from Jeffrey Simpson of the Globe and Mail,

While the “national” hockey media shoot fish in a barrel reporting obsessively on the collapse of the Toronto Maple Leafs, up the road in Ottawa, a franchise has been in slow decline.

The bombastic and debt-laden owner, Eugene Melnyk, and general manager, Bryan Murray, have presided over the Ottawa Senator’s slide to out-of-the-playoffs mediocrity. The Senators stand 11th in the Eastern Conference, nine points from the wild-card playoff position, and 22nd overall, a far cry from where they used to be a decade ago. Next week, the Senators start a hard five-game road trip against Western Conference teams, all of which are better than Ottawa.

Melnyk, who has recently sold his stables and horses to raise money, used to brag about being willing to spend to the NHL salary cap in quest of a winning team. Now, Melnyk boasts about having imposed one of the league’s lowest salary caps on the Senators, claiming other owners are blowing money on bad deals. The result is obvious on the ice and in the organization. The Senators cannot compete against teams with much higher salaries. The co-relation is not exact (see the Leafs), but larger-spending teams do tend to finish higher up in the standing.

Melnyk remains defiant, insisting in December, “I’m not in the least embarrassed about us spending at the bottom. I’m happy about it because we’ll be able to spend more in the future and some can’t. Some are stuck.”

continued