Quote:
Originally Posted by DefenseMinister
The 05-06 edition of the team that ended up imploding in the 1st round was actually the scariest roster the Sens have ever iced.
Spezza, Heatley, Alfredsson, Havlat, Fisher, Neil, Vermette, Schaefer, Kelly
Redden (right before he turned into a terrible hockey player), Chara, Phillips, Volchenkov, Meszaros and most importantly Hasek (backed up by Emery).
The next year, the Cup finals team had a lot of that depth and star power stripped but still went as far as it did on the strength of the phenomenal first line. But they lived and died by that line and when they didn't produce in the Finals, there were predictable results.
It's common knowledge that it wasn't the talent that ripped apart the team in the John Paddock coached following season (they went 16-3 to start the season). Emery and his massively inflated ego, new contract and indifference to doing anything on the ice to improve himself while he was having way too much fun being King A-hole all over town absolutely ripped the team apart and caused the division in the dressing room.
He got his coach fired, a couple of his buddies traded or released and the Sens considered him such a problem that they ate his contract by buying it out in the offseason only 1 year into it just so they could get his entitled ass out of the city.
Unfortunately, the Sens couldn't rebuild correctly after that because all the top player's deals came up that season and the Sens had to give them massive raises in order to keep them in the fold, thus maxing out their cap room. Any secondary player was dumped for spare parts or allowed to walk for nothing because there was no money left. Muckler didn't care about drafting or developing players so there were no young players to take up the slack and the team started the decline.
Murray didn't have the ability to make significant changes because the team had the core locked up to hefty deals and there were no young assets to deal from. He needed to build through the draft (which takes time) and patch the holes with whatever cheap filler there was out there (hello Randy Robitaille, Jason Smith, Jarko Ruutu, Jesse Winchester etc). It's only now really where you're starting to see the results of the 5 years of drafting and developing the org has done over Murray's watch. That's how long it's taken to get out of the shadow of the mess John Muckler left him with.
There's your history lesson. Hope that answers your question.
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I'm aware of what happened, I'm just not convinced it couldn't have been avoided.