After having a very noticeable conversation with Colin Greening on the Senators’ bench following his team’s practice this morning, Senators general manager Bryan Murray made a timely appearance on TSN 1200’s ‘In the Box’.
Although the bulk of the interview was spent breaking down Greening’s situation because Murray’s visible chat with the player, he also addressed his interest in adding a top six forward and his philosophy of whether the club should sell high on goaltender Craig Anderson.
You can listen to the full interview by clicking here or by listening to the embedded audio at the bottom of the post.
As always, my thoughts are in bold.
On Murray having a conversation with Colin Greening and whether there was any news on that front…
“There’s no news. I just told him basically that I had talked to a number of GMs. I’ve tried to encourage them to give him an opportunity through a trade or whatever vehicle it may be. At this point, there’s nothing for him. I just told him eventually here, if we don’t get something done, he’s got to play hockey. You can’t play hockey as a 23rd or 24th guy on the roster here, so I may have to put him on waivers at some point in time. But in the meantime, we’re going to look and see if there’s some way of accommodating him and giving him a chance to continue his (NHL) career.”
I posted an article on Greening’s situation yesterday.
On a players appreciating honesty in knowing what their situation is…
“I think he’d appreciate me more if I told him he was going to play every night, but very definitely. I really think that’s why I’m in this business, really. It’s a people thing and you have to stay in touch with your players. Whether they’re young guys or old guys, they like to be told what the thinking of management is. From Colin’s point of view, I went to Dave (Cameron) first and I asked him if he was playing in the near future and I heard you just comment that we have a full roster of people now, and he happens to be the guy that is not in the lineup and not going to be it looks like for the next few games, at least. He’s a young guy with a chance to play and contribute to a team in the National Hockey League. He’s a big guy. He skates pretty well. He just doesn’t fit right now with our group at this moment anyway. Two injuries from now, he could be the most important guy going, but anyway, I just tried very hard to let him know we’re thinking (of him). We’re concerned. We’d like him to be able to continue his career and if he has to go down and play a little bit in Binghamton to get noticed at some point in time during the year, that’s the way it is.”
If injuries felled two of Ottawa’s left wingers and that necessitated putting Greening back in the lineup, there’s still not a chance that he would become “the most important guy going”. At this point in his career, too many people have passed him on the development chart.
Kudos to Bryan Murray for foreshadowing how the Greening situation is going to unfold though: with the player clearing waivers and appearing in games in Binghamton with a buyout of the final two years of his contract likely to happen this summer.
On whether Murray was going to put Greening on waivers before today’s noon deadline…
“No. No. We’re going to wait until after the All-Star break. We’ll talk to his agent today and we’ll give him permission to talk to some teams and see if something can be done for Colin.”
As I joked yesterday, maybe it’s too early to dismiss Greening’s representatives’ abilities to get a deal done. After all, they’re the same person(s) who landed their client a three-year contract that has a limited no-trade clause and an escalating salary structure that pays him $3.2 million in the final year of his deal.
On Greening being a great guy…
“Well we liked him so much last year… we could have let him go (and hit unrestricted free agency), I guess. We signed him to a contract extension. We thought that he was going to be able to be a regular in the lineup, for sure. He’s the type of guy that can play, but then you get a (Curtis) Lazar coming in and you get (Jean-Gabriel) Pageau playing at the level he’s playing at now and things happen in hockey. I thought for sure when I talked to a few managers that (Greening) would be the type of player that would go in and be a depth player at least for a real contending hockey team. It may well end up being that, but at the moment, it’s not the case. But he is a good guy. He does work hard. He‘ll give you what he can. He just… a couple of years back when he played with (Jason Spezza) and them, he got some goals and he hasn’t been able to do that lately.”
The image of Bryan Murray calling “real contending hockey teams” who are coincidentally pressed up against the salary cap ceiling and trying to encourage them to acquire an overpriced depth player and sell them on Greening being a good fit is quite funny.
Why the organization ever felt compelled to lock up Greening before the start of the 2013-14 season knowing that he was going to play in a third or fourth line capacity away from Spezza alludes me. Ignoring all the underlying statistical evidence to suggest it was a terrible move, the signing never made sense at the time.
Unfortunately, Murray was never asked whether the Senators would be willing to eat up some of Greening’s salary to move him was never broached. If they could absorb enough salary to make it a cheaper alternative than a buyout, maybe that makes sense for the Senators. Or maybe there simply isn’t any interest from other teams in acquiring Greening at all.
On whether Chris Neil is ready to return…
“We’ll take him off IR today and Dave (Cameron) will have the option of dressing him tomorrow night.”
Chris Neil will be in the lineup tonight versus the Rangers.
On how close Mark Borowiecki is to a return…
“Well, we’re going to wait until after the All-Star break with him. He’s skating, but I think there’s some scar tissue there. He had such a deep cut that we have to be careful. Fortunately for us, we’ve got seven (defencemen) that are healthy as well as (Borowiecki), so we’ll make him wait until after the break. That will give him another week of conditioning and healing.”
With the return of Marc Methot and some improved play by Patrick Wiercioch, the Senators have coincidentally been better hockey of late. Obviously there are other contributing factors as well, but much like the return of Chris Neil, if the coaching staff makes a concerted effort to put Borowiecki back into the lineup at the expense of a better player, the organization will willingly be making their lineup worse. Rejoice tank nation.
On being ten points out of the playoff and whether his ideology on buying versus selling has changed since his interview with Bruce Garrioch…
“Well, it’s been frustrating. I thought in Dallas we should have won the hockey game. I thought the other night against Carolina, we were the better team. It’s just how it goes. Some nights you play poor and you get a point or two points out of it and another night (you play better but get none). I think we’re playing better now. We’re playing a better style. We’re more aggressive. We get more scoring chances. We don’t give up as many chances as we had been. I think the chances the other night were 22 to 10 or something and high quality. We don’t score and don’t win. So that part is… but we still need to add another top six guy. Bobby Ryan, he’s a legitimate top six guy. If we had one more player to play there and move one of the younger guys back a notch, I think it would really help our hockey team a lot. But I spent yesterday going through the rosters of pretty much every team and the evaluation we have on them, it’s hard to get that player if it’s possible at all – other than going real low in the draft and waiting for a young guy to come along, but we’d like to hurry that process up. I’m going to continue to talk to people and search, but I know it’s going to be difficult.”
Here’s a nice little table summarizing the differences between MacLean and Cameron:
Shots/Gm
Shots Against/Gm
5v5 CF%
5v5 FF%
5v5 SF%
PDO
5v5 Sh%
5v5 SV%
PP%
PK%
MacLean
28.8
34.4
47.70
45.33
44.04
100.2
7.1
.931
20.0
82.5
Cameron
32.2
29.2
52.46
50.70
51.07
99.9
8.4
.915
12.1
84.4
The data essentially backs up everything that Bryan Murray is saying regarding the team’s play, but as I’ve written before, Cameron’s certainly benefited from a softer schedule. There’s no question he has faced easier quality of competition – which makes sense, because you never want to cut a new coach off at the knees by giving him a difficult stretch of games to get his feet wet. Perhaps most importantly, injuries to less effective players has allowed Cameron to dress what would otherwise be his most efficient lineups. Although he has routinely scratched Chris Phillips, it remains to be seen how he handles the return of players like Mark Borowiecki, Chris Neil and eventually Zack Smith.
What is interesting about Murray’s comments pertaining to adding offence to the Senators is that the team is actually shooting better under Dave Cameron than they were under Paul MacLean – although reports of adding a top six forward occurred during MacLean’s tenure, as well.
Maybe if the Senators wanted to add a little offensive spark, they could employ their leading even strength point producer, Mike Hoffman, more creatively on the power play rather than use him sparingly on the second power play unit playing a point position.
On how he feels about the team’s competitiveness and whether it may be in team’s best interests to lose now…
“Well, we always try to win. I think that’s the most important message to our players. We’ve got a whole core of young players that are becoming very important in the organization. I think our defensive core, for the most part, is quite young. Our goaltending, we’ve got a vet and a good, young player and we’ve got, I think, a real core of forwards that are young. It’s hard just to throw in the towel. I don’t want to ever do that and I never want that to be the message. It’s easy for people to say that that are outside the organization, but when you’re inside and you’re trying to build credibility, you’re trying to send the message that we want to be and should be a contending team… I thought we should be better. I certainly feel that we should be within two or three points, at least, of a playoff spot. We’ve blown some games. We didn’t play very well early. We know that. I’m not sure I can give you an answer whether I go search for a more experienced guy at this point. If I had a guy that I could get who had a little more time on his contract, or had assurance that I could sign him, I would do that to make (the roster) better. I think we’re still (in the playoff hunt). Ten points is a lot to make up. I know that, but I still think if we could get a little run going here, there are going to be some head-to-head contests above us that teams are going to lose, so we have a chance to close the gap a little bit, so that’s going to continue at this point.”
The team can also thank Craig Anderson for allowing the team to not be 20 points out of the playoff picture.
To give Murray some credit, he’s done an exponentially better job of drafting and developing young players who can play on the parent roster. Ideally, you want an inexhaustible supply of young talent so that when the players on the parent roster become too expensive or too shitty, you can move on without pause.
Now with that being said, it’s one thing to be young, it’s another to have a significant amount of young talent that is still trending up and has significant projectable upside to look forward to. With the exception of a Cody Ceci or a Curtis Lazar and possibly a Robin Lehner, I cannot say with any kind of confidence that this team’s youth is going to get significantly better than the level that they are performing at right now.
That, of course, isn’t to say that there isn’t young value here, there is. Mike Hoffman and Mark Stone in particular have demonstrated themselves to be efficient and reliable players who probably warrant more playing time than they’re currently receiving, but the bulk of Ottawa’s youth projects second or third line players. I know that it’s beating a drum at this point and it’s easy to say, but this team needs an injection of elite talent. Without it, I just don’t see how this organization can escape, especially with its budget, being anything more than a playoff bubble team that relies heavily upon its goaltenders to carry them through the season.
On Craig Anderson being Ottawa’s best trade asset and whether the organization would consider trading him…
“Why would I do that at this point? We don’t have a third goaltender. Robin (Lehner) is close to ready, but he’s got to play more games. And I think with Craig being the credible guy that he is, I don’t know that I have to… if you don’t have goaltending in this league, you don’t have anything. We know that. We can’t start and get rid of a guy and not be able to find a guy that can come in and play at that calibre. We know that’s not going to happen, so it’s unlikely that Craig Anderson is going anywhere but the net in Ottawa.”
To play devil’s advocate, if you don’t have at least two or three elite-level position players, you don’t have anything either. Right now, the Senators have one in Erik Karlsson and unless they luck out in the draft, I don’t know where they’re going to find their next one.
To Anderson’s credit, he has consistently played like an elite goaltender this season, but can he continue to play like one throughout the season or through the duration of his contract?
At the best of times, goaltending is a volatile position, just look at the varying opinions of Robin Lehner for proof of that. Even Anderson’s track record reflects the fact that when he plays a full season’s worth of games, his numbers tend to normalize and sit near league average numbers.
Looking at Ottawa’s situation, I have to wonder how the Senators will elect to balance player development with winning once (assuming) they fall deeper out of the playoff picture. How entrenched is Dave Cameron as the team’s head coach of the future? Will the organization play Robin Lehner more in the second half of the season to evaluate him better and give him a chance to develop?
If Anderson starts playing less to create more opportunity for Lehner and eventually transition to him being the goaltender of the future, there may never be another chance to recoup as much value for Anderson as there is now.
Keeping that in mind, it’s not like the Senators have ever elected to maximize the returns on his veteran core at any point during his tenure as general manager. Rather than move a key piece to shake his team up in 2008, he elected to move Joe Corvo and Patrick Eaves to Carolina for Mike Commodore and Cory Stillman. In 2009, he moved Dany Heatley, but only after he demanded a trade. When the team underwent its much ballyhooed 2011 rebuild, it sold high on likeable but replaceable niche players in Mike Fisher and Chris Kelly. In 2014, he moved Jason Spezza for quantity – a bevy of safe, projectable third line talent – despite the playmaking center expressing interest in being moved four years earlier.
The Senators rarely maximize their veteran assets and that’s part of the reason why they are in the situation they are in. I can understand the trepidation in moving Anderson because he masks a lot of the deficiencies that this team has, but if the Senators are this tragically flawed playing with Anderson at his best, how good will the assortment of talent be when his play eventually regresses to numbers resembling his career norm?
On Bryan Murray’s ideal trade target for a top six forward being a young player on a controllable contract who can be with the team for awhile…
“Yeah, the Bobby Ryan trade was an example of something that I’d be looking to try and do – where you pay a couple of chips to get an established guy that maybe doesn’t fit or is unable to fit in the cap or whatever it may be on another team. I don’t think that there’s a lot of them available, but we’re going to keep looking.”
I don’t know whether I should take Murray’s answer here seriously or not. On one hand, I don’t blame him for maintaining that he’s trying to make the team better – especially with this many games left in the season, regardless of their long playoff odds. At the same time, it’s completely unrealistic to think that the Senators would be able to add a young and established player who has a lot of controllable term left on his deal. No playoff bound team would be looking to make their roster worse now and conversely, any non-playoff team would be looking to add a significant amount of future assets or youth to their collective. Unless the Senators are willing to trade some of the youth off the parent roster, I just can’t imagine them getting this kind of deal done without mortgaging a significant part of the future.
And for what, really? Even with another legitimate top six forward (which I would hope would be another center and not a winger), this team, especially with their blue line, is more than just a few pieces away.
On that type of deal not being easy to make…
“They are never easy and you pay a price. We traded a young guy, (Jakob) Silfverberg and a (first round pick that wound up being a top ten pick), but it’s worked out. I think Bobby Ryan’s come in and given us credibility here. He’s a hardworking guy. He’s helping a couple of young players establish themselves and he’s just a young player himself. So I think that that kind of player, if there’s a deal like that available, you try and make it.”
I wish I knew what Murray meant by credibility. I’m guessing he’s referring to Ryan re-signing with the Senators and helping shift the criticisms that players no longer wanted to play here because as likeable, and marketable as Bobby Ryan is, the Senators haven’t taken a step forward as an organization. They are still no closer in becoming more than just a perennial playoff bubble team.
On this team giving itself more of an opportunity to win since the coaching change…
“Well, the philosophy has changed. I think Paul (MacLean) is a good coach and he’s going to coach in the league again. I think he was more concerned about being able to defend – maybe not do the skill development all the time that we wanted to see be done. I think you see Dave’s practices, there’s more flow to it. There’s more passing the puck. There’s five-and-zeroes even. It doesn’t matter what level you’re at as a hockey player, you need to learn to play with the people you’re put with and you have to pass the puck. You have to do things quickly. You have to play your position and I think we’re doing more of that and we’re doing a lot more skating in practice. I think it catches up to a few of the players, but long-term, I think it’s very beneficial. There is a style change. We forecheck a lot more often now. Our shots against are really down in comparison. We’re outshooting teams more regularly. It hasn’t translated into wins. That’s the only thing that’s bothersome. As I say, against Carolina, we outplayed them, I thought. Outshot them. Outchanced them and didn’t win the hockey game. That’s hockey. That’s sport, but I’d like to see that now transfer over into where we’re a more productive hockey team.”
Translation: PDO, it’s a bitch.