News Article: Karlsson trade is the gift that keeps on giving for rebuilding Senators

[Sens of Anarchy]

We can all be happy and sleep well to know we had Karlsson while he was ELITE.

We can't be sure on his future, but I think a lot of the best memories will be from his time as a Senator.

Long live the King...

He was a delight to watch on many nights.

 

[GCK]

I agree that this is pretty annoying.

I also would like to point out, in the spirit of fairness, that the contingent of posters (and I'm not naming names here, but they certainly exist among HFSens) that take the position that regardless of what the team does, it was 100% the right thing to do, are equally annoying.

There are posters here who use some pretty interesting revisionist history, and in doing so some pretty creative and devious arguing styles, on both extreme ends of the general discourse here.

I’m not sure what camp I’d fall in. I did not want him resigned because I thought his decline had started and it would be precipitous. I also was underwhelmed with the trade return AND I thought the org handled it poorly.

 

[swiftwin]

The Sens are on pace for 53 points.

Last 5 years
Ottawa 64 points
Buffalo 63 points
Avs 48 points (2nd 69 points)
Leafs 69 points
Buffalo 54 points

Hard to be 53 point bad with 3 point games and the Sens have big potential to drop with this tough month. Once hope is gone and the dog days of the season kick in, 53 points will seem like a pipe dream.

Why are you comparing our pace to other teams' full seasons?

Make an apples to apples comparison. Detroit is on pace for 43 points this season. San Jose is on pace for 56 points.

Besides, our play isn't historically bad. Not even close. We had a rough road trip early on, but we've been playing pretty well since, winning every other game, and being competitive in the ones we lose.

 

[FolignoQuantumLeap]

Both of the extreme positions are ridiculous to me. On one side, you can't say that they have the doing whats best because let's look at the results. On the other side, it's really not realistic to expect opposite results considering the context with the owner, etc. It's a business and the players are the products. You need to invest in the product line (team), pay your best players and spend to surround them with quality support players, quality coaching staff, quality goaltending, quality training staff, management, marketing, etc.

At some point if the sales (tickets quantity, ticket prices, merchandise, etc) don't justify the investment required, what can you do? Being in Kanata certainly doesn't help, having an owner that has had personal financial problem also really doesn't help. And we're not even talking about him as a "character"

Dorion is no Murray, can't expect him to do miracles when he was very green to the job. Bryan was criticized a lot but he did really well in the franchise context, made the playoffs 5/9 (while being competitive in 2-3 of the years the team missed) and laid a solid foundation (Karlsson, Zibanejad, Stone, Turris, Hoffman, Dzingel, Pageau, Chabot, White and had some solid vets in Methot, Ryan, Anderson, etc) with great drafting that should have resulted in a consistent contender but after the 2016-17 peak, the team got dismantled instead of being fixed. Methot, MacArthur, Ryan, Anderson, Neil, Michalek, etc all declined due to age/injuries and nothing was done to offset that. Oduya and Burrows? Great careers but they were at the tail end of these careers.

Anyway, doesn't matter, we are where we are today. Need a great draft in 2020 and an ownership change as soon as possible as well as a new arena downtown.

In an ideal world (and with a different owner), Hoffman would have been traded differently, Zibanejad would have never been traded, Karlsson would have been signed at a more friendly cost, even if he ended up overpaid, Stone would have been there all his career, etc. And then surround them better, etc, all the things I talk in the 1st paragraph. But it is what it is, really not ideal but the owner (who decides everything in the end) decided to rebuild entirely (financially too)

We all know the difficulties with our ownership. Do you really think Dorion gets to wash his hands of all the team's struggles since he took the reigns? I assume he knew about the team's finances when making moves. Why is he burning limited resources on guys like Anderson, Smith, Burrows, Condon, Boedker, Hainsey, Zaitsev? Those moves are entirely on him. Melnyk doesn't have a gun to his head. He's pursued a lot of very very bad players and done stuff like giving away lottery picks because he couldn't properly access where his team was at.

The collapse falls predominantly on him and his lack of moves in the 2017 offseason. That collapse was very predictable and he couldn't see it and now he's tasked with building a team. That is crazy to me.

I don't know why we'd expect anything else than failure from Dorion. We know how his managing of Bingo/Belleville has gone. He hasn't been able to ice a competitive team in the minors for years. And now we're starting to see that bleed into our drafting with the 2019 draft.

If we don't get him out of here soon, the damage is going to be irreparable. This "rebuild" will be like the Oilers of years past. It will never end. This isn't a rebuild, its Pierre Dorion's normal.

 

[swiftwin]

I agree that this is pretty annoying.

I also would like to point out, in the spirit of fairness, that the contingent of posters (and I'm not naming names here, but they certainly exist among HFSens) that take the position that regardless of what the team does, it was 100% the right thing to do, are equally annoying.

There are posters here who use some pretty interesting revisionist history, and in doing so some pretty creative and devious arguing styles, on both extreme ends of the general discourse here.

The big problem is that many around here see ownership and management as one entity. When in reality, those two are likely at odds with eachother. Ownership is awful, and management has to make the best of a shitty situation. In this context I think management (Dorion), is doing a fantastic job building a team that, under ownership's mandate, has an incredibly small payroll, punches above it's weight, and has a huge amount of potential in the future.

 

[Micklebot]

Forget "the kids are alright", we got a new motto for the season!

Not historically bad!

 

[GCK]

We all know the difficulties with our ownership. Do you really think Dorion gets to wash his hands of all the team's struggles since he took the reigns? I assume he knew about the team's finances when making moves. Why is he burning limited resources on guys like Anderson, Smith, Burrows, Condon, Boedker, Hainsey, Zaitsev? Those moves are entirely on him. Melnyk doesn't have a gun to his head. He's pursued a lot of very very bad players and done stuff like giving away lottery picks because he couldn't properly access where his team was at.

The collapse falls predominantly on him and his lack of moves in the 2017 offseason. That collapse was very predictable and he couldn't see it and now he's tasked with building a team. That is crazy to me.

I don't know why we'd expect anything else than failure from Dorion. We know how his managing of Bingo/Belleville has gone. He hasn't been able to ice a competitive team in the minors for years. And now we're starting to see that bleed into our drafting with the 2019 draft.

If we don't get him out of here soon, the damage is going to be irreparable. This "rebuild" will be like the Oilers of years past. It will never end. This isn't a rebuild, its Pierre Dorion's normal.

I can’t tell what you are getting at ?

 

[swiftwin]

We all know the difficulties with our ownership. Do you really think Dorion gets to wash his hands of all the team's struggles since he took the reigns? I assume he knew about the team's finances when making moves. Why is he burning limited resources on guys like Anderson, Smith, Burrows, Condon, Boedker, Hainsey, Zaitsev? Those moves are entirely on him. Melnyk doesn't have a gun to his head. He's pursued a lot of very very bad players and done stuff like giving away lottery picks because he couldn't properly access where his team was at.

The collapse falls predominantly on him and his lack of moves in the 2017 offseason. That collapse was very predictable and he couldn't see it and now he's tasked with building a team. That is crazy to me.

I don't know why we'd expect anything else than failure from Dorion. We know how his managing of Bingo/Belleville has gone. He hasn't been able to ice a competitive team in the minors for years. And now we're starting to see that bleed into our drafting with the 2019 draft.

If we don't get him out of here soon, the damage is going to be irreparable. This "rebuild" will be like the Oilers of years past. It will never end. This isn't a rebuild, its Pierre Dorion's normal.

No it wasn't. Literally nobody predicted it. This is the kind of revisionism I'm talking about.

And he did make moves. A huge one actually. We traded a crappy center (who became a healthy scratch in Nashville) for a center that was 9th in scoring league-wide among centers.

 

[Nac Mac Feegle]

No it wasn't. Literally nobody predicted it. This is the kind of revisionism I'm talking about.

And he did make moves. A huge one actually. We traded a crappy center (who became a healthy scratch in Nashville) for a center that was 9th in scoring league-wide among centers.

We all knew the Sens drastically overachieved in that playoff run.

Anything else is revisionist.

 

[Upgrayedd]

We all know the difficulties with our ownership. Do you really think Dorion gets to wash his hands of all the team's struggles since he took the reigns? I assume he knew about the team's finances when making moves. Why is he burning limited resources on guys like Anderson, Smith, Burrows, Condon, Boedker, Hainsey, Zaitsev? Those moves are entirely on him. Melnyk doesn't have a gun to his head. He's pursued a lot of very very bad players and done stuff like giving away lottery picks because he couldn't properly access where his team was at.

The collapse falls predominantly on him and his lack of moves in the 2017 offseason. That collapse was very predictable and he couldn't see it and now he's tasked with building a team. That is crazy to me.

I don't know why we'd expect anything else than failure from Dorion. We know how his managing of Bingo/Belleville has gone. He hasn't been able to ice a competitive team in the minors for years. And now we're starting to see that bleed into our drafting with the 2019 draft.

If we don't get him out of here soon, the damage is going to be irreparable. This "rebuild" will be like the Oilers of years past. It will never end. This isn't a rebuild, its Pierre Dorion's normal.

Wish I could like this more than once!

 

[swiftwin]

We all knew the Sens drastically overachieved in that playoff run.

Anything else is revisionist.

Unfortunately for you, things don't disappear from the internet. Go read the original Duchene-Turris trade thread.

Confirmed with Link: - Duchene to OTT in three-team trade

Literally nobody asked "what if that 1st turns into some amazing lottery pick because we over achieved?" Everyone was worried we overpaid because they thought Duchene was basically a lateral move from Turris, which turned out to be hilariously wrong.

 

[Nac Mac Feegle]

Unfortunately for you, things don't disappear from the internet. Go read the original Duchene-Turris trade thread.

Confirmed with Link: - Duchene to OTT in three-team trade

Literally nobody asked "what if that 1st turns into some amazing lottery pick because we over achieved?" Everyone was worried we overpaid because they thought Duchene was basically a lateral move from Turris, which turned out to be hilariously wrong.

I'm not talking about the trade, and you know it. Cute deflection on your part.

 

[Sens of Anarchy]

Unfortunately for you, things don't disappear from the internet. Go read the original Duchene-Turris trade thread.

Confirmed with Link: - Duchene to OTT in three-team trade

Literally nobody asked "what if that 1st turns into some amazing lottery pick because we over achieved?" Everyone was worried we overpaid because they thought Duchene was basically a lateral move from Turris, which turned out to be hilariously wrong.

A reasonable alternative would have been to move Turris at the TDL for picks. This was an obvious option. Dorion decided we were closer to contending 2 months prior to deciding to rebuild. It was a mistake and the mistake is on him.

 

[swiftwin]

I'm not talking about the trade, and you know it. Cute deflection on your part.

I'm not talking about the trade either. I'm using the trade as a window in time to evaluate people's sentiment towards the team in terms of their over-achievement. Nobody was worried the pick would become a lottery pick. Nobody even mentioned that the pick was lottery protected, because it wasn't on anybody's radar, whatsoever.

So keep peddling your little lies. The proof is in the pudding.

 

[swiftwin]

A reasonable alternative would have been to move Turris at the TDL for picks. This was an obvious option. Dorion decided we were closer to contending 2 months prior to deciding to rebuild. It was a mistake and the mistake is on him.

Why was that the obvious option? and why did nobody bring up that option in the trade thread? If it was sooo obvious, you would think someone would bring it up, no?

 

[Sens of Anarchy]

Why was that the obvious option? and why did nobody bring up that option in the trade thread? If it was sooo obvious, you would think someone would bring it up, no?

Should it not have been an obvious option for an NHL GM? Forget what fans think in a trade thread.

 

[Micklebot]

No it wasn't. Literally nobody predicted it. This is the kind of revisionism I'm talking about.

And he did make moves. A huge one actually. We traded a crappy center (who became a healthy scratch in Nashville) for a center that was 9th in scoring league-wide among centers.

Before the trade for Duchene, people were absolutely talking about how our record was inflated by OT loses and that our underlying play was not very good. I'd agree that nobody likely predicted the degree of the collapse, but there were lots of people sounding the alarms early on in the season that Oduya was a woefully inadequate replacement for Methot, that Karlsson was playing just plain bad, that Anderson's sub 900 sv% wasn't going to cut it.

We knew Karlsson and Brassard missed training camp and would likely have a slow start. We knew we'd be in tough to replace Methot's impact. We knew that MacArthur wasn't coming back. We knew Anderson was getting older and 36 year old starting goalies are a very rare breed. Tons of people said the team was worse on paper than the prior year, and that was likely to be complicated by key players taking time to get up to speed after offseason surgery recoveries.

You can argue the logic they used to get there, or the degree to which they predicted the collapse, but to suggest nobody saw the team being primed for regression is just false.

 

[Silencio]

GMs like to pretend that they're building for the future, speak grandiosely about 5 year plans etc. but in reality these guys live in win-now mode (understandable, given their tenuous job security). Of course the Sens overachieved in getting to the ECF in 2017, but think of how it would have looked to the general ticket buying public if Dorion had said "you know what, this was a fluke" and started tearing down the team a month after they got within one goal of the Cup finals. So yes it was absolutely the wrong move to make the Duchene trade when he did, but I can also kind of understand where Dorion was coming from.

 

[coladin]

We all know the difficulties with our ownership. Do you really think Dorion gets to wash his hands of all the team's struggles since he took the reigns? I assume he knew about the team's finances when making moves. Why is he burning limited resources on guys like Anderson, Smith, Burrows, Condon, Boedker, Hainsey, Zaitsev? Those moves are entirely on him. Melnyk doesn't have a gun to his head. He's pursued a lot of very very bad players and done stuff like giving away lottery picks because he couldn't properly access where his team was at.

The collapse falls predominantly on him and his lack of moves in the 2017 offseason. That collapse was very predictable and he couldn't see it and now he's tasked with building a team. That is crazy to me.

I don't know why we'd expect anything else than failure from Dorion. We know how his managing of Bingo/Belleville has gone. He hasn't been able to ice a competitive team in the minors for years. And now we're starting to see that bleed into our drafting with the 2019 draft.

If we don't get him out of here soon, the damage is going to be irreparable. This "rebuild" will be like the Oilers of years past. It will never end. This isn't a rebuild, its Pierre Dorion's normal.

The collapse was not predictable. Sorry. The team imploded due to off ice distractions, a broken locker room and subpar play from the leaders on the team. The only issue might have been the expectation that Jaros and Claesson were ready for the next step. They weren't. Oduya did not work, but they did acquire a No. 1 center. They underperformed and under delivered, by a wide margin.

Everyone deserves some blame, including management , but the players were lousy.

 

[coladin]

I'm not talking about the trade, and you know it. Cute deflection on your part.

It isn't a deflection, but it completely blows apart the "overachieving in the playoffs " argument. No one predicted that the Sens would be a last place team. No one felt the No. 1 would have been any worse than a mid round pick. Go read. They were still in the playoff hunt in November

 

[danielpalfredsson]

Does anyone else here remember that Edmonton Oilers fan who posted on here last year about how Dorion f’ing crushed that trade?

He went on to describe Erik as a rover. Not a defencemen per-say, but a highly skilled forward playing D. And that he needed a elite level shut down defender as a partner to compensate for his playing style?

Kinda sounds like soothsayer future wisdom now.

I think Wilson will make a trade or two to try and shake things up. And that San Jose will turn it around.

Was that the guy arguing that Kris Russel was the most valuable defender in the NHL?

His posts were fascinating. I don't even mean that condescendingly. I can't fathom him being correct, but they were interesting to read.

 

[FolignoQuantumLeap]

The collapse was not predictable. Sorry. The team imploded due to off ice distractions, a broken locker room and subpar play from the leaders on the team. The only issue might have been the expectation that Jaros and Claesson were ready for the next step. They weren't. Oduya did not work, but they did acquire a No. 1 center. They underperformed and under delivered, by a wide margin.

Everyone deserves some blame, including management , but the players were lousy.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.tsn.ca/talent/sens-players-ignoring-preseason-predictions-1.875629?tsn-amp

Again, people are unhinged from reality. I know that its probably on purpose and in bad faith but its either that or people literally have such poor evaluation skills and memories they they cannot really be taken seriously anymore.

 

[Micklebot]

The collapse was not predictable. Sorry. The team imploded due to off ice distractions, a broken locker room and subpar play from the leaders on the team. The only issue might have been the expectation that Jaros and Claesson were ready for the next step. They weren't. Oduya did not work, but they did acquire a No. 1 center. They underperformed and under delivered, by a wide margin.

Everyone deserves some blame, including management , but the players were lousy.

I think us missing the playoffs was predictable. Not guaranteed, but looking forward lots of people were saying at the time that we would be a bubble team;

Sporting news: 86 pts
Sportsnet (analytics): 89 pts
ESPN: 5th in the Atlantic

I'm sure there are more, that's just the fist few a google search turned up.

I don't think it was predictable that the trade for Duchene would be followed by a massive collapse, disruption in chemistry, sure, but the degree things fell apart was unexpected for sure.

I do think it was predictable that our start would not continue to produce pts at the same rate: we were at .607% of available pts, but 3rd last in CF%, and bottom half of the league in xGF%. Dorion likely made the move when he did in part because he wanted to shake things up with a team that wasn't quite performing to expectations regardless of where we were in the standings.

Anyways, tying this back to the Karlsson trade, there were definitely some hints that SJ was going to start to regress, but I think it's shocking how fast it happened. I would have thought Burns and Karlsson would be able to keep them going a few more years.

I do think it a bit odd how some are crediting Dorion for recognizing that it was time to walk away from Karlsson when all indications were that he wanted very much to re-sign Karlsson, and claimed that it was Karlsson who had no interest in negotiating. The way the whole thing played out never really made much sense with every story seeming to contradict something.

 

[coladin]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.tsn.ca/talent/sens-players-ignoring-preseason-predictions-1.875629?tsn-amp

Again, people are unhinged from reality. I know that its probably on purpose and in bad faith but its either that or people literally have such poor evaluation skills and memories they they cannot really be taken seriously anymore.

It is not in bad faith. Go read the thread of the Duchene trade. I didn't find your prediction that is was going to be a lottery pick. And, for the record, I don't think anyone here would disagree with the predictions that Ottawa was always going to be in tough to get into the playoffs. Being a lottery team? No way

 

[BloodRedArmy]

No it wasn't. Literally nobody predicted it. This is the kind of revisionism I'm talking about.

And he did make moves. A huge one actually. We traded a crappy center (who became a healthy scratch in Nashville) for a center that was 9th in scoring league-wide among centers.

Actually, we traded Turris (Girard, Kamenev and a 3rd), Bowers, Hammond and a lottery pick.

Said 9th scoring center also spent less than 2 years in our org, providing zero playoffs.

Nice revisionism.