Q: You’re now paying much less in payroll, can you break even without being a playoff team this year?



A: Yes. Put it this way. We should not be in business if we have to make the playoffs, just to break even. That’s not fair. That’s your bonus. That’s your bonus.

You guys make the playoffs, I make money. And I make a lot of money. But we shouldn’t have to do that. I shouldn’t have to do that every year.

“Up until this year, we had to make two rounds of playoffs just to break even,” he said in a telephone interview Thursday. “Now, we are doing well enough that we break even, pretty much, just finishing off the season, and everything else kind of gets ‘bonused’ out.”

Cory Conacher

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A few thoughts on the last 48-hours for the Ottawa Senators, and where this team's headed over the next month or so.It doesn't really matter if Ottawa, working against the math, runs off twelve wins in the next month or so and squeaks into the post-season. This season has been a total disappointment. It's been heading in that direction since those early-year games against Los Angeles and San Jose, where the team was trying to stave off fifty shots a night.I don't think this team is a bad team -- I just don't think they're a good one. In the interest of full disclosure, I'll note that I had higher expectations for this club than in years past. I figured they'd fairly comfortably reach the post-season, though I doubted they were any serious contender in the divisional race. Third, fourth, fifth maybe. That sounded about right for a budget team with a fair amount of talent in the right places.A combination of things went wrong though, none of it injury-related. The team bet wrongly on a couple of pieces in the off-season in Jared Cowen and Colin Greening. They probably didn't see the jump in some of their younger players they had hoped for, either. And, for the vast majority of the season, they've been a one-line, one defensive-pairing (i.e. whatever pairing Erik Karlsson's on) with no goaltending support. You're not going to win many games that way, though you probably should be able to pick up more than, uh, zero points against the likes of Edmonton, Edmonton, and Calgary.Playoffs are almost certainly not coming to Ottawa this year. And that's something the team's going to have to accept.Moving away from the Tuesday/Wednesday disaster, I found the addition of Ales Hemsky at the trade deadline rather fascinating. This is a move I totally endorsed , irrelevant of whether or not the team was trying to compete for a playoff berth. Hemsky's a good player, and he was ridiculously undervalued predominantly due to deflated shooting percentages and a horrible Edmonton Oilers team. The cost -- a third and fifth-round pick, which combined, give a team about a 30% chance at producing an NHL'er -- was irrelevant.Well,irrelevant. See, it's impossible to ignore all of the daily noise about how little money the team has and the internal budget and whatever else ownership's churning out for some ulterior motive, like getting a casino. Joe Corvo, who has been carried all year in the press box as some sort of defensive insurance, was waived by Ottawa one day earlier. He was immediately loaned to the AHL affiliate of the St. Louis Blues.Cory Conacher was the bigger name to be waived. There was some discussion about the team coming to its senses on a player that wasn't fitting in and honorably conceding that they had made a mistake in the Ben Bishop deal. Or that Conacher had been victimized by other prospects (like, Mike Hoffman), who pushed Conacher's role out of Ottawa.I obviously don't buy it. I don't think Cory Conacher has had a great season, but he's a plus-possession player that's fifth on the team in points/60. There's really no cogent argument in support of guys like Colin Greening or Chris Neil as better players, or even equal players. There's also a heap of comparable guys that really haven't distanced themselves from Conacher, which include just about every prospect that's been called up not named Mika Zibanejad, and veterans like Erik Condra and Zack Smith.The problem with this theory that the team just totally soured on such a player is that, in his final game, Cory Conacher saw extended minutes on the team's top-line with Jason Spezza. From waiver wire, to first-line, to claimed by the first of what apparently was many, many teams who placed a claim on the winger.This, all on top of the fact that it strikes me as more likely than not that Ottawa incentivized the Hemsky deal by adding in a pick in exchange for some sort of salary retention. Which, again, is totally fine -- the picks really aren't all that valuable. But, when every dollar counts, it's interesting to see the lengths front offices will go to save, and the value they'll fork over in exchange. Not that it's necessarily better or worse here, I note.However, it seems to me that the cost of doing business -- on an internal budget where every dollar matters -- means losing guys like Cory Conacher and Joe Corvo, on top of the pair of draft picks in the Ales Hemsky deal. What's funny is if that offer was tabled, four-for-one, I still really consider it. That's how good I think Hemsky is, and that's the kind of fit I see with Hemsky and Ottawa going forward.But, it's something you have to note. The thought that the waiving of Cory Conacher and Joe Corvo 24-hours before the trade deadline wasn't incentivized for the financials is just myopic.Seeing the run of moves in the days and hours leading up to the acquisition of Ales Hemsky, and seeing how the dollars still fell favorably after Edmonton and Ottawa reached an agreement on salary retention, it makes you wonder just how important reaching the post-season is to the franchise's bottom-line.It's absolutely impossible to keep track of what the team does and does not need to do in order to financially succeed, mostly because the goal posts seem to move every month or so. Ownership's stated in the past that the team needs to reach the first or second-round of the playoffs just to break-even; they've also stated that they don't need to worry about reaching the playoffs to cover losses; they've since walked those comments back. It's wholly confusing. Obviously there's incentive to reach the post-season because winning is good and losing is bad and more home games means more dollars in the bank, but the quotes about what's needed for money stability is just a mindless void of inconsistencies.Including, but certainly not limited to:The thing that's most interesting isn't just the acquisition of Ales Hemsky; it's the non-moves of a guy like Milan Michalek, or the extension of a guy like Chris Phillips. Every move the team made seems to be gearing up for a playoff push. Let me remind you that, even before the absolute debacle in Calgary, Ottawa had less than a 1-in-6 chance of reaching the playoffs. That's not zero, but it's pretty damn close.And Ottawa approached the deadline with those now infamous words from ownership: "We are definitely buyers!" Which, of course, is great if you want to see a team compete in the short-term, and great if only for the fact that the team doesn't have any motivation to lose-out because the team's first-round pick this year sits with Anaheim. The problem, of course, is that the team's betting heavily at beating super-stacked odds. This is like sitting at a blackjack table and doubling down on five. Yeah,the dealer busts. But probably not.I don't think it's unreasonable to believe the argument that Ottawa probably needs to get past game eighty-two this year, and were willing to bite the bullet on a couple of deals or non-deals in the short-term to gamble on that happening. Again, I think the addition of Hemsky at a pretty soft cost was brilliant regardless of motive. But, the non-moves .. the non-moves were less encouraging.This is a team that thinks they can reach the post-season, despite heavily stacked odds. I just remain curious if the 'think' is really 'hope', and futile hope at that. And, when it comes to the Ottawa Senators, you can never overlook the dollars. This is, after all, a group that's banking on the cap crashing like the stock market I don't think a lot of people foresaw the struggles of the 2014-2015 Ottawa Senators last June. Even their off-season moves seemed like a team heading in the direction of making a deep playoff push -- which, if you recall, was Bryan Murray's stated plan for "year three" of the rebuild. I liked this team. Ilike this team, for the most part. I think a lot of people do.But, I can't help but think there's a little bit of quiet justice with the team's likely fate, andwhat they've committed financially to the roster this year. To be a legitimate Cup contender in the bottom-fifth of league-spending, you better have an absolute arsenal of young talent to complement a few high-end players, not dissimilar to the Anaheim Ducks this year. Otherwise, you're more likely than not going to end up a cap floor team that's far less likely to contend in the lottery as opposed to the playoffs. And, I always note that the work has been done on this Many times . So, it's not really acceptable to toss out totally unsupported arguments about how spending doesn't correlate with winning.I stumbled upon this quote a few months ago in preparation for a post, but never got around to publishing my thoughts on it.If the theory in the past was "well, we spent in the past, and we didn't win," I hope that this year's lesson is that arriving at such a conclusion with maybe two or three years of anecdotal evidence is dangerous, if not altogether dumb. Not to mention the draft pick thing is just unintelligible.Speaking of dumb, I don't think anything was more frustrating last night than the deployment of players by Paul MacLean. For whatever reason, MacLean decided to dial back the only line that's been a success this year, and upped the ice time for ... the "energy" line. I don't exactly know why, but Colin Greening, Zack Smith, and Chris Neil -- when together -- are leaned on like the team's second-line. If not the first. And it's just wildly perplexing.Fifteen forwards have played at least a hundred minutes for the team this year. Colin Greening, Zack Smith, and Chris Neil all sit in the bottom-five of points/60 at even-strength. They don't produce anything offensively. This, I think, is obvious to the naked eye.What about goals? Ottawa scores 45% of the five-on-five goals with Chris Neil on the ice, and 44% of the five-on-five goals with Zack Smith on the ice, and 41% of the five-on-five goals with Colin Greening on the ice. Compare this to plus-possession guys who (surprise!) see the better-half of the goals at evens: Kyle Turris (62%), Clarke MacArthur (59%),(58%), Erik Condra (52%), and so on.Zack Smith's a decent bottom-six center who should be deployed accordingly. He shouldn't be touching eighteen minutes a night. Colin Greening's a replacement level forward. Chris Neil might be below replacement level.For all of the intangibles that group brings, they sure seem to get out-shot relative to their teammates, out-scored relative to their teammates, and of course, take more penalties relative to their teammates.There's nothing in the data that supports this group playing more than a fourth-line. And, to some, this is obvious. But I had a lot of people ask me curiously if there was something Paul MacLean was looking at to make these decisions.The answer is no. It's a brainless allocation of ice-time; so much so, you wonder if there's something going on that others aren't privy to.Thanks for reading!