Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Sens GM Bryan Murray tries to inspire team, threatens trades to Minnesota

Bryan Murray

Ottawa Senators General Manager Bryan Murray announces that the team has extended his contract by one year during a press conference in Ottawa on Friday, Feb. 12, 2010. Murray joined the Senators in 2004 and spent three years as the team’s head coach before being named general manager on June 18, 2007. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Pawel Dwulit)

AP

Coaches and executives have a funny way of going about trying to inspire players to perform better on the ice. Recently, Wild head coach Todd Richards put his team through a bag skate reminiscent of what Herb Brooks put the 1980 US Olympic Team through after an uninspiring performance in a warm-up game before the Olympics. In the case of Senators GM Bryan Murray, he’s opted to do things a little different.

While coach Cory Clouston gave the Senators a bag skate of their own, Murray decided to go another route about solving the Senators early woes. Rather than threatening their playing time or barking about demotions, Murray discussed a more intriguing way to punish players: by trading them to Minnesota to see what a real bag skate is like.

“It’s up to all of us (to improve things) — this is a team,” Murray said. “It’s not the coaches or players only, it’s me doing anything I can.

“I’ve talked to a number of people, as I said,” he went on. “I talked to (Minnesota Wild general manager) Chuck Fletcher for a long time yesterday and said, ‘can I help you, you help me’ type of thing, so we’re talking to management of other teams, trying to find if there is a need and a possibility of making a move.

“That’s not always the solution, but I think it’s something that maybe sends a little message to our players, so we will continue to pursue something.”


Let’s take a minute out to look at this logically. GMs never talk about trades they’re going to make and they most certainly never say who they’re trying to make a deal with. It causes too much trouble and having reporters call you every 10 minutes to see what’s going on can get a little bit annoying for a GM to handle. While Murray and Fletcher do have a history together, as Murray hired Fletcher during his days in both Anaheim and Florida, the chances of one or both of them discussing actual trade talks out in the open like this are virtually nil.

Secondly, what exactly is Murray trying to say here about Minnesota? Is he just using the Wild as an example because a close colleague of his is there? Yeah, probably, but we’re here to blow things out of proportion and get a little crazy about things. Murray threatening to send players who aren’t cutting it to Minnesota is somewhat interesting as perhaps in the back of his mind there’s that whole, “Well, the Wild made a deal with Montreal that worked well for both sides” mentality going on here. That too seems a bit outrageous.

The fact is, Murray wants to get people in the media talking and, best of all, get his players motivated to do something more to stay in Ottawa. Of course, if the players would rather play anywhere else other than Ottawa, promising to do something to get them out of town is the kind of God-send they’re looking for.

That said, dialing down the rhetoric might not be the worst idea. The Sens are off to a bad start at 1-4-1 to begin the season and starting goalie Pascal Leclaire is out with an injury. The Senators were able to do well with injuries last year and to this point they haven’t been as successful. Banking on good fortune and good play forever has risks like that and for now, the Senators don’t have much of either going for them. A little bit more hard work and a little less goofy whimsy from the GM could help them out a little more.