[Garrioch] Brady Tkachuk: “It’s embarrassing. I’m at a loss for words.”

The argument is that an inexperienced GM prone to bad moves was a symptom of the problem, not the problem. The problem was that the team had the most restrictive and meddling ownership in the league. This was going to lead to issues regardless of who was GM. Due to Melnyk's restrictions, it is unlikely that the Senators would get a superstar GM. The only reason they had Bryan Murray was because he was a holdover from when Melnyk didn't impose those same financial restrictions on the team, although Murray did allegedly have to deal with just as much meddling.

It's all really straight forward. Every trade can be boiled down to three things:

1 - Lack of money.

2 - Melnyk's unrealistic expectations.

3 - Paper thin and inexperienced front office.

You bring up the Stepan trade. Think for a second about why they gave up a 2nd to acquire Stepan when nobody else in the league would take him with a cap hit of 6.5M for free. They overpaid for Stepan because they were a budget team who was expected to take a step forward and win games. They needed help down the middle. They could not afford a legitimate solution under their budget. While Stepan had a 6.5M cap hit, his signing bonus was already paid, which made his base salary 2M. Melnyk's unrealistic expectations, a paper thin pro scouting staff, and a lack of money. Those are all the factors that played into that trade.

It is pretty clear I am in no way saying Dorion is a great GM. If anything, my posts have been pretty insulting to Dorion as they assume he is only GM because of Melnyk's limitations, and that he would not get a job elsewhere.

Anybody who follows this team knows this stuff. It's all really basic and easy to understand. It's why there has always been such divergent opinions among Sens fans, and then among fans of other teams who discuss the Sens moves. Not all fans of other teams realize that the Senators were a budget team, or what limitations they have. So they see a move like trading Zibanejad for a veteran who is cost controlled way below his market value in real cash, or acquiring Stepan at 2M in real cash, and they only look at it through the framework of a normal cap team that has stable ownership. You can't look at those moves through that perspective.

People have this fantasy that Dorion and Smith should have gotten ousted because they could have been replaced with x or y superstar coach or GM candidate. The reality is that they would have been replaced with another budget candidate like Pierre McGuire. It's an incredibly easy point to understand. The problem the franchise faced was Melnyk's restrictions, whoever was GM would operate under those same restrictions, those same restrictions would prevent the team from hiring a top level GM or coach, and we'd be likely to have just as many bad trades or acquisitions as a result. The fact that the team is in a salvageable position with multiple young star players locked in and only a few bad contracts is a miracle.

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