Monday, February 2, 2009

Found: One Scape Goat

TSN reports Hartsburg is fired:
Craig Hartsburg was fired as head coach of the Ottawa Senators on Sunday night, only 48 games into his first season behind the team's bench.
One could spin this saying that Brian Murray is grasping at straws to save his own job.

I've said before that it was too soon to lower the boom on Hartsburg as the problems on the ice are a direct result of management's (lack of) player movement. The team doesn't have the pieces it needs and therefore can't succeed; firing Hartsburg was like blaming a carpenter for failing to build quality furniture when all he has to work with are driftwood and rusty nails.

Now to be sure the Senators are not driftwood and rusty nails. But they are not, by any means, complete as a team.

We should have reserved judgment on Hartsburg until he'd had a proper team to fail with.

Boooo.