Not terribly surprising. With the Dadonov fiasco, the writing was on the wall.

Still surprised he got fired before Smith, though.

Sens fans are relieved to say the least, he was not a very good GM.

Not wow

I was told he built a cup contender all offseason

joke of a franchise

funny,

thats not what theyve been saying the last 2 summers

You and I were getting the same responses

You must be the last person who didn't see that coming. Not surprising at all. The coach will be layed off before the end of the season too.

Who gets to decide which year they forfeit their first round selection?

I alwasy thought it was Smith first. GM firings this early in the season seem unusual. I thought he shouldve been canned a while ago, and frankly i didnt think about it after the report either. Not super surprised now, just a little maybe

So is one of those 1st round picks LOL

Changing the coach before the GM would be bad management since the new GM would be stuck with a coach he didn't choose on a long term contract.

You fire the GM first and let his replacement evaluate the coach in place and change him for a candidate of his choosing if he considers the move is needed.

i never said hire a different coach lol idk the last time a team hired a coach long term in the middle of a season. I meant just name someone interim or fire them both at the same time

Woodcroft, Tocchet and St-louis were all hired in the MIDDLE OF THE SEASON in the last 2 years....

Anaheim, Calgary Montreal and SJ all changed their coach in the following months AFTER firing their gm in the last 2 years....

Finally lol should have been gone years ago

Fired or not, a reminder that AZ and OTT lost picks for dumb ****.

While CHI got off the hook.

and none of them came with inherited long term deals lmao. proving my point

Woodcroft and St. Louis were interim at first, and Tochett hiring was complete chaos

He did manage to add some pretty good players, with Giroux, DeBrincat (now gone), and Chychrun in addition to their drafted players.

It's crazy how Dorion went all out to try to save his job the last couple of years, but the move that sealed it for him was incompetence in properly executing a cap dump trade. I'm sure the team performance did not help but I think he would have gotten fired a bit later had it not been for that forfeited 1st.

Arizona with the draft combine thing was obvious that they would lose their pick. Those things are directly related.

Ottawa could have probably been fined or something else maybe, but guessing they did not want to penalize the new owner financially. The blame is Dorion's at the end and with the pick gone he ends up losing his job.

The Chicago franchise being a major money maker for the league was not going to get penalized by losing a draft pick. I would add that punishing the owner for what happened is easier said than done. Bowman and Quenneville did get punished. What happened in Chicago was obviously much more severe, a crime was committed, which is probably why a penalty like that is not even appropriate. The perpetrator, Aldrich, did get punished by the League (as best as they could by removing him from the Cup) and the Law. Although, I don't think Aldrich is serving time for the assault on Beach but rather on some minors. I could be wrong though.

That's the point. Sad state of Bettman's NHL is that if this had happened to, say, WPG or NYI, there probably would have been an actual punishment handed down from the league.

Forcing OTT and AZ to forfeit 1sts isn't a punishment to the owner, so much as to the organization. The GM ****ed up, its not everyone's fault, etc.; but, that didn't stop the league. If they wanted to punish the individuals direcetly involve, suspend them, fine them (exhobritantly), force them out of the league.

Instead, the league simple flicked a tiny fine on an owner worth $4.4B. CHI fired some folks, some of whom will depressingly probably end up with jobs.

It's old news, I know. Just always worth reminding everyone Bettman and Co. are morons.

Giroux: boat anchor contract at 6.5 mill

ADB: doesn't work out when Stuzle is basically the same player and therefore takes ADB's suits and vice versa

Chychrun: Pretty good, wish the Leafs got him... But he's not what Ottawa needs... They need depth, RHD and a goalie...

And think of what it costed to get those assets: 2 1sts (1 being a top 10 and the other was a top 15 pick), 3 2nds and a 3rd... As well as 17 mill in cap space...

Then you add in the Pinto thing and the basic thing of transferring someone's M-NTC and Dorion gets fired

I can show you many evidences of teams firing GMs during the season first and switching coaches afterward, but I can't understand good management pratices for you.

Giving Aldrich a good reference so he could stay in hockey and coach young boys was absolutely immoral and disgusting. It wasn't just the silence is violence mantra you hear from the Gen Z. The Hawks enabled this guy even after the scandal in Chicago. They learned nothing til all the facts came to light with the Rick Westhead reporting and they couldnt hide the circumstances from the NHL or the public. The hockey media also deserves A TON of blame as a lot of scribes ignored the story and are glorified PR men/women for the NHL. It was all Westhead's reporting and work with Katie Strong at the end.

In Ottawa's case the GM is mostly to blame, but the ARZ thing, the GMs and scouting department, if not the entire FO are complicit and should have known better, was a clear violation of the NHL's combine testing policy. So, the franchise definitely should have been punished, and because it's draft-related, forfeiting picks makes sense. The Ottawa case might be harsh but like the ARZ scenario it's a hockey operations-related blunder that was punished with hockey-related punishment. When there's a crime committed, people are going to get punished by the League in a way that hopefully prevents a reoccurrence, for that you are going to punish individuals, not an organization.

I get that you probably wanted more responsibility on the owner but at the end of the day he is Bettman's boss and unless he himself actually does something scandalous there isn't much he can do. Even then, who knows who will protect him from among the owners? The sad reality is that most people are going to hide a cover for people who they are close to and even support/enable them to continue. Perhaps the worst part about the handling of the Kyle Beach assault is, as @Andy_Dick pointed out, was the reference that they gave him.

My point though was that there was punishment handed out, maybe not enough but it's more appropriate than forfeiting a pick. I feel like that's saying "If an organization member commits a crime and it is covered up, you will lose a 1st round pick." In the case of a violent crime, that 1st-round pick is insignificant in regards and losing that pick is not really a deterrence, not to mention that the individuals overseeing things may no longer be with the club. The proper action is to suspend those who were complicit in the cover-up and get them educated on how to conduct themselves in that situation. As for whoever was involved in giving Aldrich a reference that landed him a job elsewhere with minors, they shouldn't be allowed back into the League. You would think that if they wanted to cover this up to avoid bad PR, they would let Aldrich go and then get him blackballed, not try to essentially buy his silence and make him disappear as if they told him to commit the assault.

Giroux is definitely worth the 6.5M AAV. Had he been underperforming, his contract is far from being a boat anchor with him just having a year left on his contract. Not having him would have allowed them to re-sign Tarasenko (forgot to mention him), which boils down to having one less top 6 player for a year. Losing a 32-year-old top-6 fwd who was a FA signing wouldn't be nearly as devastating as losing Chychrun at 27 to FA which could potentially happen if Giroux had an additional year on his deal. The good news for OTT, is that Giroux is very much still a top-6 forward, and he brings a lot of those intangibles that they will need in the playoffs if they make it when he's still around, and his contract expires before they need to make any major signings of proven players. The Korpisalo signing, on the other hand, can definitely turn into a boat anchor. I would give it 2-2.5 years before judging that signing.

Not sure what you mean about ADB and Stutzle being basically the same player, but one's a pure goal scorer and the other a playmaker, so it's not a stretch as to why he would think it would work out. That being said, like half of Dorion's moves that involve a 1st, this didn't work out. Dorion is not the guy you want to dealing first-round picks, but my point was that on paper he put together a solid squad. I wouldn't give too much criticism on him for trading the 7th OV pick that year for him considering that there was a higher probability that they misdraft that year with the limited scouting information due to Covid (players playing less in the year prior + the draft year, restricted travel, etc...).

They did need a top/middle pairing RD, and they got Chychrun who isn't exactly what they needed but was advertised as being able to fit that need. If they can retain him it will be solid work done. I wouldn't have been surprised if Dorion got embarrassed in two years with Chychrun leaving but now that he's gone he can't be blamed if it does happen. I'm glad the Leafs didn't get him because the cost definitely wouldn't have been equivalent to what OTT gave, and I suspect that he would continue getting injured and/or not be nearly as good as advertised.

The cost for ADB and JC was reasonable overall, the only problem is that 1) they didn't manage to retain DeBrincat (good thing he didn't feel pressured to sign him though) although they at least were able to recuperate a 1st and 2) they didn't get anything good out of having him, not even an opportunity at making a run.

Pinto thing isn't a big deal, he's a good young player who just can't get paid at this time, and with his suspension, it looks better that they didn't pay to dump someone just to fit him. The Joseph-Greig-Tarasenko line has been great for them so they aren't missing him too much probably. Sure, they probably would want Pinto in over Kubalik but it is what it is, in terms of where they were last year, they haven't gotten worse. The problem is likely that they haven't gotten much better.

The DeBrincat ordeal is a bit of a red flag, in terms of Dorion not being able to retain him, but the guy had a terrible year so it's not surprising that it would have been difficult. Other than the fact that Dorion is a mediocre GM, whose amazing moves are nullified by bad ones, I would say that Dorion has been on thin ice and had the chance to maybe get a clean slate if the team continued to improve with new ownership but the Dadonov thing definitely ended him and possibly any chance of him getting a GM job again. Maybe he will be in the FO in some other role but I doubt as the GM.