It's been twenty years since an Ottawa Senators head coach left the organization and found an NHL head coaching job elsewhere.
When it comes to coaches, the NHL strongly believes in recycling. The Ottawa Senators even decided to go Green last month.
Since the regular season ended, six of the seven head coaches who've been hired – Ottawa's Travis Green, Toronto's Craig Berube, New Jersey's Sheldon Keefe, Seattle's Dan Bylsma, Buffalo's Lindy Ruff, and Winnipeg's Scott Arniel – all used to be NHL head coaches somewhere else.
So why is no one ever interested in Senators head coaches after they're dismissed?
Remarkably, it's been 20 years since a Sens head coach left the organization and later found an NHL head coaching job elsewhere. The last one to do so on a non-interim basis was Jacques Martin. He was fired in 2004 and found plenty of other opportunities, including a final one here in Ottawa this season.
Fans talk a lot about Ottawa being a goalie graveyard, but it's also been a coaching cemetery.
Since Martin parted company with the Sens the first time, the Sens' list of head coaches who've come and gone includes Bryan Murray, John Paddock, Craig Hartsburg, Cory Clouston, Paul MacLean, Dave Cameron, Guy Boucher, Marc Crawford, and D.J. Smith.
Murray stayed with the Senators, moving away from coaching to take the club's GM job. However, everyone else on the list left the organization, continued to pursue their coaching careers, and was never again offered the chance to be an NHL head coach.
After leaving Ottawa:
- Paddock coached nine more years in junior, the AHL, and as an NHL assistant. His final year was last season with Regina, coaching Connor Bedard.
- Hartsburg coached for seven more seasons in junior as a head coach and an NHL assistant. His swan song was 2015-16 with Columbus, where he was let go when John Tortorella took over.
- Clouston coached three more years in junior, the last in 2015 with Prince Albert. After he was fired, little did the Senators know he'd coach Mark Stone, a prized future asset the following season in Brandon.
- MacLean coached four more seasons as an NHL assistant, the last in 2021-2022 with Toronto under Sheldon Keefe.
- Dave Cameron has coached for the last seven seasons, been an NHL assistant, a head coach in Austria, and, for the last three years, the head coach of the Ottawa 67s.
- Boucher has only coached for one year at a top level as an assistant with Toronto, where he was fired earlier this month.
- Crawford coached for four more seasons as an assistant in Chicago. He worked last season as a head coach in Switzerland as a midseason replacement.
- Smith almost immediately got a job as an assistant in Los Angeles under Jim Hiller and re-signed as an assistant for this fall.
So why does no one leave Ottawa and find a head coaching job elsewhere? Why aren't they ever on anyone else's NHL radar as a head coach? The answer is simple. On the day Ottawa hired them, most were already off everyone else's head coaching radar or were never on it. That's why owner Eugene Melnyk could employ them at a lower salary.
Melnyk was always very clear about not paying market value for the best coaches or anyone else. In a 2016 interview with TSN 1200 radio, he said he disagreed with a coach now getting $5 million.
"Does he walk on water?" Melnyk asked out loud. "I mean, five million bucks? Sometimes, the markets get silly. I've seen it in horses, I've seen it in hockey players, and things change all of a sudden somehow, some way.
"To put that kind of money for one single person, that's tough from even a management point of view. You wouldn't do that with an executive. Why go crazy in the business of hockey to do that? And I don't think it can make that much of a difference. I really don't."
As a result, the Senators never bothered to submit a bid for the game's very best coaches. And there came a point when good coaches didn't want to come here for reasons other than money.
Some of Ottawa's choices during the previous regime weren't good enough to be at the NHL level. Others who did have some coaching ability only had a blip of success. In some cases, their approach had significant flaws. But in all cases, due to cutting corners, they didn't have proper organizational support or the roster required to have sustained success or to improve their personal coaching stock.
In fact, their stock (which wasn't soaring to begin with) fell hard after leaving. If you're a GM in another market, that's a tough sell. Do you want to hire the fired Ottawa Senators head coach, the guy that even the frugal Eugene Melnyk didn't want anymore?
The stigma of that era will take some time to fully scrub off – in all areas of the organization – but those days now appear to be behind them.