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If Bryan Murray is wondering why his Ottawa Senators just can't stop the freefall that sees them spiraling out of Stanley Cup contention, he won't have to look far. A quick glance in the mirror and he'll have his answer. Yes, Bryan Murray is to blame. Not Ray Emery, not John Paddock. Once the odds-on favorite to make the Stanley Cup final for the second straight spring, the Senators have been treading water for most of 2008, watching their fortunes plummet faster than a New York governor on an extended, ahem, business trip. And perhaps the most glaring cause for the sudden descent has been the amateurish manner in which Murray, the man at the helm of the Good Ship Senator, handled the Emery sideshow. Common sense tells you that Emery's childish antics have had a negative effect in the Senators'... Read Full Post: Ray Emery fiasco could make for short spring in Ottawa
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Why would you want to keep someone like that on your team? Even if they are a good player they hurt more than they help.
~HockeyGal
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Totally agree. I cant believe how far the Senators have fallen, and the Emery soap opera hasn't helped. The only problem is if the Senators wanted to unload him at the deadline, who would have taken him with that contract and the year he has had? He was probably on the block but noone wanted him.
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Marty,
Let's not forget that the Sens, goaltending woes aside, are also a one-line wonder.
The much ballyhooed addition of Cory Stillman has not shored up Ottawa's glaring lack of secondary scoring.
The three-headed monster of Heatley-Spezza-Alfredsson is easily smothered in a tense playoff series.
Nice little blog dude.
KD
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Good article Henwood.
Last year Melnyk fired Muckler for not trading for Roberts and coming up 3 games short of the cup. If this ship doesn't right itself soon then Bryan Murray will have taken the same team less than half the way to the cup. Murray inherited the team that Muckler built and was unable to take them as far. If Melnyk was so quick to fire Muckler you would think Murray would have to be worried about losing his job as well.
Fortunately for Murray, Melnyk might not be able to fire his GM when he is in federal prison for fraud and accounting violations.
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Looks good on the Sens. Maybe now their cocky, arrogant smirk can be wiped off their face when someone dusts them in the opening round.
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LOL. Looks good on them. Melnyk charged and the Sens hitting the skids? Looks good on them.
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Tough to pin the problems of the Sens on one guy. As the poster above said, they don't seem to be as deep as they could be, and if you can shut down the big 3 you can beat them. But their goaltending has not be Cup-worthy, something that is going to become painfully obvious in a month or so.
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Agreed, Murray should have steeped into the Emery situation much sooner. My question is why wasn’t it taken care of in the room? Someone should have grabbed this guy by his earrings and should have explained the team “Code” to him. Not on the ice a la McGrattan, but 3 or 4 senior guys needed to do it in private.
The Sens are currently in a tailspin that even Chuck Yeager can’t get them out of and their spinning at exactly the wrong time. Plenty of “rooms” in the NHL have their difficulties but many are handled before it gets to the coach or the GM by the players themselves. I’m sure Emery was shopped around at the trade deadline, but who needs the baggage and the contract wows? Sens made a big mistake resigning him and are stuck with him and his antics for another 2 seasons. Maybe they need Alex Kovalev to show him how to turn it around?
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Neutral-Zone wrote:Agreed, Murray should have steeped into the Emery situation much sooner. My question is why wasn’t it taken care of in the room? Someone should have grabbed this guy by his earrings and should have explained the team “Code” to him. Not on the ice a la McGrattan, but 3 or 4 senior guys needed to do it in private.
The Sens are currently in a tailspin that even Chuck Yeager can’t get them out of and their spinning at exactly the wrong time. Plenty of “rooms” in the NHL have their difficulties but many are handled before it gets to the coach or the GM by the players themselves. I’m sure Emery was shopped around at the trade deadline, but who needs the baggage and the contract wows? Sens made a big mistake resigning him and are stuck with him and his antics for another 2 seasons. Maybe they need Alex Kovalev to show him how to turn it around?
Great post. Obviously, I'm not sure why Murray let it boil as long as it did but then again, how many takers would there have been? I feel bad for the Senators in the sense that I honestly believed they had the team to win the whole thing this year. I think they learned a lot by making it to the SCF last spring, and may have been able to clear that final hurdle this time 'round. As for your top parargraph, I couldn't agree more. This is a situation that coul have been resolved internally, with Murray and the leaders of this team taking control. Ottawa is still going to be a dangerous team come playoff time, but you have to wonder if the damage has been done.
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