Last night I received an interesting tweet from a reader who happened to listen to Elliotte Friedman’s interview on the Fan 960.
@6thSens http://t.co/2eNQpHKjjz from 4:25 to 9:20 Friedman hits on a lot of Sens issues…not a lot of positivity there.
— LeDoweski (@C_LeDoweski) September 20, 2014
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Given the very public spat between Marc Methot, his agent and the organization over the past week as the negotiations became very ugly and the lingering uncertainty hanging over his status and that of fellow 2015 impending UFA Bobby Ryan, you could understand why the Senators would be an easy topic to cover for an NHL insider like Elliotte Friedman.
Although Friedman did spend the bulk of this segment discussing Bobby Ryan’s reasoning for dragging out the process and wanting to wait before committing to the Senators, I was not prepared to hear his comments regarding the Senators’ ownership situation.
As LeDoweski mentions in his tweet, the Senators portion of the interview lasted for five minutes, but it’s a meaty five minutes. I highly recommend listening to the interview — which you can do by clicking on this link or by streaming the embedded audio at the bottom of this post.
I’ve transcribed the interview, which essentially amounts to two pretty long answers to questions posed by the interviewer, so to make things read a little bit easier, I’m just going to interject and thrown in my own thoughts (which will be in bold).
Let’s get to it…
On how he sees the situation involving Bobby Ryan’s unfolding since it’s a potential lame duck situation…
“Well I went around yesterday and I asked a few (management types) from other teams, ‘Like, if you were negotiating with that player and you got that response, what would you think?’ and the overwhelming response that I got was, ‘He doesn’t want to stay.’ I will have to tell you that the $49 million (over seven year) figure is incredibly in dispute. What I do believe is that he was given multiple options on term – with the highest being seven years. If you read the story written by Don Brennan, Don Brennan doesn’t come out and say, ‘I believe he was offered $49 million’. He says that there were rumours he was offered $49 million. I’ve searched for (the source) and I can’t find a single source that actively says he was offered $49 million. The principals involved that I’ve spoken to say no, so I can’t find any proof that that $49 million number is accurate.”
When Brennan mentioned those terms, that was the first I had ever seen a figure attached to Ryan’s name and unlike Friedman (who probably talked to league sources), I did a cursory scan through the interwebs to see if there was another article or blog post out there that was fuelling these rumours. I couldn’t find anything besides Brennan’s piece, but I think it’s easy to assume that when it comes to projecting the kind of numbers that it will take to keep Ryan in the fold, seven years at $49M+ seems to be the consensus on what it will take to get it done.
Ryan even let the likelihood of a seven-year term slip during his availability with the media at the opening of camp stating, “If you’re going to hitch your wagon to a team for seven years, it’s okay to take some time to decide if it’s what you want to do or not.”
In keeping that in mind, for Ryan to turn down that kind of guaranteed money now, especially when he’s coming off a season in which his production suffered from an untimely sports hernia injury, it doesn’t resonate well. Making matters worse, Bryan Murray came out and said that part of the reason for Bobby Ryan wanting to wait things out was because he was unhappy with his role and usage last season and wanted to see how they would evolve this season before recommitting himself to this organization.
Ryan said any perceived unhappiness about his role or ice time last season was not true.
“Well, I’ve never said that (he was unhappy with his ice time), everybody speculated that and I understand you guys are doing a job. My role, I think, is going to have to take a step forward in the leadership department and become a guy who’s counted on night in and night out to provide offence for the team. As much as that was my role last year, with Jason gone it’s going to be expanded to four, five or six guys. It’s going to have to be by committee. All I said was that I’d like a little bit of an expanded role across the board and everything I’ve talked about with Mac (Paul MacLean) and Bryan (Murray) that’s their feeling as well.”
Back to Friedge…
“What I do think though is that they did go to him and say, ‘If you want, we’ll extend him seven years.’ I think what Bobby Ryan is saying is, ‘Look, I don’t know if I want to stay here right now. I want to see what the situation looks like in a year.’ Look, the toughest thing Ottawa has right now is, if you look at the guys who’ve walked out of that team in the last few years, Spezza wanted to go, the greatest player in the history of the franchise walked away – Alfredsson – Heatley’s a different story a bit, but he walked away, Zdeno Chara – probably the second greatest player in the history of the franchise – was allowed to leave, I think the Ottawa Senators have to take a look at their situation and say, ‘Why are our good players leaving?’ because I think what the message, from outside that Bobby Ryan is sending is, ‘Thanks, but I’m not really sure right now.’ And I think they’re doing this with Marc Methot, they do not want these situations lingering. They cannot allow these guys to walk away for nothing and if they don’t get contracts done, I think you’re going to start hearing rumours about both of these players in the next little while.”
The thing about all the players leaving is that they are, for the most part, completely isolated events. The circumstances as to why players like Chara or Heatley or Hossa or Alfie left were completely different. In Chara’s case, the worst general manager to ever grace the organization, John Muckler, dicked around his buddy and fellow countryman, Marian Hossa – coming to an agreement on a contract extension minutes before an arbitration hearing and then within an hour, the organization had shipped him to Atlanta with Greg de Vries for Dany Heatley. Then there was the whole mishandling of the Redden and Chara contract situation (another Muckler blunder). Heatley left because Cory Clouston acted like a dick. Alfredsson left because of one of two reasons: a) he wanted to try something different; b) the Senators backtracked on an agreement to renegotiate during the 2012/13 season and played hardball with him in the offseason; or c) rumours persist that Melnyk sent Alfredsson an email alleging that he would never get paid what he was looking for. And finally, Spezza left because he was tired of a stale situation and believed that it would be in everyone’s best interests if he just moved on.
I suppose as a whole, it doesn’t look THAT great. But only dickbags are going to whine and moan about the optics involved with all this talent leaving when none of these situations — with the exception of Hossa and Chara leaving — are really that interrelated.
On the other hand, I think it’s a completely reasonable to be frustrated with the ownership and management group for going all in on Bobby Ryan at a phase of the organization’s life cycle when it could have afforded to be more patient and did not have to take on the considerable risk attached to Ryan’s term. I certainly can’t begrudge the Senators for trying to acquire someone who they believed to have the potential of being an impact guy, but questions remain as to whether Ryan is that kind of player and in taking on his remaining two-year contract, coupled with the opportunity cost used to acquire him, it put a ton of pressure on the organization to keep him in the fold. If they fail to retain him or move him for a lesser package, it’s a failure by management (although it remains to be seen how much pressure ownership put on management to follow its mandate) to assess and/or accept the organization’s competitive level, opting to put inexpensive, short-term results (“we’re going for the playoffs!”) ahead of the best long-term interests of the team.
On understanding the reservations that Ryan has about re-signing and where the direction of this club is…
“I think that’s the great question right now. There are a lot of ownership issues. Melnyk was on radio (with a partner in Toronto) talking about the financial concerns that he has. Eugene Melnyk is an interesting guy. I always told that if he ever sold the horses, look out, because that means he’s getting close to having to sell the team and last year he sold the horses.”
Melnyk sold his horses for more than $5.2 million this past July. More horses will apparently be up for sale in November and his Winding Oaks Farm has also been put up for sale and at last check, it had not been sold.
“Now, I know there have been a lot of situations in past years where people have called him and they say, ‘We want to buy the team,’ and they get rejected. Or they say, ‘If you want to take on a partner to help you with some cash,’ and they get rejected. To this point, he’s shown no interest in selling. He’s shown no interest in taking on a partner, but everybody looking in from the outside they wonder, ‘How long is this going to take? It’s just a matter of time.’”
Almost one year ago today, Eugene Melnyk talked at the ribbon cutting that signified the opening of “Sens Mile” on Elgin Street and talked about whether the team is in financial jeopardy (note: I’m actually pulling the following quote from the Senators’ own website):
“No, if you recall 10 years ago I was the only guy standing, there was no one else. People say “Oh you could get an equity buyer” or you could do this, I don’t see anybody, I don’t get any phone calls. Those people don’t exist, but the best thing to do is you have to turn it around and just work the problem. That’s what we’ve got to do we’ve got to work the problem and without — this is a price sensitive market and we need to be able to compete and we’re doing everything we can to do that. But no, there’s no jeopardy there.”
Those people don’t exist? Hmmm, well assuming that an owner of a professional organization would never lie to his fan base and consumers, if prospective investors didn’t exist one year ago, they must certainly exist today because Elliotte Friedman stands nothing to gain by revealing that kind of information.
As an owner who’s constantly talking about the need to improve the team’s revenue streams, here’s an option and potential solution that can work and better yet, it doesn’t cost tax payers anything. It only requires Eugene to give up some stake of his team. Unfortunately however, Bruce Garrioch once reiterated to Hockey Central’s panel that Melnyk told him that “He’s not that kind of guy (to take on a partner).”
“I think there’s a lot of uncertainty here and I do believe that’s one of the reasons that players are unsure about committing themselves is because they don’t know what the direction of the franchise is going to be and what the future of the franchise is going to be. I think until guys really start to get answers, they’re going to do what Bobby Ryan is doing – which is like, ‘If you want me to make a commitment to you, I want to see where we are.’ And right now, we don’t really have clear answers. Also I think, (Jason) Spezza talked about this and Paul MacLean really talked about this in an interview recently with Bruce Garrioch, there was a lot of friction last year between the players and the coach. I just think that everybody wants to sit and see (what happens). Two years ago that relationship was really good. Last year that relationship was not so good. What’s that relationship going to be this year? I think that’s what a lot of players and the organization want to see too.”
So it’s not just the fans. The players see uncertainty too and given management and ownership’s comments about leadership and the coaching last season in the aftermath of the season, it seems like they’ve already found their fall guy in the event that this season goes south.
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