Bobby Butler scores 10g in 36 games. Gets 2 years.
Colin Greening scores 6g in 24 games. gets 3 years.
Peter Regin 13g in 75 games. Gets 2 years.
Erik Condra 6g in 26 games. Gets 2 years.
Pretty much par for the course on guys that could be seconds liners but end falling down the ladder.
Regin and Condra were excellent bottom-sixers for a time with a cap hit of 1.0 and 0.625. Those extensions were super cheap and well deserved. I doubt Condra was ever regarded as a possible top-6. Regin was probably projected as an excellent 2-way 3rd line center (a taller Pageau)
Greening had a promising debut but everybody got fooled by physical attributes and speed. I looked at his puck handling and knew he wouldn't work as a top-sixer. His first extension at $816,667 was really good, but unfortunately he carried his success jut long enough to earn another extension, and that's were it became a bad investment, something that was rectified with the Phaneuf trade.
Butler looked promising too (10 goals, 11 assists in 36 games) and Sens probably thought they would save by signing him to a one-way $1,050,000 contract for 2 years but that was a player that had a short life span. A cheap gamble that they lost. Not a big deal.
No one can pretend the Murray era was a success. The evidence is in, it was bad on all fronts, performance, player relationships, in game experience, attendance, ownership - the entire thing didn't go well.
Success is not the word I'd use but the team under Murray was far from being as bad as some claim
The team went through a rebuild and made the playoffs 5 time out of 9 seasons and went to the 2nd round once. In the regular season, Sens were 18th in terms of standing points; 13th for GF and 10th for GA.
Maybe the results were average but Murray built a solid foundation and a flourishing pipeline that put the team in a great position. It's clear that last year's team was mostly because of Murray's work, unless you think that Dorion's acquisitions (Brassard, Burrows, Stalberg, Pyatt, Kelly) made the difference
The big critic I always under Murray was the coaching staff, but maybe the budget didn't even allow him to get better.
Just the fact that you say "it was bad on all fronts" shows how unfair and totally unreliable your assessment is. Performance was both good and bad depending on the stretches, player relationships were mostly excellent, in game experience? Attendance was also good during that time for a small market, not sure what you're talking about :
http://www.espn.com/nhl/attendance
Murrays peak was the Buffalo game when we got into the brawl and he and Ruff put on a show for the cameras. After that is was all downhill. He managed to marginalized every star player Ottawa had in that game.
What is that? Apples and oranges? Why are you listing an event when he was coach now? Weird...
And he managed to marginalized every star player Ottawa had in that game? lmao what is that crap