It’s not exactly the two signings that fans have been anticipating, but the Senators announced that they have added two full-time scouts — Michael Abbamont and John Perpich — to their ranks and promoted Jim Clarke to the position of chief professional scout.
This announcement comes on the heels of the organization’s promotion of Bob Lowes to chief amateur scout and the promotion of Trent Mann and Don Boyd to full-time scouting status and likely signals an end to the Senators front office re-organization after a number of their staff joined Tim Murray’s staff in Buffalo.
From the press release:
Clark, a native of Summerside, P.E.I., joined the Senators ahead of the 2008-09 season after spending 10 seasons with the Columbus Blue Jackets, primarily as club vice-president and the team’s assistant general manager. He has also previously worked as a professional scout with the Detroit Red Wings and the Florida Panthers. In his new role, Clark will oversee scheduling and liaising with the team’s professional scouts while spending most of his time scouting games at the NHL and American Hockey League levels.
Michael Abbamont returns to Ottawa in the role of professional scout. Based in southern Ontario, Abbamont will spend his time scouting the NHL and AHL levels in addition to games throughout Europe. Abbamont previously worked with the Senators from 2003 to 2005 and recently spent time with the Edmonton Oilers in a professional scouting capacity. He has also scouted for Detroit, Florida and the Washington Capitals. Abbamont has also worked in the NHL head office for Jim Gregory, the league’s senior vice-president of hockey operations, and Frank Bonello with NHL Central Scouting.
John Perpich joins the club in the role of professional scout. Based in the Minneapolis area, Perpich will focus primarily on western Canada and the United States. Perpich has worked previously for the Los Angeles Kings and Washington Capitals as an assistant coach and most recently with the Atlanta Thrashers/Winnipeg Jets in a professional scouting capacity.
Nick Polano, who has been part of Ottawa’s scouting team since 2002, will remain in his capacity as a professional scout. These scouting updates follow the team’s promotion of Bob Lowes to chief amateur scout and the full-time hiring of Don Boyd and Trent Mann in August.
Everything from the team’s payroll to the size of the team’s front office has been scrutinized this offseason and before this recent stretch of hires, the Senators did have one of the smallest front offices in the league.
As an organization that prides itself on identifying and developing young talent to compensate for the fact that it can’t spend to the upper reaches of the NHL’s salary cap, the importance of having good scouts cannot be understated. Senators owner Eugene Melnyk has also paid lip service to the importance of investing in hockey operations.
From an interview on TSN 1200 this past spring, here’s Mr. Melnyk on being able to add to his front office staff this offseason:
“They have…. You know what… they have, I don’t want to say unlimited because they’ll run with that, but they have a lot of access to capital to spend on the people… Our scouting is second to none… I really believe it’s second to none and just take a look at some of the people we’ve drafted. We added international scouts, NHL scouts, college scouts. We were one of the first ones that had college scouts. We scout other NHL teams for players that are coming up for unrestricted and restricted (free agency). We have everything pretty much we need to, but if they need more, those are tiny salaries compared to some of the players. You know, players $7 million… think of what a good scout costs. I’m not going to tell you because everybody else knows, but that’s not an area that we skimp on at all. It’s the opposite, whatever you need, we’ll give it to you.”
No one should ever equate quantity to quality and in Ottawa’s case, you simply hope that the staff that was brought in can do an efficient job evaluating talent. Ideally, I’d love to see the Senators franchise openly incorporate some more analytics-savvy personnel to their staff to augment the qualitative and quantitative evaluation procedures that the Senators already have in place, but according to Randy Lee’s most recent interview, it doesn’t sound like the organization (read: Bryan Murray) is too keen on employing someone who specifically focuses on analyzing data.
“We’ve talked about it the other day with Bryan (Murray). We do have people on staff that have background on this and they’ve presented ideas to us. I think we try to get a mesh of what the management team think and the coaching staff think of where it fits. It’s not just a matter of forcing it down the pipe. We want to make sure that it’s something that can really complement what we’re doing. We do a lot of analytics-type stuff in different ways and we’ve been doing it for years. It’s not brand new, but it’s sort of taking on a new optic where teams are doing this and designating a certain person. I don’t think Bryan (Murray) believes in designating a certain person to this, but I think as an organization, we believe that if there are components of it that we think will help us and complement the job we do, we’ll try and incorporate it into our day-to-day work.”
Other News and Notes
– I missed this late last week, but it sounds like the Senators are nowhere close to re-signing defenceman Marc Methot. According to Bruce Garrioch, “there have been no discussions between the Senators and Methot’s Ottawa-based agent Larry Kelly in at least two weeks and none are planned.”
That’s not to say that dialogue hasn’t resumed since the article was published or that it can’t soon, but holy shit, when Eugene Melnyk even comes out and says, “We have eight defencemen right now and Marc is a great player, but you’ve got to be realistic of what we can do,” it doesn’t sound promising. If anything, it simply leaves the impression that both parties are unwavering in their demands. For better or worse, okay, definitely for worse, I worry that the Senators believe that the extensions signed by Chris Phillips and Mark Borowiecki provide them with the flexibility to play hardball with Methot.
– Sticking with Bruce Garrioch articles, last Thursday the scribe spoke with Craig Anderson and arrived at the conclusion that the Anderson and MacArthur signings are a message to the fans and the players that “there is a desire for players to play in Ottawa and owner Eugene Melnyk is willing to spend.”
I certainly don’t disagree with the former, but the latter conclusion is based on a false equivalency. I’m not entirely sure how anyone can arrive at the conclusion that Eugene Melnyk is willing to spend when the Senators are 30th in the league in spending, but desperately want to compete for a playoff spot. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fine that players like Anderson and MacArthur have signed and eventually, the organization may extend Methot and Ryan as well, but how can we know how willing Mr. Melnyk is to spend when every move that the Senators have made of late is a dollar-in and dollar-out transaction (ie. adding Hemsky and adding Legwand using the $3 million freed up by the Spezza trade)? The organization keeps promising its fan base that when the circumstances are right, it will add to its payroll to augment the roster and make it more competitive, but as of this writing, it’s just been words to the wind. Maybe one day it will happen and maybe that’s what a player like Bobby Ryan wants before signing an extension – proof or reassurances that the club has the wherewithal to not just preserve the status quo but to improve upon it.
– In his latest blog for The Hockey News that details the 2014/15 season’s top ten coaches/players on the hot seat, Ken Campbell ranked Senators head coach Paul MacLean as the fourth-highest person on his list.
“There were rumblings that MacLean lost his golden touch last season with his players and mismanaged his players last season. Not surprisingly, he was not able to coax the results out of his team that he got in 2013. Even though the Senators are closer to being a lottery winner than a playoff team, expectations are always high in Canadian markets. And if the Senators get off to a disastrous start, the only guy at the Canadian Tire Centre with a bushy moustache will be MacLean’s doppelganger in the first row.”
Questions about MacLean’s player usage and management’s comments about how MacLean changed his persona from previous seasons dogged the 2013 Jack Adams Trophy winner this offseason, but ownership and management did give him a vote of confidence. I don’t know whether MacLean should be ranked this high, but I can’t disagree with Campbell’s comments about expectations. Mind you, I’m not in agreement that these expectations come from being in a Canadian market. I believe most of these pressures come from ownership instead.
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