Murray & Hartsburg fired in Ottawa?

[selke71 0]

The Ottawa Citizen reports:

As the Ottawa Senators wrap up their 1-6-1 eight-game road trip tonight in Boston, speculation on the futures of general manager Bryan Murray and head coach Craig Hartsburg continues to grow.

Le Journal de Montreal today speculated that Senators owner Eugene Melnyk had made up his mind to replace both individuals, Murray with Hockey Canada boss Bob Nicholson, and Hartsburg with Canadian Junior gold-medal-winning coach Pat Quinn. The paper said Melnyk reached his decision after spending three weeks in the company of Nicholson and Quinn at the world junior hockey championship, which concluded Monday in Ottawa with Canada beating Sweden 5-1.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/sports/hockey...2011/story.html

[pantherfan 0]

About time, if Hartsburg can't get a spark out of Ottawas 3 then it's time for change.

[Chadd 916]

I'd rather see Hartley there. I don't think Quinn's coaching style works well in the new NHL. Your fourth line can't average almost as much ice time as your top line if you expect to win on a regular basis.

[interpathway 9]

Yeah, Ottawa has been going through a tough spell here. Something has to change I suppose.

[selke71 0]

Better to get rid of the coach and even the GM than get rid of a player like Spezza in my judgment. Spezza has been the one getting all the blame publicly for months now. Hartsburg goes out and trashes him in the media. It's a disgrace. If something didn't change, Spezza would end up getting traded, and I guess the Senators would have Mike Fisher (12 pts in 34 gms) or Chris Kelly (9 pts in 34 gms) center their top line instead.

Hartsburg already put him on the third line at one point with The Hungry Ruutu and Chris Neil because he said Spezza wasn't giving enough effort (32 pts in 38 gms, 113 shots).

[Allsmokenopancake 0]

Not so fast apparently...

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=262313&amp...os=topStory_nhl

Several media outlets had released reports stating that the Senators were prepared to fire head coach Craig Hartsburg and general manager Bryan Murray and replacing them with the combination of Quinn as head coach and Hockey Canada president Bob Nicholson as GM.

Melnyk stated that those rumours were completely false.

"Contrary to what is being reported today by the media, I have made no decisions with respect to any personnel changes within the Senators organization," Melnyk stated. "Winning remains our number one priority and there is a collective focus by our management, our coaching staff and our players to deliver this to our fans.

Full story with the clicky click

[RadioGaGa 162]

Where there's smoke...there's most likely fire. It's only a matter of time now.

[Law Goalie 147]

Hartsburg's idiotic coaching decisions have already tanked the Senators; Quinn would finish them off completely. The decision to hire Hartsburg was, in effect, to hire a younger Pat Quinn - same style, same effect. A team that used to play creative, exciting hockey for better or worse now grinds out tight losses in grimace-inducing boredom.

It has been well said that one should choose one's enemy wisely, for one will become him: the Senators chose poorly but understandably because of their repeated playoff defeats, and have turned themselves into the Quinn-era Leafs. The Senators are, however, following the Quinn Plan even more successfully, since they've plummeted into the final stages of playoff-missing drudgery even faster than the Leafs did.

The best evidence of Ottawa's mismanagement is to be found in a study of Antoine Vermette: a brilliant second-round speculation who blossomed into a first-rate skilled scoring prospect that Ottawa has systematically trained into a third-line face-off specialist with occasional flares of Radek Dvorak-esque offensive mishap. Only through sheer force of will could a hockey player that good be so thoroughly degraded.

Will they hire Quinn? Almost assuredly. Will he get some kind of a reaction? Hey, why not... Will it mean anything? Nope.

I stopped watching the Sens in September, and I'm a happier man for it. I've gone back to Boston, where the heart and soul of the real Senators still beats inside Zdeno Chara's huge, misshapen body.