Speaking to reporters at yesterday morning’s practice, Senators general manager Bryan Murray indicated that Colin Greening was placed on waivers for the purpose of some other team claiming him on waivers assigning him to Binghamton.
For anyone who’s watched Greening these past few seasons, the news hardly comes as a shock. Thanks to the organization acquiring Clarke MacArthur, re-signing Milan Michalek and the emergence of a Mike Hoffman, Greening’s essentially been relegated to a fourth line or depth role these past two seasons. With upstarts like Shane Prince and Matt Puempel proving that they are on the cusp of making the parent roster, Greening keeps getting passed on the depth chart by better and more promising players.
At one time, Greening was looked at as a viable top six alternative who could play in the event of injury to a Milan Michalek or a MacArthur, or hopefully play well enough to afford the Senators the flexibility to walk away from Michalek when he became an unrestricted free agent in 2014. Unfortunately, not only did management believe it would be shrewd for them to lock him up to an extension even though he was slated to spend the bulk of the season playing on a line with Zack Smith and Chris Neil where his production would inevitably suffer.
Together the trio dumped and chased, and chased, and chased…
And when MacArthur and Michalek remained healthy, Greening’s production and play suffered to the point in which the organization lost whatever confidence it once had in him and felt obligated to re-sign Michalek compounding their original mistake. (As an aside, as a player who has struggled to play with the puck and has a tendency to get rid of it and defer to his linemates as quickly as possible. I think Greening’s still an NHL player, I just believe the biggest difference is that he’s gone from relying on Jason Spezza to carry the rock through the neutral zone to manufacture effective zone entries to a player who’s had to rely on Zack Smith and Chris Neil to do the work.)
The Senators explored the possibility of a buyout this past summer, but with Greening “earning” $2.75 million in 2015-16 and $3.2 million next season, his average salary fell $10,000 short of meeting the benchmark which would allow the Senators to buy him out. Next summer, that won’t be a problem, but perhaps there’s a situation that sees Greening play well enough in Binghamton to allow the Senators to explore a deal which sees them eat significant chunk of his salary.
Okay, it probably won’t happen, but it could and yeah, it’s really sad that this qualifies as optimism for Greening’s situation.
Whatever the case, he’s gone by the time the next buyout period hits and he’ll serve as the poster boy for why it’s not smart for an organization to give significant term and dollars to older depth forwards.
Other News and Notes:
Oublié de l’écrire ici, mais Chris Phillips a dit ce AM que son dos s’améliore, il n’a pas connu de «setback». Il est positif. #ledroit
— Marc Brassard (@mbrassard) October 2, 2015
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