Let’s get one thing straight, this is not an article defending Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk. Melnyk deserves all the hate he gets for being a cheap owner who meddles in team affairs. However, because of Melnyk, Sens general manager Pierre Dorion often gets a free pass. He often avoids blame for moves the Sens make because they are written off as Melnyk’s ideas. Pierre Dorion is very responsible for the mess the Senators are in. Because of this, he needs to shoulder more of the blame.
Pierre Dorion Has Not Helped The Sens Position
Pierre Dorion has a tough job. He has one of, if not the worst bosses in the NHL. However, that doesn’t change the fact he has not helped himself. Dorion has made a handful of good moves. These moves include the Derick Brassard trade and arguably moving Dion Phaneuf without giving up a big asset. Unfortunately, that’s just not enough to justify an NHL job when you look at where he has gone wrong in the past few seasons. So, let’s take a look at why he should be taking more blame.
Free Agent Signings
A knock on Melnyk and the Sens is often that they are too cheap to sign free agents. While this is somewhat true, it’s not always the worst thing. In NHL Free Agency, players tend to be way overpaid. However, what that means are the players you do sign need to be smart and cheap.
What the Senators did was the opposite. The Senators filled up their bottom six with players like Nate Thompson, Alexandre Burrows, Tom Pyatt, Max McCormick, Magnus Paajarvi, Gabriel Dumont, and Johnny Oduya. Now, not all of these players were free agent signings per say, but all of these players were either signed for too much or didn’t belong on an NHL Roster. Especially when you consider that it took away ice time from players like Filip Chlapik, Colin White and even Thomas Chabot at the beginning of the season.
Some people say this was Guy Boucher wanting his type of players. While this may be true, it is still a general manager’s job to stop this from happening. Dorion needed to say no immediately and let the younger prospects play. He has seemed to try and fix the mistakes in part, but by the time he realized he should switch the damage was done.
Matt Duchene Trade
Alright, let me explain this one before yelling. Matt Duchene the player is great. Heck, if you cut out the Nashville Predators side of the deal, the return for Duchene was fine too. A first, a fine prospect and a 1st and 3rd rounder for a legit top line is not bad. What is bad however was adding Kyle Turris to the trade. While Duchene is a great player, the difference between Turris and Duchene was not worth all of the extra pieces the Senators gave up. When you look at Turris, and the long list of things the Senators gave up for Duchene and not getting anything more back makes that deal bad, no matter how you cut it.
If the Colorado Avalanche didn’t want to do the deal without Nashville and the Turris portion of the trade? That’s fine, you need to walk away then. One of Dorion’s biggest problems as a general manager has been his failure you to look forward. There were many signs the Sens team was not the Eastern Conference Final team they were before. The teams underlying Corsi and expected goals metrics were poor at best. On top of that, they also lost core pieces that season. To ignore all of that data and assume because you were fine once you’ll be fine again is poor judgement. On top of that comes paying a ransom for a first line centre in Duchene. Obviously, it is easier with hindsight, but as a general manager, this is what you need to look for. Ottawa is now in a terrible spot because they are tanking with no first rounder.
Drafting Tkachuk
Speaking of the first round pick, that brings us to the decision of drafting Brady Tkachuk. I am going to try and avoid the Tkachuk hate because he is a very good prospect. However, Pierre Dorion said in his presser that the rebuild has been on since February. If this is the case, then you should be looking for your piece going forward.
A rebuild is almost always centred around one big player with some great supporting players. Look at the Maple Leafs, Penguins, Jets, Capitals, Blackhawks, and Kings. All of those teams picked high up in the draft at least once. This obviously takes some luck, but it also takes the ability to draft the right player. Whiffing on a high pick like the Edmonton Oilers did with Nail Yakupov back in 2012 can set your franchise back years.
Giving up that pick can be even worse. One only has to look at the Leafs giving picks that became Tyler Seguin and Dougie Hamilton as part of the Phil Kessel trade. Kessel is a talented player, but this move, made in 2009, set the Leafs back years. This is why the Sens really needed to think more about before drafting Tkachuk.
What Should Have Been Done?
I wrote about if well before the draft here, but I’ll summarize it again. The idea of a rebuild is to get the piece that will be a complete game changer going forward. Brady Tkachuk is just not that player. He was ranked outside the top five by multiple scouting services, including LWOH’s own Ben Kerr. If the plan was always to trade Erik Karlsson, which it sounds like it was, then it is safe to assume this Senators team will struggle again this season.
Obviously, not everything in the NHL is a guarantee, there’s a lot of random that can happen. However, it is hard to see this Ottawa team climbing much. That pick is a very safe bet to be a top 10 pick. So best case scenario you’re giving yourself a shot at Jack Hughes, worst case scenario a Tkachuk type player should still be available a few spots later anyways. Now this team enters a gloomy year with no first rounder in the draft, making tanking much more pointless. Pierre Dorion needs to swallow his pride in a situation like that and just accept he screwed up. Move on, and give yourself a shot at getting a game breaking player.
Mike Hoffman Trade
The San Jose Sharks made Pierre Dorion look like a fool. Because of the drama in the room Mike Hoffman no doubt had to go, but you need to get picks back for him. Again, one of the biggest parts of a rebuild is draft picks and players for the future. Mikkel Boedker may be a warm body, but he is not in the Sens long-term future.
San Jose then flipped Hoffman to the Florida Panthers for the exact type of package Ottawa should have been asking San Jose for, regardless of Melnyk’s no division trade rule. This type of planning by Dorion was poor judgement overall. In his next trade with the Sharks, it seemed like Pierre Dorion was more focused on not being burned by trade again than the actual return he got back.
Erik Karlsson Trade
The return for Karlsson was always going to be poor. You don’t trade away the best defenseman in the league and win. However, what Dorion got back was pitiful. He took the “Quantity over Quality” approach and even tried bragging about it. Rudolf Balcers and Josh Norris seem like fine players, but very likely nothing game breaking. Dylan DeMelo and Chris Tierney are both average roster players at best.
What makes it worse is that Jeff Marek reported on 31 Thoughts that Dallas had a package of “Julius Honka, Roope Hintz, Devin Shore, and guaranteed picks.” There was also a rumour of a sweetener too. That deal is almost certainly better than the one they got and it makes you wonder what Pierre Dorion was thinking.
To add just a little more salt in the wound, the Montreal Canadiens got top prospect Nick Suzuki back in a trade for Max Pacioretty just days earlier. So it’s not like a big prospect hadn’t been moved. Dorion traded away the best player the franchise has ever had for lottery tickets and four players who may not even become above average. No matter how you cut it, that is unacceptable.
Lack Of Future Vision
As stated earlier, one of the biggest problems Pierre Dorion has is not being able to look a year or two in advance when it comes to possible ramifications of his actions. The Craig Anderson extension is a great example of that. There should have been no rush to sign a 36-Year-old goalie to a two-year extension a year before it kicks in. It doesn’t matter if Anderson had a great year the year prior. There are only a very select handful of players you should be comfortable giving an extension to at that age 365 days in advance. When adding in the goalie factor and how violent their age curve can be it should be a no-brainer to stay away from that.
Now that contract looks like it could be very bad. Sens fans are definitely hoping that Anderson can pull back to form this season. However, at age 37 it seems like a big ask of a goalie to do. The other example of not being able to look into the future is how Dorion has handled Cody Ceci.
Ceci has been overrated most of his career and that’s not his fault. He’s put in shutdown roles, he’s not suitable for and forced to play big minutes. There has been evidence that Ceci is not what he’s made up to be for years now and Pierre Dorion has had multiple chances to move him. Instead, he decided to move someone like Marc Methot while keeping Ceci. As a result, Ceci has a very diminished trade value and still isn’t suitable for the role he is going to have to take this season.
Overall
Overall, Pierre Dorion has done his fair share to put the Senators in the mess they’re in. Dorion’s overall ability to overvalue certain players or assets in trades has proven costly to this organization. While Dorion likely has a safe job under Melnyk, the man he has become a yes-man too, fans need to realize that big problems will still occur if Dorion is in charge of this team.
