Not enough change in Ottawa

GM Bryan Murray (seen here during his 2005-07 tenure as coach) keeps digging a deeper hole for the Senators. AP Michael Farber's Mailbag Michael Farber will periodically answer questions from SI.com users in his mailbag. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND

Well, at least it didn't take as long as it did last year.

General manager Bryan Murray is running through coaches in Ottawa the way Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison negotiated Arizona Cardinals during his 100-yard dash in the Super Bowl. Since reaching Game 5 of the 2007 Stanley Cup Final, the Senators have had four: John Paddock, Murray himself, Craig Hartsburg and now Cory Clouston, who was brought up Monday from AHL Binghamton to guide the disappointing team after Hartsburg's firing 48 games into the season. Paddock made it through 64 matches last year, which suggests that either Hartsburg is three-quarters the coach Paddock was or Murray is even itchier than he was last season.

Of course, Paddock's team, with a stellar start, won 36 games before he was dismissed late last February. When the axe fell on Hartsburg, who was hired last summer to bring some accountability to a team that had spun off its axis, the Senators were 13th in the Eastern Conference, so far out of a playoff spot that they could barely espy one with the Hubble Telescope.

The stunning development in Ottawa is not that Hartsburg was fired -- he looked like he was coaching the Zombie all-stars until a brief rally in the third period of a 7-4 loss in Washington on Sunday -- but that owner Eugene Melnyk allowed Murray to make the change at all.

When a GM has to hire three coaches in fewer than two seasons, his judgment is, umm, suspect.

Melnyk held a press conference last week to express support for his bungling team. During his chinwag, Melnyk said that those who suggest the Senators be blown up -- a common if clumsy phrase in the sportswriting genre -- should actually blow themselves up, which, in a post-9/11 world, smacked of insensitivity if not outright stupidity. Maybe Melnyk should have just told the assembled media to go retrench itself, because even if he refuses to accept it, the window of opportunity for Cups in the near future closed last year.

Murray, among our favorite men in the game, built Anaheim's 2003 Cup finalist, but his touch has gone ice cold in Canada's capital. He's made bad bets on personnel, signing center Jason Spezza and winger Dany Heatley -- superb talents at best but coach killers at worst -- to long-term deals. (Heatley signed a six-year, $45-million extension in October 2007 and Spezza received a seven-year, $49-million extension the following month.) Even though Murray knew that goaltender Ray Emery was a dressing-room problem, he didn't thank him for his services during the 2007 playoff run and wound up having to buy him out last summer after one season of a three-year extension. Murray also resigned Mike Fisher to an extension that will make him a too rich Senators center until 2013.

Instead of getting ahead of the market, Murray locked himself into talents who are not bedrock players despite their offensive numbers (Heatley and Spezza) and left the Senators with a defense that is not adept at moving the puck or joining the rush. He also has too many players, including Fisher (seven goals) and Antoine Vermette (six), who'd be more attractive if they were making at least $1 million less per year than they are now. Like Paddock, an admirable man and former Ottawa assistant coach who was favored by the players, and Hartsburg, previously a moderately successful NHL head coach, Murray simply backed the wrong people.

Maybe Clouston can provide the good housecleaning the Senators need in his first NHL job, but it's a long shot. A better bet last summer might have been the one man seemingly capable of shoveling these Augean Stables -- John Tortorella -- but, according to sources, the former coach of the 2004 Cup champion Lightning never received an interview. Now, the abrasive Tortorella can be a pebble in the shoe of his players, which might have made for a stylistic mismatch, but Murray should have at least heard some of his ideas before anointing Hartsburg.

Would Ottawa have taken to an American as a coach? If he won, guaranteed.

For a team that has been an annual playoff participant for more than a decade, the coaching switch probably comes too late. Unless Murray can change the culture of the team -- or Melnyk identifies a GM he thinks can do it -- the foundering Senators will continue to fade.