The slow sinking of the Ottawa Senators
The Ottawa Senators traded forward Mike Hoffman on Tuesday to San Jose, which is literally as far as they could send him in the NHL without paying someone $50 to throw him in the Pacific Ocean. They got back … well, does it matter? When you need to dump a body, it’s hard to haggle too much over the price.
Of course, that argument was harder to make when San Jose traded Hoffman to Florida two hours later, and got back a better return than Ottawa did. It’s impressive to lose two trades in one day, especially when you only made one.
Such is the whirlpool of despair in which the Senators swirl. Hoffman was their leading goal scorer over the past four seasons, and is 24th in the league in that span. He was a homegrown fifth-round pick, on a decent contract. And he couldn’t have been more toxic if he was owner Eugene Melnyk’s ex-liver.
“We did our homework, and we discussed it with a lot of people, and we feel that’s in the past,” Florida Panthers general manager Dale Tallon said. “We’re very confident that he’ll be embraced by our team and by their wives, girlfriends.”
Hoffman was radioactive from the moment Erik Karlsson’s wife Melinda filed a protection order against Hoffman’s fiancée Monika Caryk last week, accusing Caryk of persistent and horrifying cyberbullying. Hoffman and Caryk professed innocence and shock, though it seems unlikely the Karlssons would have filed the order without some form of confirmation. The Ottawa Citizen reported an active police investigation into stalking allegations is ongoing.
So Hoffman was put on the first toxic material tanker out of town, with a fifth-round pick and defenceman Cody Donaghey.
From San Jose, Ottawa got back the thoroughly unremarkable Mikkel Boedker, with two years and $8 million (U.S.) left on his contract, a 22-year-old defenceman named Julius Bergman, and a 2020 sixth-round pick. Not much. It was like a variation on the old Henny Youngman line: “Take his wife, please.”
Of course, San Jose’s Doug Wilson then flipped Hoffman back into Ottawa’s division along with a sixth-round pick for a second-rounder, a fourthrounder, and two fifth-rounders. Wilson created cap space and added picks. It was like he was the one trying to rebuild.
“We had been contacted by Ottawa last week, and we kind of let it lie, because it was too big a price to pay, and ... we looked at (this) deal and we felt that this would be a perfect fit for our team,” Tallon said. “(The harmony of the wives’ and girlfriends’ room) is important … I think it’s, they get along better when the team wins more.”
Well, Ottawa may not do that again for a while. The Senators also owe the Colorado Avalanche a first-round pick either this year or next as part of the Matt Duchene deal. Disaster.
It was just over a year ago that Ottawa’s Pierre Dorion was a finalist for general manager of the year, after Ottawa somehow slid to double overtime of Game 7 of the conference final, with Karlsson limping around on one leg.
Then last year everything fell apart, and the franchise has veered into embarrassment. (We’re not even getting into how it took them nearly two weeks to suspend assistant GM Randy Lee over harassment allegations.) The fan campaign to drive out Melnyk hasn’t made a dent, but he remains the source of so much of their garage-sale dysfunction. It was December, at their outdoor game, when Melnyk carped about fan support, telling reporters, “Here, we’re fighting every day to sell a ticket, honest to God. When you get to the third round of the playoffs and you’re begging people to buy a ticket, something’s wrong with that picture … Even at $68 million (in salaries), that’s way too much over a revenue base that we have. If you want to go bankrupt, have the cheapest product on the market and the best product. We’re giving the best product.”
Asked about relocation, Melnyk said, “If it becomes a disaster, yes. If you start not seeing crowds showing up, yes. But for now, we are on the cusp of doing OK.”
So now the Senators have let the trade value of a scoring winger implode — the club had known about the allegations since the end of the season, and were unable or unwilling to mitigate them before they went public — and are expected to trade Karlsson and centre Zack Smith as early as this week. Which means they are at the stage of the rebuild where they pour gasoline all over the countertops and light a match.
What will be left? Dorion seems out of his depth, and Karlsson was their generational player, a truly transcendent figure. Ownership is driving him away, the way it drove franchise icon Daniel Alfredsson away before him. If Melnyk doesn’t sell, and the club trades Karlsson for anything less than a ransom — the Leafs should make an offer — who will want to hack their way through afternoon traffic to that outdated, sterile barn to watch the expiring contracts of Duchene and Mark Stone lose 60 games? What did Melnyk say in December, about the prospect of relocation? If it becomes a disaster, yes.
Melnyk should sell. But then, some people are slow to admit defeat. A little over a year ago, the Senators were a goal from the Stanley Cup final. That’s the joke.