Management GM Pierre Dorion/Front Office Thread - Part IX [Mod Warning in post 1)

[Tuna99]

Going from Debrincat to Tarasenko is a downgrade only a man like Dorion could convince himself is a good idea.

When you think how many moves he’s made since last summer it leave the team with so many questions marks. I think one of Dorion’s great weaknesses is his teams always have so many question marks that it never comes together. And it’s true every team isn’t perfect, but if you’re not sure every season if your goaltending is good enough, your top 6 defence is good enough (and depth 7-10) and your bottom 6 forward group is looking for an identity and your special teams isn’t a sure thing - just to many question marks.

Is Tarasenko even good any more? His metrics are bad for a team that cheated a lot last year and looked confused early in the season, I don’t think Tarasenko helps with the identity the Sens had at the end end of the season when Sanderson, Brady and Timmy really took over the team. He’s not the right type of depth player Ottawa needs. I want a hound to play with Pinto - a guy who can compliment a 3rd line and offer skill, speed, dirt bag hockey. Formenton would be good but who knows what’s going on with that.

 

[Icelevel]

Is he in decline, or did a puck hitting his hand impact his season? That type of injury happens no matter who you are. I mean, he's not the player he was back in his prime, but 70 pts pace is the same thing as Giroux had the year before we signed him and its in the same ball park as his seasons prior to the knee issue.

No matter who you are but especially if you’re bobby ryan.
Wow remember that?

 

[harrisb]

LTIR doesn't work like that. That would literally be Andlauer taking on a debt for no reason.

LTIR is mostly covered by insurance. Teams are allowed the exceed the cap by the LTIR amount. Yes debt but also bending the rules to grow cap space. LTIR contracts are beneficial to two ends of the spectrum, cap teams and floor teams. For once we are on the cal side now why not take it to another level. There is a reason Seabrooke, Price, Muzzin, Murray contracts are all sitting on cap teams

 

[PlayersLtd]

LTIR is mostly covered by insurance. Teams are allowed the exceed the cap by the LTIR amount. Yes debt but also bending the rules to grow cap space. LTIR contracts are beneficial to two ends of the spectrum, cap teams and floor teams. For once we are on the cal side now why not take it to another level. There is a reason Seabrooke, Price, Muzzin, Murray contracts are all sitting on cap teams

Yes and no.

Yes, LTIR is mostly covered by insurance. No, LTIR doesn't help you if you take on an LTIR contract. It helps you if a player already counting against your cap goes on LTIR, in that case you get cap relief (see Kucharov, Stone, Pronger etc...). In the other case you're just taking on an insurance claim with no impact on your cap.

As pointed out Murray would be a special case because he is counting against our cap by way of salary retention.

 

[harrisb]

Yes and no.

Yes, LTIR is mostly covered by insurance. No, LTIR doesn't help you if you take on an LTIR contract. It helps you if a player already counting against your cap goes on LTIR, in that case you get cap relief (see Kucharov, Stone, Pronger etc...). In the other case you're just taking on an insurance claim with no impact on your cap.

As pointed out Murray would be a special case because he is counting against our cap by way of salary retention.

Pretty sure it’s two players on LTIR that could help the sens. If they are over they can exceed by the delta between space and cap of LTIR player 2. Need two players to do this.

Seeing as Norris hasn’t been activated, acquiring an LTIR player of high value while we are right at the cap would be hugely beneficial. We’d gain that LTIR contract cap minus our cap space which is almost nothing.

pretty sure we could keep Norris on LTIR, acquire an LTIR contract and grow our LTIR pool by the LTIR contract player amount. When season start activate Norris but we have the LTIR pool to play with above the standard cap

Norris already on LTIR plus the second LTIR contract opens this loophole

 

[Micklebot]

No matter who you are but especially if you’re bobby ryan.
Wow remember that?

Dude made a deal with the devil to be a pick magnet, little did he know how that would play out ...

 

[Micklebot]

Yes and no.

Yes, LTIR is mostly covered by insurance. No, LTIR doesn't help you if you take on an LTIR contract. It helps you if a player already counting against your cap goes on LTIR, in that case you get cap relief (see Kucharov, Stone, Pronger etc...). In the other case you're just taking on an insurance claim with no impact on your cap.

As pointed out Murray would be a special case because he is counting against our cap by way of salary retention.

Sort of, insurance coverage doesn't extend to everyone on the team, teams allocate their coverage, typically to the top 5 earners as that's what the premium is based on. Coverage can be up to 80% of the salary, however teams can spread the coverage across more players and have less coverage for each.

 

[Crosside]

 

[AchtzehnBaby]

Good interview by Pierre.

 

[Beech]

Sort of, insurance coverage doesn't extend to everyone on the team, teams allocate their coverage, typically to the top 5 earners as that's what the premium is based on. Coverage can be up to 80% of the salary, however teams can spread the coverage across more players and have less coverage for each.

Mick,

you are the person who would know best. How does insurance in pro sports work? I really don't know how it works.

get into a car accident and see the hell it is to deal with insurance companies and then see your premiums skyrocket for years after.
try and put in a claim for health benefits, long term compensation, etc. and see the hell you enter

How are insurance companies okay with injuries and LTIR as it now is? We laugh at Robidas Island.. It is money to them?

How much premiums must the NHL pay to insure millions of dollars worth of contracts???

After year 2 of owning my car, the premiums I pay/have paid versus the value they would give me is tilted heavily towards them. And by year 4, all I have done is give them more money than they would ever give me.

If on average an NHL team claims 5 Million a year in insurance claims. That is 160 M.. Does the league not have to pay 170 M in premiums, if not more????

Am I totally misunderstanding it? Is insurance an internal league function? Do teams all contribute to some pool, out of which they all can access funds? Or is it private? as in your TDs, Desjardins, etc?

 

[Micklebot]

Mick,

you are the person who would know best. How does insurance in pro sports work? I really don't know how it works.

get into a car accident and see the hell it is to deal with insurance companies and then see your premiums skyrocket for years after.
try and put in a claim for health benefits, long term compensation, etc. and see the hell you enter

How are insurance companies okay with injuries and LTIR as it now is? We laugh at Robidas Island.. It is money to them?

How much premiums must the NHL pay to insure millions of dollars worth of contracts???

After year 2 of owning my car, the premiums I pay/have paid versus the value they would give me is tilted heavily towards them. And by year 4, all I have done is give them more money than they would ever give me.

If on average an NHL team claims 5 Million a year in insurance claims. That is 160 M.. Does the league not have to pay 170 M in premiums, if not more????

Am I totally misunderstanding it? Is insurance an internal league function? Do teams all contribute to some pool, out of which they all can access funds? Or is it private? as in your TDs, Desjardins, etc?

The last group insurance policy the NHL had that details were public for worked a bit like this:

- Teams paid a premium based on their top 5 paid players (exact amount not disclosed to my knowledge)
- Coverage was 80% for 5 players, but could be extended to more players by reducing the coverage proportionally, so for example, 10 players at 40%. Bare in mind that you still pay the premium based on the top 5 highest paid players on your team, so extending coverage to more players is probably a losing bet.
- Players need to miss 30 games before becoming eligible for a claim.
- Pre-existing issues can be excluded,

The reality is most teams are likely not making a claim given the 30 games criteria, it's really only covering catastrophic stuff like the Norris injury.

 

[Beech]

The last group insurance policy the NHL had that details were public for worked a bit like this:

- Teams paid a premium based on their top 5 paid players (exact amount not disclosed to my knowledge)
- Coverage was 80% for 5 players, but could be extended to more players by reducing the coverage proportionally, so for example, 10 players at 40%. Bare in mind that you still pay the premium based on the top 5 highest paid players on your team, so extending coverage to more players is probably a losing bet.
- Players need to miss 30 games before becoming eligible for a claim.
- Pre-existing issues can be excluded,

The reality is most teams are likely not making a claim given the 30 games criteria, it's really only covering catastrophic stuff like the Norris injury.

okay, so the Sen's top 5 make ~ 8 M on average.. So 40 million..

My car was 25 K, I was paying 1.3 in Insurance. ~ 5%.

Assuming the same, it would suggest the Sens paid 2 M in insurance. If we create a range and say 10%. That would mean the Sens paid 4 M. so between 2-4 M

Norris is at 5 M in salary (2022-2023). A combined 35 games of having played and wait period.. so he was paid for 47 game so about 60%. So he got paid ~2.8 million from insurance !!!!

f*** is the insurance company rolling a dice? and if the premium is say at 15%, so the Sens pay 6 M.. it stops making sense. The Leafs would have shelled out close to 8 M @ 15%.

I guess..maybe on the off chance that 2 players go out!

Strange that insurance makes sense for either side. You get on Capfriendly and a fair amount of guys are on LTIR. But as you said, few are probably insurance claims.

 

[AchtzehnBaby]

help is on the way?

https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/ottawa-senators/news/another-possible-sign-steve-staios-may-end-up-in-ottawa

 

[Burrowsaurus]

We should do another HF Sens meet at MacLaren's.

The last one involved Ray Emery fighting Marty Biron and then Andrew Peters, so it's been awhile.

I'm not afraid to disclose my positions or my perspective.

I actually think meeting people in person helps to de-escalate relationships.

Have we reached a point where we need de-escalation haha.

I’m down to meet up.

Anonymity makes negativity easy

If I think this team sucks online I’ll think they suck in person

 

[Sens of Anarchy]

Good interview by Pierre

 

[Burrowsaurus]

Good interview by Pierre

I’m confused. Did he just do an interview? Where is it

 

[AchtzehnBaby]

I’m confused. Did he just do an interview? Where is it

I think SOFA misquoted my post.... interview was way back.

 

[Bileur]

help is on the way?

https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/ottawa-senators/news/another-possible-sign-steve-staios-may-end-up-in-ottawa

Lots of speculation there but I’m not sure lack of job security in Edmonton necessarily means higher likelihood of a job being offered in Ottawa, at least at this junction.

 

[Samboni]

Pretty much guaranteed that whoever replaces PD will be controversial. Be prepared for 40+pages of they should have hired so-and-so.

 

[FunkySeeFunkyDoo]

Pretty much guaranteed that whoever replaces PD will be controversial. Be prepared for 40+pages of they should have hired so-and-so.

I’m going to be plastered after drinking my celebratory bottle of “Dorion is fired” Scotch…. So I’ll probably be responsible for about half of those posts.

 

[aragorn]

I expect the team to do very well this season which could make it very difficult to fire someone when the team is doing well, but occassionally it does happen.

 

[BonHoonLayneCornell]

Pretty much guaranteed that whoever replaces PD will be controversial. Be prepared for 40+pages of they should have hired so-and-so.

It will be for sure.

If it happens, it will be the first time the organization will have looked outside the org to hire a GM in over 20 years, so it's a long time coming and pretty much a first for this board to discuss. All we've had were two internal promotions with no other candidates.

 

[Samboni]

I expect the team to do very well this season which could make it very difficult to fire someone when the team is doing well, but occassionally it does happen.

Dorion’s immediate future will depend on how the team fares in the first 3 weeks. It makes better optics to fire someone with cause than replacing the guy on a good run.

 

[The Devilish Buffoon]

Dorion’s immediate future will depend on how the team fares in the first 3 weeks. It makes better optics to fire someone with cause than replacing the guy on a good run.

Definitely, but short of some real playoff success (i.e win 2 rounds) I think Dorion is gone by next summer. Even then, I could see a “promotion” to POHO where he is basically just a figurehead.

Dorions performance isn’t good enough to overcome his shortcomings with managing staff. And that shortcoming will only be a bigger concern with a bigger staff

 

[ReginKarlssonLehner]

I really think Dorion setting up himself for failure with his weird allegiance to DJ.

If we are off to a bad start, it should be put solely on DJ Smith. He should be first within first 3 weeks of .500 play or worse.

Then, if we are still playing poorly by January, can Dorion.