After a 5-0 loss to the Florida Panthers, the Senators are below .500 and off to yet another poor start under head coach D.J. Smith.
In March of 2012, when Brian Burke fired Ron Wilson as Head Coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs, he said during the press conference that it would be "cruel and unusual punishment to let Ron coach another game at the Air Canada Centre."
After watching the Senators come unhinged in their worst home performance in Smith's four-plus-year tenure, it's hard not to feel like having Smith coach the Senators' next home game against the Seattle Kraken on December 2nd would be anything other than cruel and unusual punishment.
With chants of "Fire DJ" emanating from the stands at the Canadian Tire Centre on Monday night, even Brady Tkachuk and Claude Giroux will have a hard time convincing the mob that the team still wants to play for Smith.
Even if they do, does it really matter?
Players' coaches tend to have a few things in common. The players enjoy playing for them. Some may enjoy career statistical years. Others may choose to extend in their current city when free agency looms. Players tend to lie down in traffic for them or plead their case when things go sour.
They also tend to not get the most out of their teams. They try to get by on the players' admiration to elevate their performance rather than having to play the heavy when it is called for.
The players are supposedly playing for their coach. Sometimes, it feels like the coach is playing for the players.
It would be hard to recall Smith ever putting the hammer down on a veteran player. It has always been notoriously hard for younger players to earn his trust.
Erik Brannstrom was a healthy scratch on March 1st of last year.
Jacob Bernard-Docker has had to earn his keep, but if not for the simultaneous injuries to Chabot, Zub, and Brannstrom, he might still be getting 10 minutes per game.
The leash for Tyler Kleven and Nikolas Matinpalo was extremely short, and it's getting harder and harder to imagine Lassi Thomson ever playing for Smith again.
Once a player becomes established, for whatever reason, Smith's ability to instill accountability seems to disappear.
None of us hears what is said behind closed doors. There may be a side to Smith that the media and fans haven't gotten a glimpse of after all this time. Maybe the players know what an angry or frustrated Smith looks like and dare not summon it out of deference.
To his credit, Smith has never done one of those stick-throwing tirades in the middle of a practice or gone berserk in the middle of a game and gotten ejected. That doesn't feel like the missing piece.
Fans and media do, however, hear every press conference.
The most familiar quotes from Monday's post-game were "It's on me," "You can't win like that," and "It's my job to dress the best lineup."
It's easy to see why players would enjoy playing for someone like that – someone willing to take a bullet and keep his players from harm.
No one expects Smith to become a tyrant or to make a spectacle of himself to prove how much he cares. There is no doubt about his commitment.
However, when a leader caters to the Foremost Jacks on the team to the point that he is unable or unwilling to make them unhappy by simply reminding them that failure to execute consistently comes with consequences, then the machine has broken down.
If the respect within the dressing room that he seems to have would be jeopardized by instilling accountability, not only amongst the fringe players but also the core, then it wasn't his room anyway.
Ideally, a new GM would be brought in to assess and decide. In the interest of being humane, that timetable needs to be accelerated.