest in pushing mental health awareness.

– Robin Lehner spoke with Buffalo journalist Mike Vogl about relishing the opportunity to get the starter’s job in Buffalo. Tim Murray had some interesting comments regarding Ottawa’s goaltending situation:

“I just go back and look at almost every single situation where there were two No. 1s, it never works,” Murray said. “There was always an unhappy player. It filters through your team.

“Robin needed a change of scenery.”