The Ottawa Senators are under a bit of scrutiny right now. It seems as if this off-season is going to pick up right where last off-season left off, which includes circular discussion about the strict internal budget and plenty of poor-crying, probably laced with an
ulterior motive.
One of my favorite things to do though is to skim through these interviews and find spots where a team executive or representative contradicts something another team executive or representative said prior. It's kind of incredible how routinely this happens.
Another one of my favorite things to do is to explore quotes for accuracy,
like this one:
“They have…. You know what… they have, I don’t want to say unlimited because they’ll run with that, but they have a lot of access to capital to spend on the people… Our scouting is second to none… I really believe it’s second to none and just take a look at some of the people we’ve drafted. We added international scouts, NHL scouts, college scouts. We were one of the first ones that had college scouts. We scout other NHL teams for players that are coming up for unrestricted and restricted (free agency). We have everything pretty much we need to, but if they need more, those are tiny salaries compared to some of the players. You know, players $7 million… think of what a good scout costs. I’m not going to tell you because everybody else knows, but that’s not an area that we skimp on at all. It’s the opposite, whatever you need, we’ll give it to you.”
Emphasis mine.
It's entirely possible that Ottawa pays a hell of a lot more than their peers when it comes to player development stuff -- an area ownership and management types have talked about before.
Gord Wilson has said before that the team spends more per scout than the league-average, which is very possibly true. It's also impossible to investigate from the outside, which also makes it also convenient, if you have a reason to be skeptical these days.
Unfortunately for us, we don't know the total dollars allocated in these departments. What we can do, though, is compile the army of staffers each team employs -- a painfully laborious task, but a doable one nonetheless. The numbers are really nothing more than my best guess at how many guys involved in player development -- basically the hockey ops departments (including scouts), video coaches, guys who work in defined player development roles, statistical analysts, and voice-in-the-ear assistants to the front office executives calling the shots -- work for each team.
It's nowhere near exact, but I think it's a decent estimate, especially considering at least half of the franchises have an easy click-through directory that allows for identification/compilation.
You have to ask yourself: is it reasonable to believe that, even under the assumption that Ottawa pays more per employee than the league average (and the fact that these numbers are, at best, estimates), Ottawa's spending big here?
To quote Daniel Alfredsson: "Probably not."
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