Report: assistant general manager Trent Mann and the Senators
According to a report by Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch earlier this afternoon, the Senators and assistant general manager Trent Mann have parted ways.
No clarity was provided on whether Mann resigned from his position or was fired by the organization.
The timing of the news came as somewhat of a surprise considering Mann ran the Senators’ draft in June and was photographed at last week’s development handing out jerseys to the selections who were not in attendance at the draft in Nashville. These photos were circulated by the organization on Twitter.
Throughout the rebuild, Dorion has routinely praised Mann’s amateur scouting ability while comparing it to his own. One of the things that the organization tends to get a lot of credit for is its amateur scouting, for Mann and the organization to part ways now is intriguing.
According to that same Garrioch’s report, discord was sewn back in February when the Senators relieved Troy Mann, Trent’s brother, of his duties as head coach of the Belleville Senators.
“The decision by the organization to fire Troy Mann caused tension in the organization’s front office. Trent Mann would have known when Troy took over the post in Belleville that there would come a day his brother would be fired, but only learned of the decision after it happened that night.”
If true, it is remarkable that a high-ranking member of the hockey ops department, who ranks just below the general manager, was precluded from finding out that his own brother was going to be fired until after it had already occurred. I recognize that Mann is not involved with Belleville and is primarily focused on the amateur side of operations. I also recognize that it is a common business practice for organizations to refrain from telling others that an employee is being fired.
On the other hand, a front office is supposed to be a cohesive unit and if someone within the hockey operations department was being terminated, I would like to believe that one of the two most senior-level positions would not be kept in the dark — especially an employee who joined the organization as a scout 13 years ago and became the team’s director of scouting in 2017. Given Mann’s years of service and how much lip service Dorion has paid to him over the years, I would not blame him if he felt that a courtesy heads-up was necessary.
Trent Mann and everyone within that department understand that hockey is a business and coaches often pay the price for teams not meeting expectations. Troy Mann’s time with the organization was always going to be finite, but the circumstances around his departure fueled rumours.
Hanna’s source provided her with information that could irrevocably damage Troy Mann’s career, so it makes sense that this is where the relationship between the Manns and the Senators began to deteriorate. It is also the kind of allegation that could pave the way for a civil lawsuit.
If that is where it is headed, it could explain why Chris Stevenson was hearing other rumours.
In one of the photos from the Senators’ Twitter feed that I posted earlier, it is clear that one of the photos featuring Mann and Dorion was taken at the Canadian Tire Centre, which is incongruent with Stevenson’s initial tweet. He expanded on that original tweet shortly thereafter.
If Troy Mann is pursuing a lawsuit, this would help explain why the organization is keeping his brother at arm’s length away from his office. For what it is worth though, the Senators’ social media team also published video footage in May of Mann participating in the team’s amateur scouting meeting at the Canadian Tire Centre.
Former team president Anthony LeBlanc’s resignation signalled the first of what we can expect to be many changes within the organization once the sale process is finalized and Michael Andlauer officially takes over. Mann’s unceremonious exit was the next and more will follow.
Eventually, it should culminate with Pierre Dorion’s dismissal. If the last two days that featured Trent Mann’s dismissal or Dorion’s foolishly honest acknowledgments yesterday on TSN 1200 have taught us anything, it is that new leadership and professionalism at the top of the organization are sorely needed.
The good news is that it is coming. It just cannot happen soon enough.
One of the dynamics in the wake of Mann’s firing is how quickly fans will diminish the team’s draft record. A constant during the Dorion era has been this willingness to overstate just how well the Senators have drafted.
To their credit, the organization has knocked their top-five selections out of the park. Considering the debate and concerns over Brady Tkachuk’s goal production in college or whether Jake Sanderson was the right pick in 2020 at fifth overall, both players have shelved any apprehensions over their selections. Together with Tim Stützle’s emergence as a star, this trio of players has really driven this perception that Ottawa drafts well.
The truth is that outside of the top five, Ottawa has struggled to identify good talent and it often gets overlooked because of how well the guys taken in the top five have performed. Make no mistake, the Senators have found players. Shane Pinto and Drake Batherson were good finds where they were selected and I have confidence that Ridly Greig will develop into a good two-way player. In my research of the Dorion era that looked at draft selections between 2016 and 2022, only the Columbus Blue Jackets had a higher percentage of drafted players play an NHL game.
During this span of time, the Senators have:
Drafted 48 players
22 of those 48 players have played in NHL games (41.67%, 2nd highest in the NHL during that span)
20 of those 48 players were first or second-round picks
7 draft picks have played 82+ games
6 draft picks have recorded 30+ points and of those six, three were top-five selections
Considering the volume of picks that the organization stockpiled during the rebuild, the results felt low, so I looked into how impactful the performances are of the Senators and every other NHL organization between 2016-22.
Using Evolving-Hockey’s ‘goals above replacement’ (GAR) and ‘wins above replacement’ (WAR) metrics that measure value to a player relative to the contributions of a replacement-level player, I wanted to look at how much value the Senators’ draft selections have created.
Ottawa’s 48 draft selections have combined to create an accumulated GAR of 86.2. Almost 75 percent of that value has been created by the performance of the players drafted by Ottawa’s top-five picks. In looking at the accumulated GAR of draft picks made outside the top-five, Ottawa ranked 23rd in the NHL (21.8 GAR). The organization came out looking better when sorted for GAR/games played - Ottawa ranked 13th in the league with 1.8 GAR/pick. In terms of GAR/picks who have played NHL games, the Senators slide to 19th in the NHL.
Put succinctly, the Senators have found a lot of players who played NHL games but have not had much of an impact. With 20 first or second-round picks during this span, this is an unfortunate outcome considering how many valuable draft assets the organization stockpiled through its rebuilding efforts. With such little value coming back to the organization outside of their top-five selections, it’s an unfortunate outcome. Even with the misses it has had, this organization should be further ahead in its development provided it had hit on more draft selections.
Looking at other organizations who have done an exceptional job adding value outside of their top-five picks, Carolina, Dallas, and St. Louis are great examples of teams that should be studied for their drafts. It’s a credit to their scouts and prospect statistical modelling that they have had the success they have had.
For an organization that has been as lauded as Ottawa has, especially within this city by its fans, it will be interesting to see if and how the tone shifts now that Mann is gone. The amateur staff’s portrayal as being geniuses is overstated. The truth is that the Senators are nowhere near the top of the league when it comes to their recent draft selections. They are not the worst, but at best, they are average to the bottom third of the league.
Once the sale to Michael Andlauer is finalized the hope is that a new front office will integrate new mechanisms and tools to help vet qualitative information to mitigate potential mistakes and identify undervalued prospects who have a chance to be productive NHL players.