New Sens Management Deserves Time and Runway to Put Vision in Place

So, one week before Christmas, the Senators pulled the trigger on a move that fans have literally been screaming about for months. 

Much like all of you, the news of head coach DJ Smith’s firing on December 18, immediately after running a “fun” practice after a series of dispiriting losses, has caused me to think about what comes next.

This was a move that was long overdue. At least months, if not entire seasons overdue. By all accounts, Smith is a quality human being – a man who had the respect of his players and all those he came across. 

But that didn't translate to being a good head coach in Ottawa. Under Smith and the similarly dismissed Davis Payne, this team had no structure, no consistency, no vision, no accountability, no new ideas, no ability to calm the players down when they're up or down, and no ability to make adjustments in real time. 

Smith's kind and affable nature didn’t result in acceptable defensive play, or a higher number in the win column. His repetitive and cliched answers during his dour post-game press conferences in his final months did him no favours. This should not be the end of his career, however. Smith could thrive as a "good cop" assistant coach to a "bad cop" head coach. When the boss is mean to the players, DJ can be there to pick them up. 

For his positive attributes, this road trip has forced the team's hand. I will forever believe that Smith did his best, but you can’t execute your best when you don’t have tangible ideas to get there.

Smith himself said a few weeks ago "This isn't rock bottom" after a lifeless 5-0 to the Panthers. It turns out he was right. Rock bottom was the current road trip the team is on. 

But, what coach would take this team over with no GM in place, at their current place in the standings, and in the middle of the season? Fortunately, the team had the perfect interim candidates in Jacques Martin and Daniel Alfredsson – quality men with decades in the game, a history of winning, and no designs on being the full-time guy heading into the off-season, when the candidate pool will be well stocked. 

These two gentlemen will likely impart their wisdom and good habits, and then return to the more supervisory roles they were doing before. At least I hope so, because hiring Alfredsson in particular for a role with a shelf life is guaranteed to blow up in the team’s face down the line. Never hire your franchise legends for roles that require replacements every few years. Even the mighty and legendary Rod Brind’Amour in Carolina will be fired some day, despite his fantastic success to date.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing, and bringing in two of the winningest names in franchise history buys time and goodwill from a fan base that, in the status quo, had none left to give. The duo can start building up a new vision for this roster in the coming months, and stick around to supervise it from the press box once the new coaching staff is in place. 

Any good full-time coach with pedigree will want to know who the GM is, what the overall organizational vision is, and to have some security in the role – questions that the Senators organization can't answer today with any certainty. You're not getting Craig Berube or Patrick Roy or Claude Julien under those circumstances until next year when proper management and vision is in place. The goal for the rest of the year is quality table setting for the next coaching staff.

Fans would be wise to not expect immediate miracles. History remembers Martin as the guy who took a perpetually dead last team straight to the playoffs in one shot. But people forget that when he replaced Dave “Sparky” Allison in January of 1996, Martin’s Senators went 10-24 the rest of that season. Sure, that was a 5X increase over Allison’s two wins to date, but it took time to instill those winning habits in Ottawa, where they made the playoffs with a mere 77 points in 1997. 

While even Smith was better than a 10-24 record, Martin has had roughly two weeks to get acclimatized. He needs time to analyze the roster, their shortcomings, and come up with a plan before the results come. There's a lot to fix. His role is to set the table for a new staff next year. 

So why did it take so long for new ownership to wake up and smell the terrible defense, sub par goaltending, and second period implosions?

Many Senators fans on social media have already turned on the team’s new ownership and management, some three months after the sale. I have not. Michael Andlauer and Steve Staios have a major task in front of them that takes way longer than 3 months to fix. Andlauer, in particular, inherited damaged goods, and how damaged those goods actually were was clearly hidden from him during the purchase of the franchise. 

This is to say nothing of the fact the sale closed so late they couldn't make any reasonable changes before the season, or properly react and prepare for forfeited first round picks and 41 game gambling suspensions that were part of the package. 

While I'm a little annoyed that two months after the firing of Pierre Dorion, the Senators don't have a new GM, I can sympathize with the Lord-only-knows-what Melnyk era messes they're cleaning up behind the scenes. That needs to happen before you can even start looking at the on ice product. 

A new coach is a band aid to a symptom, while fixing a broken down organization to run properly is actually curing the disease. A lost season is small potatoes compared to the enormity of that task. Especially after spending $950 million to get the team. 

The carry-over issues have allowed us to see truly how poorly run this organization was from top to bottom, and three months and a new interim coach likely won't fix those issues. I think they took the gamble that they could focus on those organizational tasks and DJ and company could adequately hold down the on ice stuff while they fixed the actual structure of the organization. 

That includes: fan and business outreach, hiring good people for important roles (which they've done with the hiring of Alfredsson, Cyril Leeder, Sean Tierney, et al), getting a new arena going, holding Pierre Dorion accountable for an egregious error in judgement, and opening up all the windows to air out the stink of the Melnyk years. 

Obviously that was a bad gamble, based on recent results, but a reasonable one to make while they hoped they could focus on actually fixing the foundations.

It's easy to forget that this is three months into Year One for those two, and they perhaps underestimated the high level of patience Sens fans have shown in the previous six years. If that's their biggest error in judgement so far, that's forgiveable. 

Fans should be grateful that the new regime is not interested in band-aid solutions or knee-jerk reactions and we haven't even started seeing the execution of their actual vision. I think we can confirm that the firing of Smith was forced by results, not by flying off the handle like previous ownership would have. The season is likely already lost, but the future can be built properly.

Yes, we're at another wasted season, and they deserve criticism for Smith keeping his job as long as he did and another season in the basement at Christmas time. But I can't agree with opinions that say Andlauer or Staios don't know what they're doing. If you buy a broken down home covered in mold with holes in the wall, leaky pipes, rotten floorboards, and crumbling concrete, you don't criticize the homeowner because they're not ready to throw a house party in three months.

I've seen several opinions that say this is the worst it's ever been for this franchise, that it's embarrassing to be a Senators fan these days. It's not. Hope burns brighter for this team than it has in decades. The club finally has a sharp, reasonable, empathetic, and intelligent owner who cares, it's just a shame he can't speed up the process. Andlauer and Staios are sharp minds who have won at every level across multiple endeavours, and three poor months of Sens hockey isn't going to change that. They're not miracle workers, but they are smart and passionate hockey men.

This ownership/management group hasn't even made a draft pick, signed a free agent, or made a trade yet. It's been all damage control from the previous regime from day one. You can't calmly build when you've had crisis after crisis to manage right from the starting line. 

Of course, fans wanted a new coach under the Christmas tree this year, and the organization finally delivered on that. Now they hope, with the interim solutions in place, they can start to see that vision come to fruition in the new year as Andlauer and company continue their renovations of the $950 million broken down house. There’s a lot of drywall to patch and floorboards to replace.

It's always darkest before dawn, and we do have hope that this is the last of the pitch black moments before the sunrise. The Sens have good people in charge of things who are bringing in more good people, and they deserve a runway to put that vision into place.