Great post. There's a lot of Eugene hate around here but he has done and continues to do a lot to improve our experiences as fans.
He has financial constraints, which would be true of anyone who may own this team. People act like the sky is falling because we can't spend as much as other teams and they direct their anger towards Melnyk.
Much of that anger is misplaced, and would be better directed at the NHL for allowing the salary cap to slowly creep away from its intended purpose of allowing smaller market teams like Ottawa to be competitive with spending.
Melnyk's ownership of the team has changed drastically within the past few years. He went from from competitive owner to penny-pinching miser at the drop off a hat. What explains this?
Here are two stories, which do you think is more likely?
1) He really hasn't become a penny-pinching miser who no longer cares whether the team wins as long as he makes a profit. He truly will spend money once some genius figures out how to build a contender at a $15-20M disadvantage. The fact that Ottawa appears to earn more ticket revenue than a dozen other teams who spend more on payroll doesn't mean that our owner is a liar when he cries poor, it means that a dozen other billionaires don't know how to run a business.
or
2) All of Melnyk's recent misfortune have come home to roost and his personal financial troubles are what caused the team to stop trying to be competitive. I believe that since 2008:
- he has divorced.
- been kicked off the board of Biovail.
- been investigated by the Securities Commission.
- lost $900M on the stock market within a time span of a few months.
While he still has more money than any of us will ever have, these massive catastrophes have put him in 'survival mode' and he is pocketing as much profit from the hockey team as possible to offset his recent financial losses in other areas.
The salary cap is climbing because teams like the Sens are making more money. Linkage, remember?
Exactly and with the team's ticket revenue somewhere around 14th, plus other benefits like owning their own arena and operating in a city where hockey is easily marketable... this team should be somewhere between 10th-15th in the league. The Senators shouldn't be crying poor.
I must be the only guy who thought we got more than Spezza was worth in that deal with Dallas. Chiasson is looking real good so far in preseason which doesn't mean anything until the regular season but it looks promising. Paul was invited to Team Canada & seems to be a highly regarded junior player with NHL potential.
Guptil has good size & skills, we'll be watching Bingo this yr to see if he can break out for us & a 2nd rd pick in a deep draft also looks promising for Ottawa's scouting staff. Spezza sucked defensively, his minus was terrible, his giveaways were terrible & his point production was on the decline not to mention his injury problems seemed to be increasing. IMO he was a depreciating asset that we traded for prospect/players that are trending upwards, I think we got the better deal. I was more disappointed we lost Hemsky. I think the team is much better without Spezza.
You're not the only one, but your post looks like all of the others.
..."If Spezza looks like he has during the worst of his injuries for the rest of his career and all of the nobody prospects reach their fullest potential; we win this deal."
There is so much spin and unlikely prediction that it's hard for me to take them seriously.
I predict that Spezza will outproduce (NHL points) all four assets combined from now until the last one of them hangs up his skates.