The Ottawa Senators Are An Absolute Clown Show

Waiting on the Ottawa Senators to make important decisions is about as painful as waiting for your girlfriend to decide what she wants to eat.

The Ottawa Senators are going to screw this up, aren’t they?

With the future of the franchise hanging in the balance, management/ownership will see to it that this entire trade deadline debacle ends horribly.

Over time people around the world will remember Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Julius Caesar and the Ottawa Senators at the 2019 trade deadline as the greatest tragedies to ever grace this planet.

This Is Embarrassing

We are just four days away from the trade deadline, and nothing has happened. No trades, no signings, nothing.

Yes the team could be fielding offers from around the league and continuing discussions with Mark Stone and Matt Duchene. Yes the team could be finding a good trade offer for Ryan Dzingel. Yes the team could be still finding someone who actually wants to trade for Cody Ceci.

But no, ownership and this management group do not get the benefit of the doubt. Looking at their track record it is apparent that they have done nothing to prepare themselves for this moment. They have known for a long time that this season was a lost cause and that they should prepare for the future. If that means trading their stars, then it unfortunately has to be done. But it looks like that was never in the cards for them.

They did offer Stone and Duchene long-term extensions. Judging by how long this has taken they probably thought that would be that. They had no plans to trade them.

They thought their two best players (And two of the better players in the NHL) would want to sign, long-term, to stay on a team that won’t contend for the Stanley Cup for at least four years. Did Pierre Dorion and Eugene Melnyk really think Stone and Duchene wanted to stay in this clown show? Why would they? To play on a bad team in front of an empty Canadian Tire Centre that was abandoned by fans who got tired of Melnyk’s schtick?

If those two decide to leave, good for them. Seriously! No hard feelings! If Stone and Duchene want to leave none of us should stop them.

This team has become the laughing-stock of the NHL, a joke that teams like the Detroit Red Wings and the New Jersey Devils laugh at to make themselves feel better. Decisions and transactions made by the Senators don’t look like the result of a lengthy discussion with teams or players, but the last-second panic move by a group of men who have no idea what they are doing.

There is no vision of what the team should look like now and over the next few years. If the Senators can’t re-sign their best players this year, how difficult do they think it’s going to be next summer when Thomas Chabot will need an extension? The team needs a kick in the pants. The falling attendance will only do so much, losing their best players and being unable to sign any stars in free agency is the next step.

It’s like Melnyk and Dorion fancy themselves as the hockey executive equivalents of Jackson Pollock, flinging everything onto the ice and hoping it creates something beautiful. But they haven’t. All they have created are the Ottawa Senators.