A few days ago, I recapped the year of 2018 for the Ottawa Senators by talking about the five best things to happen for them. Today, I’ll be looking at the five worst things. Surely, there could have been more, but this is the cream of the crop:
1. The Erik Karlsson trade
This was different than when Jason Spezza was traded and when Daniel Alfredsson left in free agency. Karlsson is in his prime, and there was simply no reason for him to go, other than the fact that Eugene Melnyk is broke and Karlsson was not going to play for him. Under a different owner, he would still be an Ottawa Senator.
With Karlsson not playing as well as he can so far in San Jose and some of the pieces coming to Ottawa being impressive, the trade doesn’t look as bad is it first did. Rudolfs Balcers and Josh Norris could become solid NHL players, and Dylan DeMelo and Chris Tierney are at least contributors. Having said that, it was still extremely disappointing seeing that Pierre Dorion was unable to get a prospect in the same echelon as Cody Glass, Miro Heiskanen, or Mikhail Sergachev.
Sure, the Senators will end up with some useful pieces in this trade, but let’s not forget that Karlsson is a generational future Hall of Fame defenseman, and he loved the city of Ottawa. It will always be a complete sham that he never got to finish his career as a Senator. 2. LeBreton falling apart
I don’t think Ottawa necessarily needs to have a rink at LeBreton, although it is certainly more convenient, plus a Melnyk-owned team needs it more than a normal owner would. The quicker that construction of a rink at LeBreton can begin, the quicker a new owner can come in to buy the team from Melnyk because the value of the franchise will be higher at that point. We know that he is strapped for cash, and the longer this process drags out, the longer it will hurt the development of the organization.
The lawsuit and counter-lawsuit between CSMI and Trinity is just another footnote in a never-ending saga to getting this land developed, and it feels like the past two and a half years have been a waste. I still believe that the Senators will play their games at LeBreton one day, but who knows when that will happen now. Hopefully, DCDLS is able to go ahead with their development instead and then they can buy the team. It would be foolish to expect anything with confidence at this point though.
3. Monika Caryk drama
There are always rumours about discontent in the dressing room, and some are more concrete than others. I’m sure some people had heard rumblings about the drama between Monika Caryk/Mike Hoffman and Erik and Melinda Karlsson, but it is fascinating that everything became public in May. It put Dorion in a horrendous situation because every team in the league knew that he was being forced to trade Hoffman, and he predictably received a horrible return with Mikkel Boedker and a worse draft pick coming back.
While I do have some sympathy for Dorion, some have said that the team knew about this situation before the trade deadline (before the news became public), so I have no idea why Hoffman wasn’t traded at that point. He lost any amount of leverage that he had once the news came out that Caryk was allegedly harassing Melinda on social media, but he could have easily gotten ahead of things by being proactive.
Instead, this was just another embarrassing story from the organization that added to the laundry list of things making the Senators a circus. Was there anything that the team could have done to prevent this alleged bullying? Of course not, but it is just incredibly unfortunate timing for them. At the same time, they could have done a better job by at least acquiring some future assets in exchange for Hoffman rather than a 3rd line winger.
4. Randy Lee arrested
Former AGM Lee was arrested back in June on second-degree harassment charges and he spent a night in a Buffalo jail. His court hearing kept getting pushed back, and finally on December 20th he pled guilty, although since second degree is a non-criminal offense, he was only fined $120 and already had his one night in jail served.
The Senators were (rightfully) criticized for not firing Lee or at least putting him on administrative leave, although later in the summer he “resigned… due to the charges. He was most likely pushed out of the organization, and I’m thankful that he was. He was already doing incredibly poor as an Assistant GM to begin with, so there was no excuse to keep him around after this incident. It wasn’t the biggest charge in the world, but we still shouldn’t minimize his behaviour towards the hotel bus driver---it says a lot about his character.
It was good that this ended with Lee leaving the organization, but it was another terrible look for the organization once the news came out and after they initially decided to not do anything with him.
5. Tom Anselmi resigning
This will probably get lost in the shuffle for most people, but it’s a significant event. Former President and CEO Anselmi left in February, and he was the main proponent of the Heritage O logo for the Senators. After he came on board, the organization began replacing their 3D logos everywhere around the Canadian Tire Centre and even on their website. It seemed as if O jerseys were coming perhaps as soon as this season.
But now that he has left, the O logos have been replaced once again with the original 3D’s, making fans frustrated at the lack of new jerseys. I think most people, myself included, prefer the Heritage O to the old 2D logo, but I would still much rather have the 2D one than the 3D one. And with Anselmi gone, any sort of change was pushed back even further. Jerseys aren’t the most important thing in the world, but with the team looking awful, changing jerseys would have been an easy way to temporarily satisfy the fanbase.
Furthermore, his resignation also symbolizes the dysfunction within the organization. He was only with the team for just barely over a year so it must have been a pretty uncomfortable situation for him to be in while under Melnyk. We might never know the specifics of why he left, but I’m sure more details will come out once Melnyk is no longer the owner.
Honourable mentions:
I could have talked about even more things such as the Uber incident, the Melnyk Twitter bots, or simply the team’s play on the ice. What else would you include amongst the worst things that happened to the Senators in 2018?