Hartsburg Fired!

You don't want to get fleeced just for the sake of getting ride of someone. If they just want to get rid of him they can waive him. You're so hard on the guy and have reduced his value to nothing, yet you propose trades involving guys like Little, including first round picks. If fans know about alleged problems with players, don't think that people within the NHL don't, if anything they probably know more.

I still say you only trade him if you get a sweet deal. He's still a great player, despite what you think.

DashRiprock wrote:You don't want to get fleeced just for the sake of getting ride of someone. If they just want to get rid of him they can waive him. You're so hard on the guy and have reduced his value to nothing, yet you propose trades involving guys like Little, including first round picks. If fans know about alleged problems with players, don't think that people within the NHL don't, if anything they probably know more.

I still say you only trade him if you get a sweet deal. He's still a great player, despite what you think.

Great? He is far from great. If he is great so was Pierre Turgeon.

It all depends on what a teams current situation is.

Here's Scott Burnside's highly critical take on Hartsburg's firing from ESPN.com:

Monday, February 2, 2009
Be careful with this team, Eugene

By Scott Burnside
ESPN.com

Less than a week after Eugene Melnyk made an ill-advised suggestion to fans -- saying if they thought the Ottawa Senators needed to be rebuilt, they should bomb themselves -- the mercurial owner approved the firing of coach Craig Hartsburg, signaling the official end of the Senators' long run as Cup contenders and playoff regulars.

Speaking of bombs, were you a bit surprised to find that one went off so close to you, Eugene?

What was that you were saying about the team needing just 26 or 27 wins down the stretch to make the playoffs, Eugene?

Funny how you never hear Mike Ilitch suggesting to Red Wings fans that they should detonate themselves when things go bad in Detroit or San Jose president and CEO Greg Jamison suggesting Sharks fans can drown themselves in the Pacific when the Sharks don't meet expectations.

Somewhere there's a lesson, don't you think, Eugene?

Reminds us of the title of an old Pink Floyd song, "Careful With That Axe, Eugene." A word to the wise perhaps? Careful with that team, Eugene. Or is it too late?

If the Senators' march to the 2007 Stanley Cup finals represented a high watermark for a team that for the better part of a decade was a model of drafting and development and regular-season success, then the ensuing 20 months are a sobering reminder of how chaos, just like success, runs downhill.

No mistake, this is a team in transition, if not total chaos.

When a team goes through four coaches in about a year -- John Paddock, Bryan Murray, Hartsburg and new coach Cory Clouston -- it's hard not to draw the conclusion that this is a ship adrift.

Murray, who coached that Senators team to the 2007 finals before assuming the GM title that offseason, can certainly be held accountable, and he said as much Monday morning when he introduced his former AHL coach as the man to lead the Senators out of the wilderness.

"It definitely is on my shoulders," Murray said.

Murray, who helped build the Anaheim Ducks into a Stanley Cup champion as GM before taking the head-coaching job in Ottawa ostensibly to return home after the lockout, is a smart hockey man. That's what makes this team's dramatic decline so puzzling. Even Murray seemed perplexed Monday as to what happened to the once-dominant Senators.

But as much as Murray's personnel and coaching decisions are subject for debate and criticism, Melnyk's fingerprints are all over the Sens' decline.

In hindsight, it seems to have been a rush to judgment to fire John Muckler weeks after the 2007 playoffs ended. While Murray had a strong record as a GM, the hiring of Paddock, long removed from being an NHL coach, to replace Muckler was a disaster. Paddock was fired with 18 games left in the season and Murray took over to guide the Sens to a first-round sweep at the hands of the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Then, this past summer, when top young coach Peter DeBoer was available, sources tell ESPN.com it was Melnyk's abrasive style that cooled DeBoer on the Senators' job. In fact, it was immediately after DeBoer's visit to Melnyk's home in the Barbados that DeBoer was hired by Florida Panthers GM (and former Ottawa coach) Jacques Martin. It is no coincidence DeBoer has the Panthers in a playoff spot and the Senators are now looking like a draft lottery team.

Other sources told ESPN.com Murray has privately lamented his decision to hire Hartsburg in the offseason and wishes he had hired a coach more closely tied to NHL coaching, like Bob Hartley.

Now, with this season a wash, Murray hopes he has finally got his DeBoer in Clouston.

"This is a good coach and I say that wholeheartedly," Murray said of the 39-year-old Clouston, a former University of Alberta player and successful Major Junior A coach.

A cynic will suggest that Murray simply promoted Clouston to save costs. Yet Murray said Monday he had full control over replacing Hartsburg, including hiring a veteran coach, but believes Clouston is the right man for the job. That Murray didn't get the right man in the offseason is an indictment of both ownership and the inability of management to do what was best for the team.

What now?

Murray had better hope he is right and Clouston is the kind of coach who can discern the wheat from the chaff in the Senators' dressing room. The March 4 trade deadline is a month away and, over that time period, Clouston and Murray will try to determine who deserves to be part of this team's future.

"We have to watch the players over the next period of time and determine who stays and who doesn't stay," Murray said. "There will be judgments made before the trading deadline."

Murray met with his team Monday morning and told them he believes there are good people in that dressing room.

For the sake of Ottawa fans, here's hoping ownership finally lets the hockey people make the hockey decisions and finds out whether Murray is right.

Scott Burnside covers the NHL for ESPN.com.

davetherave wrote:I listened to the Jacques Demers interview on Team 1200 today, and he said three very significant things.

One: you have to bench veterans/stars when they don't perform. "I sat Vincent Damphousse and Guy Carbonneau, and Guy didn't speak to me for weeks," he said. "But you have to do it."

Two: Jason Spezza has talent but doesn't use it. "He has everything to be a great player in the league. But is he lazy? Sometimes he is."

Three: the Sens are rotten at the core. "There is a cancer in the locker room".

Demers is not only a Cup winner, he's coached some of the best players ever to play the game including Patrick Roy and Steve Yzerman.

So Demers is saying, basically, that the Big 3 will have to (a) sit (b) be read the riot act and (c) at least one of them needs to be traded.

Nice summary. Whether the cancer is a player or a general attitude problem was not clear to me. He'd never specifically say it was a certain player even if he knew.

shabbs wrote:

davetherave wrote:I listened to the Jacques Demers interview on Team 1200 today, and he said three very significant things.

One: you have to bench veterans/stars when they don't perform. "I sat Vincent Damphousse and Guy Carbonneau, and Guy didn't speak to me for weeks," he said. "But you have to do it."

Two: Jason Spezza has talent but doesn't use it. "He has everything to be a great player in the league. But is he lazy? Sometimes he is."

Three: the Sens are rotten at the core. "There is a cancer in the locker room".

Demers is not only a Cup winner, he's coached some of the best players ever to play the game including Patrick Roy and Steve Yzerman.

So Demers is saying, basically, that the Big 3 will have to (a) sit (b) be read the riot act and (c) at least one of them needs to be traded.

Nice summary. Whether the cancer is a player or a general attitude problem was not clear to me. He'd never specifically say it was a certain player even if he knew.

He didnt say what the cancer was, no, but its was def implied. People, on their own, can eliminate who is not the problem in Ottawa.

1. Not the coach. We have had 4 different coaches in the last year.
2. Not the goalies. Auld has played over his head most of the year, Elliott has been solid, and Gerber is no where to be found.
3. Not the rookies. When is a rookie ever a problem... oh ya, just Jason Spezza crying when he was a 19 year old about being sent down.
4. Not the captain. He does everything he can on the ice to try and get his team going. Short of playing with missing limbs he will play through anything.
5. Fisher, Neil, A Train, and all the other grits guys. They are easily disposed for the most part and have trade value, if they were the cancers they would be gone.

Who is left? Draw your own conclussions.

Is it a possibility that Murray had no choice but to hire guys like Paddock, Hartsburg and Clouston because no other veteran NHL coach (Quinn, Tortorella, etc) wanted to come to Ottawa?

no coach is going to want to come to Ottawa now ever since the revolving door has been opened a few years ago after Murray called it quits, this is beyond ridiculous honestly, no honest, self respecting coach will want to step behind that bench.

The media firestorm continues. Tonight on the Wings-Blues telecast, Versus' Keith Jones and Brian Engblom lashed Melnyk and Murray for the firing, both saying "Hartsburg is one heck of a coach."

And here's Michael Farber from SI.com today:

NOT ENOUGH CHANGE IN OTTAWA

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/michael_farber/02/02/hartsburg.firing/index.html?eref=nhlg

Well, at least it didn't take as long as it did last year.

General manager Bryan Murray is running through coaches in Ottawa the way Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison negotiated Arizona Cardinals during his 100-yard dash in the Super Bowl. Since reaching Game 5 of the 2007 Stanley Cup Final, the Senators have had four: John Paddock, Murray himself, Craig Hartsburg and now Cory Clouston, who was brought up Monday from AHL Binghamton to guide the disappointing team after Hartsburg's firing 48 games into the season. Paddock made it through 64 matches last year, which suggests that either Hartsburg is three-quarters the coach Paddock was or Murray is even itchier than he was last season.

Of course, Paddock's team, with a stellar start, won 36 games before he was dismissed late last February. When the axe fell on Hartsburg, who was hired last summer to bring some accountability to a team that had spun off its axis, the Senators were 13th in the Eastern Conference, so far out of a playoff spot that they could barely espy one with the Hubble Telescope.

The stunning development in Ottawa is not that Hartsburg was fired -- he looked like he was coaching the Zombie all-stars until a brief rally in the third period of a 7-4 loss in Washington on Sunday -- but that owner Eugene Melnyk allowed Murray to make the change at all.

When a GM has to hire three coaches in fewer than two seasons, his judgment is, umm, suspect.

Melnyk held a press conference last week to express support for his bungling team. During his chinwag, Melnyk said that those who suggest the Senators be blown up -- a common if clumsy phrase in the sportswriting genre -- should actually blow themselves up, which, in a post-9/11 world, smacked of insensitivity if not outright stupidity. Maybe Melnyk should have just told the assembled media to go retrench itself, because even if he refuses to accept it, the window of opportunity for Cups in the near future closed last year.

Murray, among our favorite men in the game, built Anaheim's 2003 Cup finalist, but his touch has gone ice cold in Canada's capital. He's made bad bets on personnel, signing center Jason Spezza and winger Dany Heatley -- superb talents at best but coach killers at worst -- to long-term deals. (Heatley signed a six-year, $45-million extension in October 2007 and Spezza received a seven-year, $49-million extension the following month.) Even though Murray knew that goaltender Ray Emery was a dressing-room problem, he didn't thank him for his services during the 2007 playoff run and wound up having to buy him out last summer after one season of a three-year extension. Murray also resigned Mike Fisher to an extension that will make him a too rich Senators center until 2013.

Instead of getting ahead of the market, Murray locked himself into talents who are not bedrock players despite their offensive numbers (Heatley and Spezza) and left the Senators with a defense that is not adept at moving the puck or joining the rush. He also has too many players, including Fisher (seven goals) and Antoine Vermette (six), who'd be more attractive if they were making at least $1 million less per year than they are now. Like Paddock, an admirable man and former Ottawa assistant coach who was favored by the players, and Hartsburg, previously a moderately successful NHL head coach, Murray simply backed the wrong people.

Maybe Clouston can provide the good housecleaning the Senators need in his first NHL job, but it's a long shot. A better bet last summer might have been the one man seemingly capable of shoveling these Augean Stables -- John Tortorella -- but, according to sources, the former coach of the 2004 Cup champion Lightning never received an interview. Now, the abrasive Tortorella can be a pebble in the shoe of his players, which might have made for a stylistic mismatch, but Murray should have at least heard some of his ideas before anointing Hartsburg.

Would Ottawa have taken to an American as a coach? If he won, guaranteed.

For a team that has been an annual playoff participant for more than a decade, the coaching switch probably comes too late. Unless Murray can change the culture of the team -- or Melnyk identifies a GM he thinks can do it -- the foundering Senators will continue to fade.

Hartsburg is one heck of a junior coach, I agree.

SensFan71 wrote:no coach is going to want to come to Ottawa now ever since the revolving door has been opened a few years ago after Murray called it quits, this is beyond ridiculous honestly, no honest, self respecting coach will want to step behind that bench.

It's certainly looking like a dicey move to be a Sens coach these days.

I suspect the next coach to come in will be via a new GM.

shabbs wrote:

SensFan71 wrote:no coach is going to want to come to Ottawa now ever since the revolving door has been opened a few years ago after Murray called it quits, this is beyond ridiculous honestly, no honest, self respecting coach will want to step behind that bench.

It's certainly looking like a dicey move to be a Sens coach these days.

I suspect the next coach to come in will be via a new GM.

I would do it if I was a big name coach. I would welcome the challenge personally. I would have Spezza and Heatley cringing every time they heard the whistle during a game.

504Heater wrote:

shabbs wrote:

SensFan71 wrote:no coach is going to want to come to Ottawa now ever since the revolving door has been opened a few years ago after Murray called it quits, this is beyond ridiculous honestly, no honest, self respecting coach will want to step behind that bench.

It's certainly looking like a dicey move to be a Sens coach these days.

I suspect the next coach to come in will be via a new GM.

I would do it if I was a big name coach. I would welcome the challenge personally. I would have Spezza and Heatley cringing every time they heard the whistle during a game.

I would be having Spezz and Heater doing bag skates all practice long, then make sure they put away all the pucks, sticks, clean up the ice, every damn meaningless task you could do to punish the freaking slackers.

504H, did you notice Farber was advocating Tortorella... ?

SensFan71 wrote:
I would be having Spezz and Heater doing bag skates all practice long, then make sure they put away all the pucks, sticks, clean up the ice, every damn meaningless task you could do to punish the freaking slackers.

Absolutely. Every time they didn't compete to my liking, they'd go through hell.

Heater and Spezza need to be put through hell...

I suggested earlier to Marakh something along the lines of a "Full Metal Jacket" hazing or something...

I still think if Murray is still GM that he should call Torts immediately and line something up.

Unless Clouston turns out to be the Canadian version of Torts or Torts-lite, who knows, but after seeing this movie twice now, I'm not too optimistic.

davetherave wrote:504H, did you notice Farber was advocating Tortorella... ?

No, I'm relying on what you guys were saying. They think he's the man?

Cronenbergfan wrote:Heater and Spezza need to be put through hell...

I suggested earlier to Marakh something along the lines of a "Full Metal Jacket" hazing or something...

I still think if Murray is still GM that he should call Torts immediately and line something up.

Unless Clouston turns out to be the Canadian version of Torts or Torts-lite, who knows, but after seeing this movie twice now, I'm not too optimistic.

My buddy thinks that Torts would insist on a 4 year package as coach and that Murray might be a little nervous giving that amount of time on a contract. Especially for a guy like Torts who can lose a room in a matter of a calender year - two tops.

Hard to say, I argued that Torts should be happy as a clam to be back coaching in the NHL, but he seemed to think that it just doesn't work that way. So maybe now we're getting some light shed on what's going on. Perhaps Murray has full intentions of waiting until the summer to revamp the roster and hire a long term guy - if Cluster isn't the guy.

i don't want these guys to turn it around only to finish in no man's land and miss out on a top 5 pick...

I do, however, want to see them actually give a s**t about each other, the game, the fans, and their org to actually compete every time they lace 'em up!

Is that too freakin' much to ask!?!?