Podcast (Audio) Dorion Retrospective

[flyingfingers]

And understated part of the Dorion disaster heading into 17/18 was not sending that 2nd to Vegas so they didn’t take Methot.

If the thinking was “we’ll get Duchene and go all in for 2 years before blowing it up when everyone needs new contracts”, letting Methot go and replacing him with Johnny Oduya was absolute lunacy.

That team was driven by Karlsson, and a huge part of Karlsson being able to play the way he did was having Methot next to him.

Instead we lost Methot and Karlsson was rushed back from a major injury only to be paired with a series of terrible partners and it all went to shit after we had already traded our 1st…

 

[Masked]

And understated part of the Dorion disaster heading into 17/18 was not sending that 2nd to Vegas so they didn’t take Methot.

If the thinking was “we’ll get Duchene and go all in for 2 years before blowing it up when everyone needs new contracts”, letting Methot go and replacing him with Johnny Oduya was absolute lunacy.

That team was driven by Karlsson, and a huge part of Karlsson being able to play the way he did was having Methot next to him.

Methot retired 45 games after he left the Sens. How would have he stopped the disaster? If anything, sending a pick so they'd take someone else would have been a bigger disaster.

 

[flyingfingers]

Methot retired 45 games after he left the Sens. How would have he stopped the disaster? If anything, sending a pick so they'd take someone else would have been a bigger disaster.

We’re going back in time here.

If we go back in time and Methot stays, maybe he keeps up his regular routine of eating/training/living and never suffers the injury he did. He wouldn’t have played in that same game against that same team in that same play where the injury occurred, after all.

Maybe Karlsson would have hit the ground running, after returning, if Methot was still his partner. Maybe he would have formed instant chemistry with Duchene. Maybe we would have gone on another run.

You can’t go back in time and change one thing but have everything else stay the same. That’s not how time travel works.

 

[GoodinOsgoode]

We’re going back in time here.

If we go back in time and Methot stays, maybe he keeps up his regular routine of eating/training/living and never suffers the injury he did. He wouldn’t have played in that same game against that same team in that same play where the injury occurred, after all.

Maybe Karlsson would have hit the ground running, after returning, if Methot was still his partner. Maybe he would have formed instant chemistry with Duchene. Maybe we would have gone on another run.

You can’t go back in time and change one thing but have everything else stay the same. That’s not how time travel works.

 

[bert]

Perfect example of the Peter Principle. Dorion is a scout, not a manager. He might be good at identifying NHL players but he doesn't know how to build a team.

I dont believe he understands how to scout character or hockey sense. He has missed so badly on both of those over and over again. He has no character how could he possibly identify it. No matter what way he tries to spin the Debrincat deal he looks like an idiot. Basically admitted that the agent duped him. I do believe it because the agent probably knew this guy would never be in this position again. Otherwise and agent would never do something like that. Either way its the lack of respect he commanded that did him in over and over again. Also how does he know what a good room is like anyways.

 

[AchtzehnBaby]

NEVER FORGET

 

[Nac Mac Feegle]

Dorion doing what he does best; self promotion.

 

[DJB]

Man good to see Dorion still lying and never taking any accountability .

Good riddance

 

[OgieO]

I think he was a good talent evaluator but simply couldn't handle the GM aspects of the job. Especially trading and rounding out the roster with the right people. He started to lose patience near the end when we CLEARLY should have been a team that prioritized drafting and developing. I understand the need to keep Brady happy, obviously that had to happen but he could have handled that so much better. He just had no ability to work with other GMs it seems and couldn't make smart moves to help the team short and long term other than via the draft.

But still... some really cool and insightful info in there.

 

[SPF6ty9]

Unless he is blacklisted from the league, I think he will get hired somewhere, just not in a GM or even AGM spot.

Someone like Dorion who has been connected to the league for 30 years is bound to have connections/friends in other organizations.

He is never going to be hired as a GM ever again, but I could see a team having a spot for him somewhere. He very clearly has one primary talent, amateur scouting.

Dorion gives off major Pierre McGuire vibes. I don't see how he could be blacklisted for anything, probably more just he's not as smart as he thinks he is and people don't enjoy being around or working with him.

If he gets a job in the NHL, it will probably be something like "go scout at rinks for 250 days/year and let's interact as little as possible".

 

[Masked]

Dorion gives off major Pierre McGuire vibes.

I think they are the flip side of each other. Dorion has some hockey knowledge but not people knowledge and is rather ineffective at speaking in public.

McGuire is a guy who made his way by fostering relationships with people *cough*Scotty Bowman*cough* and speaking like someone who knew what he was doing even though he's pretty much been out of his depth with every role he's had at the NHL level. He was excellent in the media until he started becoming a caricature of himself.

 

[Hale The Villain]

I think he was a good talent evaluator but simply couldn't handle the GM aspects of the job. Especially trading and rounding out the roster with the right people. He started to lose patience near the end when we CLEARLY should have been a team that prioritized drafting and developing. I understand the need to keep Brady happy, obviously that had to happen but he could have handled that so much better. He just had no ability to work with other GMs it seems and couldn't make smart moves to help the team short and long term other than via the draft.

But still... some really cool and insightful info in there.

You don't risk ruining the rebuild by rushing it because you made a dumb promise to Brady Tkachuk. Nothing understandable about that.

Would have thought giving him the C and paying him 8.2M coming off a 52P/82GP season would have made him plenty happy.

That's Pierre Dorion to a tee though. Dude probably ran through the dressing room demanding high fives after getting DeBrincat.

Sought affirmation from his players and it backfired on the franchise in a big way.

 

[darude]

I think they are the flip side of each other. Dorion has some hockey knowledge but not people knowledge and is rather ineffective at speaking in public.

McGuire is a guy who made his way by fostering relationships with people *cough*Scotty Bowman*cough* and speaking like someone who knew what he was doing even though he's pretty much been out of his depth with every role he's had at the NHL level. He was excellent in the media until he started becoming a caricature of himself.

They both suffer from not knowing when to shut their yaps.

The media loved a Dorion interview because he'd always spill so many beans. If you wonder how the team kept getting fleeced in trades it's because every other team had pretty solid knowledge of how the guy thought.

 

[Laphroaig]

Pierre Dorion was a terrible GM but then again so were Mel Bridgman, Randy Sexton, Pierre Gauthier, Rick Dudlley, John Muckler and Bryan Murray. Marshall Johnston was a great GM. The jury's still out on Staois.

 

[PlayOn]

Don Boyd: Steve has done a tremendous job of allowing us do our work and not interfere. He asks the right questions and we have to be prepared to answer them… he has to be comfortable in what he does. The people above me in this organization at this point in time as far as the last couple years here, they let us do our job.

Thought I’d throw this out there (from Boyd’s interview on TSN 1200). With Dorion all the bad picks are someone else’s fault but here’s our head scout clearly insinuating he interfered with their decisions.

 

[thinkwild]

I dont see a lot of the trades posted as necessarily bad trades. There is also context to some of them like the tear down was coming and then signing players when at the cap floor. But i dont want to defend Dorion, he did a lot of questionable things.

But i also think blame needs to be put on those who set his expectations and performance review plan. Dorion seemed to want to do everything possible to create something that was winning before he left. And Brady and Chabot were pushing him there too apparently. But it would be nice if we had a team President or someone who made it clear his role was to execute the rebuild as best as possible. That's what his early, unexpected, 3 year contract renewal was for. That he would be judged on that setting the foundation of the rebuild. Like Marshall Johnston was. Leave it to the next guy coming under new ownership with a new salary cap to trade away the assets Dorion collected and, from a better position of strength, make the next moves.

But there is backlash from the players that would have to be managed that way too

 

[Xspyrit]

That claim is pure ignorance.

Milbury traded Chara and Spezza for Yashin. A HOF and a borderline HOF for a guy who had to be bought out of his contract then had the buyout cap hit for another 8 seasons.

Milbury traded Luongo and Jokinen for Mark Parrish and Oleg Kvasha because he wanted to pick Rick DiPietro first overall instead of Dany Heatley and Marian Gaborik.

Either of those deals are ten times worse than anything Dorion has done.

I used to think that, until I created an Excel file comparing them. I stopped quickly as I saw it wouldn't be close. Yes Milbury had the 2 most mediatized awful moves but Dorion has the quantity. Almost everything he touched turned into a big pile of shit

Thank you for further proving my point. Like I said, when he missed, he missed small. When he hit, he hit big. We have one of the best young cores in the league, and most importantly, are signed to extremely good long term contracts.

Best young cores? Better than San Jose? New Jersey? Detroit? Buffalo? Montreal? Colorado? Dallas? Columbus? Anaheim? Chicago? Minnesota? I could go on and on. I'm not saying they are all better but try to make a poll on the main boards to ask where the Sens rank with an u-25 of Stutzle, Sanderson, Pinto, Greig, Kleven and Yakemchuk vs other teams (you can add guys like Tkachuk, Chabot and Batherson if you want but their age would make guys like Cale Makar and Kirill Kaprizov qualify)

At the end of the day, that's all that matters. Fretting over stupid stuff like losing 4th round picks is nitpicking to extreme levels when, on the flip side, you have Stutzle and Sanderson at $8m into the 2030's. Those deals are going to be utterly ridiculous in 5-6 years when they are in their prime and the cap is significantly higher.

lol I posted a list of 23 moves and you nitpick the only smaller move in the list, the one that I gave you right away. So full of it as usual.

Do you think Ottawa is the only team with good players on good contracts?

The last line (that you conveniently lumped together) on the list of good moves is worth more than the entire block of bad moves put together.

Those are facts you can't deny.

Facts that we can't deny lol. Do you think any of this is spectacular? We finished as one of the worst teams in the NHL for 7 straight seasons... The fact that we only cumulated Tkachuk, Sanderson and Stutzle from high picks (maybe Yakemchuk too) is actually pathetic because our genius GM kept gambling his parents house and lost it every single time. And Stutzle is the pick that came from trading a 3 time Norris D-man in his prime.

 

[Wallet Inspector]

What a shame that even with all their other blunders, if the Sens just made the obvious good moves of

-drafting Peterka over Jarventie
-drafting SIllinger/Coronato over Boucher

We'd be in a much stronger position moving forward.

 

[Masked]

I used to think that, until I created an Excel file comparing them.

 

[frightenedinmatenum2]

Stone had the opportunity to sign long-term in the summer of 2018, but after the team traded Karlsson and Hoffman following a 2nd last finish, he wasn't going to do that unless it was a big overpayment, which Melnyk probably wasn't comfortable doing.

Instead of trading him that summer and getting a bigger return, he chose to walk him to UFA by signing him to a one year deal, which is why we didn't get nearly as much for him as we should have.

Should have also traded Duchene that summer too, but after giving up the unprotected 2019 1st he kept them to try to save face and improve our draft position by winning some more games. Should have been considered sunk cost at that point since playoffs were an extreme longshot, but Dorion made a lot of moves out of self-interest, rather than in the best interest of the franchise.

And despite keeping Stone and Duchene we still finished with the worst record in the league

They were trying to convince the fanbase they it wasn't a complete selloff of players.

Also, I might be imagining this, but I recall Papa Tkachuk stating in an interview that he would not have permitted his son to sign with Ottawa if he had nobody to play with. Stone staying was important to his development.

It's ironic that Melnyk wouldn't sign off on an 8 year deal for Stone with a NMC, because he would not have owned the team beyond the fifth year of that contract.

 

[BankStreetParade]

They were trying to convince the fanbase they it wasn't a complete selloff of players.

Also, I might be imagining this, but I recall Papa Tkachuk stating in an interview that he would not have permitted his son to sign with Ottawa if he had nobody to play with. Stone staying was important to his development.

It's ironic that Melnyk wouldn't sign off on an 8 year deal for Stone with a NMC, because he would not have owned the team beyond the fifth year of that contract.

This guy got $48M of $76M paid in signing bonuses and a NMC, in a no-tax state. It's an absolute fantasy to think Stone was staying in Ottawa, under any circumstances.

 

[Forgetful]

Thought it was Anders Forsberg that was responsible for the Karlsson pick

 

[Icelevel]

I never want to see this clowns name again. For the sake of everyone’s sanity delete this loser thread.

 

[Senator Stanley]

Thought it was Anders Forsberg that was responsible for the Karlsson pick

Forsberg was the area scout who identified him and really knew the player, but I think we have to give Dorion his due for actually making Karlsson the pick. That was his first year in the organization, his first draft as director of amateur scouting, and he got his new boss, Bryan Murray, to trade up to take the tiny Swedish defenceman.

 

[Forgetful]

Forsberg was the area scout who identified him and really knew the player, but I think we have to give Dorion his due for actually making Karlsson the pick. That was his first year in the organization, his first draft as director of amateur scouting, and he got his new boss, Bryan Murray, to trade up to take the tiny Swedish defenceman.

Dorion may very well have talked Murray into taking Karl but he might not have had to do very much talking found this old Murray quote,

When we talked to Anders at that time about Erik Karlsson, we knew his size and strength (or lack thereof) and ability, but we also knew quite a bit about where he was from, the type of commitment he had made to become a hockey player, what the perception was over there. Anders worked with a lot of young players in the development program over there in Sweden, so we got to know them personally.

Bryan Murray on drafting Karlsson (from ‘NHL draft 2012: Senators really like their Swedes’, National Post – 06/22/12)

came from this in case your interested

Ottawa Senators' 2008 Draft Review - The Hockey Writers Senators History Latest News, Analysis & More

While 2008 wasn't the flashiest of drafts, it was a mix of stars and depth pieces, and it turned the Senators back into a competitive team.

thehockeywriters.com