Senators Fill Their AGM Roles with Two Familiar Names & Thoughts on the Fiala Trade
On the heels of Elliotte Friedman revealing that the Senators were doing a deep dive trying to fill some hockey operations roles and Peter MacTavish resigning from his position to take a job at Quartexx Hockey, the Senators announced yesterday that they have filled two assistant general manager roles.
After five seasons in his role, chief amateur scout Trent Mann has been promoted. Mann has served with the Senators since the start of the 2011-12 season. He spent the first six years of his tenure as an amateur scout before being named the team’s chief amateur scout for the 2017-18 season. The organization indicated in their press release that Mann will continue to fulfill his obligations as the chief amateur scout while adding new responsibilities to his portfolio.
Ryan Bowness is the son of Rick Bowness, who many will remember as the first head coach in Senators history. Ryan grew up in Ottawa, attending high school in Kanata before being drafted into the OHL and NHL. He was an eighth-round pick of the Columbus Blue Jackets in the 2001 NHL Draft. Since that time, he played Canadian university hockey before pivoting and starting his post-playing career working for NHL franchises.
Bowness got his start working for the Atlanta Thrashers as a team manager and remained with the franchise as it moved to Winnipeg. There he remained in that role for another two years before transitioning into a scouting role. He was a professional scout for the Jets for three years before moving on to Pittsburgh where he took on a similar role. After another three years, Bowness was promoted to Pittsburgh’s director of professional scouting.
According to the Senators’ official press release, Bowness will “oversee contractual-related items and will serve as the general manager of the team's American Hockey League affiliate, the Belleville Senators.”
When Friedman said on Hockey Night in Canada that the Senators “are just looking to bolster their hockey operations (department),” the assumption was that the team was finally looking to invest in its very thin front office. It felt like an encouraging step in the right direction because at the time, no one really knew that the moves were necessitated by the departures of other employees.
MacTavish’s resignation and the firing Pierre McGuire created two holes and admittedly, no one outside the organization really knows how difficult they will be to fill. Perhaps Ryan Bowness and Trent Mann will thrive in their roles and their additions become a net benefit to the Senators. At the same time however, it’s completely reasonable to point out that the front office has not grown and that the people taking on these positions are new to the role. Moreover, the Senators are simply giving Mann more responsibilities while hoping that his quality of work on the amateur side does not suffer.
Over the past 15 years, the Senators have rarely hired anyone externally who has a wealth of hands-on experience. Whether it’s someone in the front office or a head coach, the Senators have exhibited a preference to hire individuals who are new to the role. Hiring experienced hands often comes at a significantly higher cost, but it’s worth acknowledging that opportunity and inexperience foster loyalty to the individual doing the hiring. In keeping that in mind, it explains why it was never a surprise to see Pierre Dorion axe Pierre McGuire shortly after Eugene Melnyk’s passing.
Hopefully, Mann and Bowness can have a positive influence and impact the many of the moves the Senators will need to make this offseason, but ideally, the organization is not done making additions to its hockey operations department. Without an in-house analytics department or more hires to its pro and amateur scouting departments, it will be hard for the organization to move away from the status quo and help avoid many of the pitfalls that can undo what good the organization has done.
Another interesting wrinkle to think about is Daniel Alfredsson’s expression of interest in rejoining the organization’s front office. Although he has never indicated any aspirations or preference for a role, the assumption has always been that he’d follow a Steve Yzerman-like path. Without an assistant general manager role available, I wonder what kind of opportunities are there for him in the current front office as it exists now.
Fiala Off the Block
The Senators can strike one name off their offseason wishlist.
On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Kings acquired forward Kevin Fiala from the Minnesota Wild for their 2022 first-round pick (19th overall) and defensive prospect Brock Faber.
Upon the completion of the deal, the Kings announced a seven-year contract extension with Fiala that carries an average annual value of $7.875 million.
On the surface, the trade looked like something the Senators could easily beat. With general manager Pierre Dorion expressing a willingness to listen to offers on the team’s seventh overall selection, packaging that with one or two of Ottawa’s prospects should have been enough to best the Kings’ offer.
Of course, for the Senators to beat that offer, they would have had to ensure that Fiala would be willing to come here and sign an extension. Dorion will probably refrain from shedding light on whether trade talks ever progressed to that point or whether Fiala balked at coming here, but recruiting players to come and play in Ottawa isn’t always the easiest thing to do.
For a soon-to-be 26-year-old who scored 33 goals and 85 points last season, Fiala’s contract extension does not appear to be that expensive either. In looking at its structure, however, I’m not sure that the Senators could have managed to structure it in a similar way. Fiala is owed signing bonuses in each of the first six years of the deal and Ottawa’s internal policy of avoiding those works against that.
I have seen some social media commentary on Fiala’s contract value and it not being an ideal fit for Ottawa anyway because of the deals its young players will have to sign. I feel like that’s an overstated concern simply because a few of Ottawa’s core have already signed and the ones like Norris and Stützle are good, but likely won’t command any prohibitively expensive contract values that will put the team in a tight spot. It’s not like the organization has a generational talent that will command the $9.0-10.0 million-plus deals that other superstars have signed for. And with all expectations that the salary cap ceiling will increase in two years, I believe the team’s internal cap situation is in a pretty good spot.
If the Senators can limit the damage done by sinking bad money into replacement-level players, they should be in a good spot. Eventually, the team is going to have to invest money into its supporting cast, but in order to do so, it cannot be wasting money acquiring misevaluated veteran players.
If the hope was that Fiala would be able to give the Senators a very good three to five years, maybe it makes more sense to target a player in free agency like Claude Giroux, who only would cost the team money. By signing a player who can reasonably be expected to give the team a good three years, it would allow the Senators to retain their seventh overall pick. At least in that scenario, it could maximize the team’s window of competitiveness. Their free-agent target could hopefully bridge the gap to when the team could expect this high pick to develop into a productive NHL player.