In the first few seasons following the Ottawa Senators’ 2007 Stanley Cup Final appearance, general manager Bryan Murray took some heat for the way this organization had its window of Cup contention close.
Of course, looking back in retrospect, blaming Murray for not making the best of inheriting a situation in which John Muckler’s inane decision-making on elite players was compounded by a poor draft record and the fact that aggressively moved whatever prospects he could to acquire depth complementary short-term fixes, was reductively silly.
Yes, the Senators’ franchise fell off a cliff following their lone Stanley Cup Final appearance, but acting that like was the apex or best team that the organization ever assembled is wrong. Murray helped oversee this transition from a have into a have-not, but he wasn’t the one chiefly responsible for getting the organization to that point.
That blame falls on John Muckler and for the first time in ages, the former Senators general manager appeared on 1310 News’ ‘Liam Maguire’s Ultimate Hockey Show’ yesterday and discussed a few of the decisions that led to Ottawa’s downfall.
For the sake of this piece, I did not transcribe the entire interview because I don’t really care about Muckler’s playing days in the Eastern Hockey League or him verbally fellating Wayne Gretzky and Domink Hasek.
Instead, I’ve transcribed the information that I found interesting and pertains to the Ottawa Senators. If you would really like to listen to the full 20-plus minute interview, you can access it by using the embedded media player at the bottom of this post.
As always, my thoughts are in bold.
On how he views the recent comparisons being made between Paul Coffey and Erik Karlsson…
“Karlsson’s an excellent skater and that’s his whole game. He (is) kind of soft on the defensive part of his game, but over time, that will come to him as he matures a little bit more. But as far as talent, I think he’s the most talented guy in the National Hockey League. In seeing the ice and the way he skates and the way he can pass and move a puck, it’s just textbook. So there’s a lot of similarities to Paul (Coffey). Paul was maybe a bigger man. Paul was the same way when he first came into the league. He didn’t really worry about the defensive game and all of a sudden, he got it together and he was very good.”
Just in case you didn’t like Muckler enough, he goes and throws away a “soft” dig at Karlsson.
On Chara not giving the Senators the opportunity to match the contract offered by Boston…
“Pretty well. I talked to Chara one-on-one and he said he wanted to stay. I said, ‘Well, we’d love to have you stay. You’re a big part of our hockey club.’ And then when the agent got to me, he didn’t really give us a number that Chara wanted and we had offered him, I think, $7-million per year and his agent says, ‘That’s not enough.’ I say, ‘Well, what do you want?’ He says, ‘Well, you tell me,’ so he wants me to negotiate against myself. And it came down to… he went to Boston and played very well in Boston. There’s no question about that. As far as the Chara and Redden thing, I was going to sign the first defenceman that came forward hoping… I didn’t want to lose both of them. So I signed Redden because Chara wasn’t available to be signed at that particular time. He was still holding out, so I signed Redden. So it wasn’t a contest between Chara and Redden and who I was going to sign. I wanted them both, but I didn’t want to lose both of them and that’s the way it went down.”
Deflecting oneself of blame by stating that there was no choice would be a lot easier to stomach if inaction wasn’t a blameless decision.
“I was going to sign the first defenceman that came forward.”
What the hell is that? Is that any way to handle deciding which of your franchise defencemen you’re hopeful of retaining? Moreover, where was the prioritization and projecting out of who would have been the most valuable guy moving forward? I understand not wanting to negotiate against yourself, but why are you waiting until the last minute to negotiate with either player? And most importantly, if the player you wanted to retain most was Chara, why not exhaust all of your efforts to get Chara under contract?
This inaction was asinine, but maybe it was brought about by the league’s return from the lockout. With a faster and quicker game and the Senators getting ousted by a smaller and faster Buffalo Sabres team, Chara took some flak because some pundits weren’t sure if he was cut out for the new NHL.
Well, screw those pundits and screw John Muckler.
On whether Marian Hossa wanted out of Ottawa because Chara left…
“No, not at all. I talked to Hossa. He did want to stay. We couldn’t afford… people don’t understand what the cap is all about. You’ve only got so much money and I didn’t want to deplete the whole third line or something like that. I wanted to keep the nucleus of the club around because they were a very good hockey club and we would have been a better club with Chara and Hossa. But Hossa signed, I think, in the neighbourhood of… I signed him for $6-million a year and I forget how long the contract was and then I traded him. I traded him for a player who was signed for ($4-million), so I saved $2-million, so I could keep someone else on the team. Sometimes you’re put in a position that you have to make the tough decision because you can’t go over the cap obviously and you want to try and keep your team together and that’s what we did. We went to the Stanley Cup Finals, so I think I did the right thing, but I know people didn’t understand Chara leaving and trading Hossa, but we had to do it because of financial situations.”
There’s a bit of a timeline confusion on the part of Liam Maguire. Hossa was dealt the season before the 2005-06 season – which ultimately would be Chara’s last as a member of the Ottawa Senators. The rumour going around when Chara left Ottawa, was that he was upset with the treatment his good friend had received the offseason before when Muckler inked Hossa to a three-year $18-million contract and then immediately shipped him to Atlanta with Greg de Vries for Dany Heatley.
There’s definitely something to be said about moving players out who have priced themselves out of Ottawa, but usually when you do, you’re referring to the depth or complimentary players that Muckler was referring to when he affectionately referenced the team’s third line.
As proud Muckler is that the Senators made the Final, it cost them two Hall of Fame players and closed the window of Cup contention faster than it should have been.
On how difficult it is to operate a team when you’re pressed up against the cap or an internal team budget…
“Well, I have to say that (Eugene) Melnyk gave me the limit all the time that I was there and we still didn’t have enough (money) because we had such a great team. When that cap came in, it was $38-million. We had Hossa, Chara and Redden and they were all in the peak of their careers at that time, so we were kind of handicapped on who we signed or who we had to let go and so it went down the line. Every team is going to run into that eventually. They’re going to lose players. Look at Chicago. Chicago’s done a very good job. They’ve lost players and they kept their core and they’re going to compete for the Stanley Cup again. It’s very difficult. Like, Bryan (Murray), he probably has, I don’t know, two million, three million or four million (dollars) underneath the cap because it’s hard to have a cap team when the income figures don’t meet the cap. (When that happens), you have a problem.”
In going back to my points from the previous blurb, if you’re going to reference the Blackhawks as a model, at least recognize that when they dealt good players. They didn’t misidentify their elite talent. They dealt and replaced their complementary players to reload.
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