It seems Bryan Murray decided that rather than taking responsibility as GM for the Senators' problems, he would place the blame on the players (as well as their former coach).
Allen Panzeri's article from this morning's Citizen explains:
Stars didn't shine, Murray says
Senators GM pins blame for poor season on players
By Allen Panzeri, The Ottawa CitizenApril 2, 2009 6:43 AM
Every time a coach gets fired in the National Hockey League, this cliché is used to justify it: Because you can't fire the players.
If it was that easy, Ottawa Senators general manager Bryan Murray might have been handing out pink slips on Wednesday afternoon.
Less than 24 hours before, the Senators had been eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoff race. It'll be the first time since 1995-96 that they have missed the postseason. Their 5-2 loss to the Florida Panthers coupled with Montreal's 4-1 victory against the Chicago Blackhawks ended the Senators' slim hopes.
In his assessment of this team's failure, Murray pointed the fingers at Senators players. Whether that does much is another question. It hasn't so far.
"For two years now, we've fired two coaches (John Paddock and Craig Hartsburg)," Murray said. "Whether they were the right people at the right time or not doesn't matter at this point.
"The players have to play.
"In the NHL, you play 82 games, and hopefully the playoffs on a regular basis, and to win, if your best players, who take a fair number of your dollars, don't perform on an every-night basis, then you're left wanting."
On this team, from the beginning of the season to today, even when the team is playing better, "we've had a number of guys underachieve," Murray said.
It's not difficult to pick out the prime suspects: Forwards Jason Spezza, Dany Heatley and Mike Fisher have had sub-par seasons, and goaltender Martin Gerber wasn't very good when he was here, which was why Murray demoted and eventually handed him off to the Toronto Maple Leafs through waivers.
The way NHL teams are structured under the salary cap, their top players have to be that much better because they get most of the money.
If they're not, Murray said, it doesn't matter what a team's second-, third- and fourth-line players do. Your team is just not going win.
Senators captain Daniel Alfredsson said he couldn't disagree with a word of what Murray said Wednesday.
"Especially now with the salary cap, every team has two top lines, or a top line in some cases, and throughout the season they have to be the difference most nights," Alfredsson said.
"As we've turned it around, I think that has been the case for us," Alfredsson said. "We know we've been able to do it in the past, and this obviously gives us confidence that we can do it again in the future.
"You learn through adversity. You find out a lot about individuals. I think the way we've bounced back shows a lot of character. It would have been easy for us to just go through the motions down the stretch ... but we've taken a lot of pride in the way we play and we're going to continue it down the stretch here."
Like Alfredsson, Murray was disappointed to see the Senators eliminated, but it wasn't unexpected. He knew they were fighting long odds, as did club owner Eugene Melnyk.
One topic Murray promises to raise in talks with the players is inconsistency. He was dismayed to see it for most of the season.
For example, Heatley has one point -- a goal -- in four games, while Fisher has one point -- an assist -- in four games.
"The teams that make it to the high spots in each conference are the ones that show up every night and play at a high level," Murray said. "They're led by their leaders. Their established stars have to play at a good level. When you do that, it carries over to everybody else."
With the acquisition of Pascal Leclaire, who is continuing he rehabilitation following surgery on his right ankle, Murray hopes he has solved the team's goaltending woes for next season. He'll look at defence and try to see what he can do there -- acquire Jay Bouwmeester, maybe? -- and then try to obtain another top-six forward. Is that Mike Comrie, who becomes a free agent this summer, or someone else?
Murray is pleased with the way the team has played under Cory Clouston, who was hired as coach after Hartsburg was fired in early February, but said the bar would still have to be raised even higher.
"I know what a number of these players have done," Murray said, "and I expect we meet that level of performance more often than not."
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Bryan Murray, it appears, knows the rules of survival at the top of the food chain: when pressed, admit that mistakes were made, but never admit that they were yours.
Mr Murray is an imposing individual, and clearly knows how to navigate the shark-infested waters of Big Hockey Business.
While one can look at Mr Murray's 'restocking' of the Senators' talent pipeline and use the apparent array of talent as an argument in his defense, the fact is none of that talent can be expected to provide an immediate solution.
And in terms of the future, can anyone be myopic enough to believe that other teams won't improve their personnel, making the job of returning the Senators to playoff contention more difficult?
One can put on Red White and Gold coloured glasses and talk about "having turned it around". But playing better under a new coach at a point in the season when the team's playoff aspirations were already severely compromised, skews the picture somewhat.
Let's not forget, a team that was 'more responsible defensively and harder to play against' was the promise from Mr Murray last year.
Fans could be forgiven for asking, "What promises will made, and broken, next year?"
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