Tuna99
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- Sep 26, 2009
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Management UPDATE: Steve Staios GM and POHO, Dave Poulin Senior VP of Hockey Operations
- Thread starter God Says No
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umma gumma
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- Apr 8, 2005
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The Turris trade is what made me believe he was a good (not world beatingly excellent) GM.
To refresh your memory, it was:
To OTT:
Kyle Turris
To PHX:
David Rundblad
2012 2nd Round Pick
Rundblad basically sniffed the NHL over a bunch of seasons, but never really put it together enough and played only 113 games total.
Phoenix took that pick and packaged it up to Columbus to acquire Vermette.
Ultimately Philly ended up with the pick and took Stolarz.
We spent the 7ish seasons he was on the team having decent success, including a deep playoff run, and he had some memorable goals to seal wins.
The trade addressed a key need the team had (we didn't have the depth at C we needed) and was decent for what the return was.
Given the circumstances he was working with ownership-wise, it was a good deal that worked out.
Let’s not pretend the Burrows trade didn’t push us over the edge, come on.
BonHoonLayneCornell
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Sens of Anarchy
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umma gumma
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Bjornar Moxnes
Fordi fellesskap fungerer
Lehner and dumping Legwand for a first rounder was also excellent, but they drafted Colin White when Konency was still available...
Filatov2Kovalev2Bonk
Effortless sexy.
5.5-6/10
His scouting and development were worlds above the previous regime, but said regime was tasked with winning now and arguably the Senators' only successful season in its modern iteration fills that bill.
Murray has his own "Lee over Kopitar" though in his trading Brian Elliott for Craig Anderson. The Senators were terrible enough that year to have a great chance at Gabriel Landeskog. There was even a full media press for him, with his SEL point totals compared to Alfredsson's. Senators fell out of contention for that prize and got...Mika Zibanejad! A fine selection, but Murray's aversion to players having night gigs eventually turned "DJ Z-Bad" into Derrick Brassard, a truly awful trade. Mika is having an up and down season but blossomed into a great player, while Brassard was a plug the likes of which Murray could have picked up at any local rink for minimum salary.
Murray's coaching choices were awful. Whether he was afraid of a coach turfing him as he had Muckler, he chose coaches that were cheap, inexperienced or simply easy to push around, until Paulrus.
Coaches:
Cory Clouston was a Bingo survivor, but was ill-equipped to deal with the egos and demands of the big-time NHL. He often looked like a deer in the headlights, as if he wanted to be home rather than at the rink. He's no longer anywhere near the NHL.
Craig Hartsbug: Oh how can I forget him...just another man over his head in the NHL. Just another screamer who's not helping the Blue Jackets remain failures.
John Paddock was a washed coach, with no recent success and someone that needed a job and that Murray could manipulate as well. His tenure was largerly forgettable, with the team storming out but then cooling off considerably, focing Murray to get back behind the bench.
Dave Cameron was a lifetime loser, a man who'd blow a massive lead with Team Canada at the WJC and who, again here with the 67s, is unable to win. Cameron should have been run out of town the minute he was hired by anyone in the city. He finally, finally won in 2022 at WJC, his first and only championship in a close to 40 year career.
Paul MacLean was perhaps Murray's best hire. The fiery, blustery, volubile "Paulrus" become a crowd favourite and the players responded, gaining a swagger they hadn't had in ages. The team did well here as well! It's just a shame it took so long.
Player Choices:
Murray loooooooooed his plugs, bottom 6ers and local grinders. The team was unwatchable at times as guys like Brassard, Daugavins and their ilk flooded the team, reducing its skill and ability to win consistently while building a sort of tough gritty Sens plucky roster that was occasionally enjoyable.
Thankfully he'd draft very, very well. And those drafts largely saved the Senators from drowning in the standings.
Oh and oh yeah, Rundblad won the Cup with Chicago. If he'd listend to SensAdnan that would have been us maybe.
Media Handling:
The media were in awe of Murray (? He had not won anything, but was volubile) and Murray used them to slag every single player that he traded or had to let go. When that didn't work he's hop onto the airwaves and give us his ":Woe is me" look and make a few jokes. You can't count on Bruce Garrioch or Don Brennan to ask pertinent questions, so....yeah, we lost the whole Pizza Line and then some, and each of them was treated a selfish, awful stuff.
Overall, Murray is someone I'd have GMing my Rec League or a team in Rockland or something but not someone I'd ever have in charge of an NHL team with aspirations for long-term success.
Last edited:
Pierre from Orleans
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Correction – Murray didn't trade Zibanejad, Dorion did. Also, while they trade ended up being objectively bad, it's a huge stretch to Brassard as "no skill" and lump him with the likes of Daugavins.
umma gumma
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It is nothing at all like the Lee over Kopitar moment. Like not even close. There is no guarantee we even draft 1st. Koptiar was there for the taking. And the Anderson deal gave us a legit starter for the next 9 seasons.
BonHoonLayneCornell
Registered User
Not to mention Zibanejad was fine and arguably has had a better career than Landeskog, they just gave up on him early in the process. Likely inspired by Dorion trading up to draft his new #1 center Logan Brown just prior, and Melnyk's unwillingness to extend players at that time.
7.0/10 considering how respectable he made the organization appear despite having Melnyk in the back.
Murray was decent at drafting and alright at depth hockey trades. No awful contracts signed during his tenure, and no move that made you go "wtf are you thinking?".
Wasn't a big fan of his star trades (like with Heater or Spezza), the way he aired dirty laundry.
My least favourite moves were:
-Signing Jaarko Ruutu
-Bishop for Conacher
-Trading a first round pick for Rundblad when we already had Karlsson in the system
My favourite moves were:
-Trading Rundblad for Turris
-Foligno for Meth
-Elliott for Andy
-Getting Kelly to a cup contender while getting a fair return (I was a big Kelly fan)
To be fair every GM has draft misses. I think drafting evaluation moreso just comes down to what you do find than what you don’t. If you have a lot of hits no one ends up caring about the misses when you win.
Murray was not great at trades, not sure where that idea came from.
Got terrible value in most of the significiant deals he made, and had an awful habit of acquiring players instead of selling them in lost seasons when we had no chance of making the playoffs, costing us dearly on draft day.
He was an ok GM overall, definitely not one of the best in the league. Dorion's reign of terror after his passing makes him look really good in comparison though.
Got terrible value in most of the significiant deals he made, and had an awful habit of acquiring players instead of selling them in lost seasons when we had no chance of making the playoffs, costing us dearly on draft day.
He was an ok GM overall, definitely not one of the best in the league. Dorion's reign of terror after his passing makes him look really good in comparison though.
Tuna99
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Was it? Lehner was a 24 years old former 2nd round pick with great numbers at every level.
Post-trade he had an excellent career. Had one of the highest career average save percentage of any goalie in the league, and he played on some pretty terrible teams.
Bjornar Moxnes
Fordi fellesskap fungerer
I mean we had Anderson and goaltending was not an issue during Lehner's best seasons. In a vaccuum getting a first in a deep draft and dumping salary was a win. We just didn't draft a clearly obvious player that played in the OHL team in the same city. If we drafted Konency, everyone would have seen the trade as a master class.
The Hemsky trade was the least weird of the many acquisitions he made when we were far out of the playoffs, as at least we didn't have our 1st that year (thanks to the awful Ryan trade).
Adding Campoli and a rental Comrie in 2009 when we were bottom 5 was hilarious. Insane timing and it might have cost Murray dearly on draft day in not getting his guy Kadri.
Trying to improve the goalie position in 2011 by trading Tank Commander Elliott for Anderson ended up working out, but people need to factor in that doing the trade when he did ended up boosting the team in the standings from 2nd worst to 5th worst, probably costing us Landeskog/Huberdeau.
Did the same thing in 2016 with the Phaneuf trade too. Dude was completely incapable of sitting on his hands and letting the team suck when the season was already lost. Ended up sabotaging his own draft position a lot of the time because he couldn't stand to see the team lose.
But the idea that a mid-late 1st was an excellent return for Lehner just doesn't add up.
People were acting like he was some kind of reclamation project when he was younger than a lot of team's top goalie prospects.
This was a guy who had great numbers on a mid OHL team, backstopped the B-Sens to a Calder Cup at 19 with a .938 SV%, had a .918 average SV% in the AHL regular season and a .914 SV% in the NHL through ages 19-23.
Getting a 23 year old goalie with that kind of resume for anything less than a mid-late 1st would have been a steal.
He really never should have been traded in the first place, but I can understand why we chose to make the predictable error of keeping the Harmburgler over him after he saved our season.
Tuna99
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Ironically the Campoli trade was for Palmieri who scored on us last night (500+ career points).
BonHoonLayneCornell
Registered User
Not that it would excuse him because he was the boss that gave the go ahead, but he said at the time Dorion handled all the negotiations on that deal with TML's assistant GM at the time. It definitely had Dorion's fingerprints all over it.
I imagine Melnyk wasn't willing to let the team tank and lose revenue late in the season.
Zero proof for that, the opposite actually.
Had no problem with the team sucking from start to finish during the rebuild.
