Greening to Waivers, Mills Signs and Thoughts on Thoughts

Waivers: a friendly reminder that your favorite team’s general manager made a mistake.

After giving Colin Greening’s agent permission to explore a trade for their client, Ottawa Senators placed left winger on waivers once it became obvious that no suitors were lining up to move any assets in a trade.

With his lonely one goal also being his only point on the season through 20 games, you can’t really blame teams from balking at idea of moving any tangible assets for him.

Now the Senators have to hope that some team will pick up remainder of his contract for a song by filing a claim ahead of tomorrow’s noon deadline.

Greening is currently in the first year of his three-year pact that carries an annual average value of $2.65 million. In real dollars, Greening will earn $2-million this season, $2.75-million next season and $3.2-million in the last year of his deal.

If (if!?!) Greening clears waivers, he will be optioned to Binghamton where he will get an opportunity to rediscover a game that has been lost since he stopped playing on a line with Jason Spezza.

Via Behindthenet.ca, here’s a look at Greening’s five-on-five production since entering the league (guess which year he stopped playing predominantly with Jason Spezza):

As I wrote at the time of Greening’s signing outlining all of my concerns with Greening’s deal, Greening’s production away from Spezza always painted the picture of a player who struggled away from the team’s best offensive forward. Through Greening’s first two seasons in the league, 40 of his 50 points came with Jason Spezza being on the ice.

In fairness to Greening however, anyone’s numbers would likely take a hit if they were bumped off a line with the team’s best offensive forward. In saying that however, when Spezza missed the bulk of the lockout shortened 2012-13 season because of back problems, Greening’s ineffective play and a drop in production playing alongside Zack Smith and Chris Neil were noticeable.

Unfortunately for the Senators, for whatever reason, they decided to ink Greening to an extension after they had already boxed him out of a top six role by acquiring Bobby Ryan and Clarke MacArthur to bolster their top two lines.

It probably didn’t help matters that Greening put in a good showing during the team’s Eastern Conference semifinals series against Pittsburgh, but if people really believed that his performance then solidified him as a solid playoff performer, they were wrong.

Contextually speaking, the Senators probably thought they were doing themselves a favour by inking signing him well in advance of his 2014 unrestricted free agency. Knowing that Greening had modest offensive success playing with Spezza, they probably looked at him at a successor or insulator to Michalek in the event that Michalek got hurt or bolted at the end of the season in free agency.

In playing Greening regular minutes with Neil and Smith however, the Senators only drove down Greening’s production and value – something that they should have considered more seriously when they were entertaining the thought of extending him in the first place.

The Senators only compounded the problem more by the fact that Spezza wanted a change of scenery at the conclusion of the season and that because of Ottawa’s series of veterans wanting out of this market, the Senators elected to re-sign Michalek to a three-year commitment worth an average annual value of $4-million.

Hopefully in one year’s time, it won’t be Michalek who is the one going on waivers.

Senators Sign Brad Mills

A few days ago, the decision to mutually part ways with Jakub Culek created a positive dual effect. Not only did it allow the former prospect to return to Europe and pursue a playing career there, it allowed the Senators to free up a contract slot. (Note: the league only permits organizations to carry 50 professional contracts at once.)

Today the Senators essentially announced that Culek’s spot would be going to Brad Mills. Mills signed a professional tryout offer this summer and had appeared in nine games with the Binghamton Senators this season – tallying one goal and four points.

Mills made the news earlier in the season when he was suspended for 20 games by the AHL for violating the terms of their drug policy.

Thoughts on Thoughts

Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman posted his latest ’30 Thoughts’ column and fortunately for all of us, he included a number of Senators-related morsels that are worth discussing in greater detail.

7. Senators’ 2011 first-rounder Matt Puempel is off his 2013-14 pace of 30 goals for AHL Binghamton, with 11 in 41 games so far this year. But he’s got a fan in Ottawa: Bryan Murray.

“We’re getting more chances, but they aren’t resulting in goals,” Murray said last week. “All (Matt) does is score. We have no space at the moment, but his time is coming.”

Puempel’s struggles through the first half of the season have been well-documented. After notching 30 goals in his first full professional season (74 games), Puempel only has 11 through his first 41 games this season.

In an interview that he had on TSN 1200 about two weeks ago, Binghamton head coach Luke Richardson attributed Puempel’s production problems at even strength to the graduation or loss of offensive talents like Mike Hoffman and Stephane Da Costa.

As a prospect whose play away from the puck has always been under the microscope, Puempel’s the kind of prospect who will need to fill the net consistently to earn his place at the next level. If he can’t do that, prospects like Shane Prince will continue to leapfrog Puempel on the depth chart.

5. Bryan Murray on Erik Karlsson: “Defences are playing him so tight at the point.” Has he ever seen a defenceman handled like that? “Paul Coffey is the closest. Teams would try, but his lateral movement was so dynamic, they would end up shrinking back away from him.”

Karlsson can evade pressure at the blue line and in restaurants where adults hound him for a photo.

6. Murray said last week he was not interested in trading Craig Anderson, even though he is 10 years older than Robin Lehner. The latter has yet to snare the net, and now other teams, who assumed Anderson would be the one dealt (eventually), aren’t so sure.

Murray isn’t worried about age. “He’s a lean, fit, guy,” the GM added. “We don’t need him to play 65 games a year, but he probably could if we had to.”

Murray pointed out that, when Anderson was younger, he didn’t play a ton of games. From his pro debut in 2001-02 to 2008-09, he averaged 33 appearances per season, only once going higher than 39. “It’s hard to move him until Robin Lehner finds a consistently good level.”

Murray’s quote strikes me as odd, if only because he’s illustrating a catch-22 situation. Robin Lehner cannot snare the net because he’s part of a tandem wherein the veteran, Craig Anderson, is always getting the bulk of the starts because Ottawa’s been a playoff bubble team for the past few years and is constantly in a win-now mode. Even in the instances in which Craig Anderson has been hurt for prolonged stretches of time, the organization either: 1) traded for Ben Bishop; or 2) gave Anderson his job back once he returned because of the old “You can’t lose your job if you’re injured” adage.

It is fair to say that Lehner’s play because he has been inconsistent, but as a goalie seeing spot duty behind what’s been a horrendously terrible defensive team for the past few seasons, maybe he also deserves a bit of a pass – especially since he’s still so relatively young (23).

By stating that “it’s hard to move him until Robin Lehner finds a consistently good level,” Bryan Murray is essentially admitting that he won’t move Anderson until Lehner improves his consistency or Anderson goes into decline. So if you’re a proponent of the Senators selling high on a valuable commodity when they have a young goaltender who’s had success at every level that he’s played at, that may make you cringe a bit – especially since this small-market organization has not demonstrated a savvy or consistent approach to sell high on veteran players.

This reluctance to give Lehner more playing time is defensible in the sense that Dave Cameron is a new coach who won’t rule out the playoffs being out of reach, but at some point Lehner has to play more this season. If he’s viewed as a big part of the future here, he has to play.