Ownership Rumours and Bringing Stability to the Top of the Organization
Rumours of a prospective sale of the Ottawa Senators have dogged this city for years.
Whether the many rumours were ever credible or not, their continued existence has fostered a boy who cries wolf response.
It’s not that fans don’t want to believe the rumours, it’s just that after so many years of investing hope into the latest bit of gossip, fans have their guards up.
Even when Vancouver’s Patrick Johnston writes an intriguing flicker of hope regarding the Senators in a recent column at The Province, it is easy to be cynical.
The Senators have a nice group of young players, but the organization around them is a mess. And it has been for years.
It doesn’t help that their owner isn’t really that wealthy and mostly just likes the idea of being an NHL owner, rather than being interested in truly building a winner.
Not to mention having a bad GM running the show. They badly need a change in hockey leadership.
Anyway, it was interesting to hear Eugene Melnyk is entertaining offers for the Senators and obviously a potential sale could complicate any management or coach changes this year.
Johnston’s last paragraph raises questions: Who and how high level are his sources? Why would a Vancouver writer put this out there before a local journalist?
Johnston stood by his sources, however.
Johnston’s intel could be something or it could be nothing. It would help explain why the Senators have been so quiet or reluctant to publicly address the media and fans during the team’s recent rough patch.
At the same time, with Covid ravaging the club during that same period, there may be other explanations as to why Sens brass has been so slow to face the cameras.
Without knowing who Johnston’s sources are, it’s impossible to know what to believe. Although, it may be encouraging to hear that people he respects are certainly discussing the possibility of a Senators sale.
Intriguingly, other more prominent members of the media are discussing the instability created by the hierarchy within the Senators organization.
On the ‘32 Thoughts Podcast’ that was published this morning, Elliotte Friedman shed some thoughts on Ottawa’s struggles.
“You know, Kyle Bukauskas, on the Wednesday night hockey showed that shot of the front office sitting a section apart… like, those are tough. The thing I’d worry (about) is that when you have young players… I know this is tough for Senators fans to do, but just leave the status of the organization out for a second… When I look at that lineup of young players: Tkachuk; Chabot – who I think has played very well this year for a lot of the year; Norris; Pinto – even though he’s been hurt; Batherson; all the young guys you’ve got there and the ones that aren’t there yet that are coming – the Sandersons, the Bernard-Dockers and those kinds of players. I believe in it. I think their fans want to believe in it.
Look, there are a lot of rumours. Is Melnyk selling? What’s kind of going on behind the scenes there? He’s still talking about a downtown arena. I mean, things are kind of all over the place. They’re all over the map. The commissioner protects his owners, and I get that. That’s his job. I get it. I just wonder at what point do you say, ‘We’ve got this group of young guys here and we can’t let the overall instability or the way the franchise is run at the top affect them.’ Because right now, you’re worried that they’re getting used to losing. I don’t think they accept losing, I don’t think that’s right. But, you get used to losing and losing becomes part of your existence. I’ve seen too many young players in sports, and not just hockey, be affected by losing. It hurts their careers and that’s why Jeff, I look at if at some point in time, the league will step in here and say, ‘We have to have this franchise run a different way.’ It’s not enough to just say… look, I know there are people in Ottawa who believe this… ‘We get a downtown arena, everything is going to be okay.’
Yeah, but even if they put the shovel into the ground tomorrow, how long is that away? You have to build stability around these players. You have to give them a feeling that they’ve got a chance to win. I just think that right at the top, I just wish the league would get to a point where they step in and say, ‘Okay, there’s a way that we’re going to demand that this organization is run.’
For Friedman, who is arguably one of the most respected media members in hockey, to state that he publicly “wishes” that the league would step in at some point and address the way the Senators have been run, that carries some significant weight.
These types of comments would never have happened years ago and it is enough to make me wonder if we are a lot closer to the end of the Melnyk era in Ottawa than we realize.
Like Friedman noted, it’s Gary Bettman’s job to protect his owners. At the same time, the league obviously recognizes the importance of the NCC’s parcel of land at LeBreton and what it means for the future of the Ottawa Senators. And, after Melnyk upstaged the marquee NHL 100 Heritage Classic with his comments, they are certainly cognizant of how much damage he has and continues to inflict on this market.
When the RendezVous group won the original LeBreton Flats proposal in 2016, their original timeline was for the Senators to be playing in their new arena by the fall of 2021. That is a five-year window to build a rink, so for Friedman to express concern about how important it is for the Senators to not only get to LeBreton Flats, but create stability over that kind of timeframe, it speaks volumes.
Between this media openness and speculation that The Athletic will eventually drop an investigative piece examining the Senators, it feels like we may be building towards something. Or, maybe this is just wishful thinking being fuelled by the Senators’ recent struggles on and off the ice.
Maybe fans are right to be skeptical.
Who can blame them for it?
It’s the best defence being played in Ottawa these days.
Post-publishing note:
Have had a few people reach out and ask about speculation regarding the reference to the speculated article.
In October, Ian Mendes received a since-deleted tweet from a common Senators fan:
Seeing a fan call out a journalist for a piece of writing that has not really been widely discussed or referred to at all is bizarre. Moreso when you consider that this person ragged on Mendes for not having the courage to hang his name on a byline.
I can’t think of any reason for a common fan to care about prospective articles. And, I certainly have no idea why anyone would have any interest in bylines and the potential consequences of a civil suit if such an article were published. Unless they were fed this information by someone with some skin in the game. Another journalist, perhaps?
Maybe the alleged article in question isn’t real, but the specifics of this since-deleted tweet make me believe that it is.