News

The president of the Ottawa Senators was obviously flustered.

"It would be a lie if I told you that was the truth," Roy Mlakar said in answer to a speculative question.

Then he rolled his eyes. "That made no sense, did it?"

No, but not much else did either on this muggy day in Ottawa when the ice gave way under general manager John Muckler.

Muckler was out, fired after taking his team to its best performance ever, fired after reaching the Stanley Cup final when 28 other teams could not, fired for coming up three wins short of the Stanley Cup.

The formal announcement that Muckler was gone and coach Bryan Murray was being promoted was not exactly a surprise by the time the press conference was held at Scotiabank Place.

There had been rumours for days, and Muckler, surely, had gone to bed this past weekend feeling, as coach Bob Berry once put it just before he was canned, "feeling like an elephant on the edge of a cliff tied to a dandelion."

That the dandelion broke is no surprise; that there was an edge to the cliff was.

How could there be with vehicles still driving down the 417 with team flags flying from all windows?

As a visibly upset Mlakar said of the demise of his friend, "It's part of the game." But no one seemed quite sure exactly what game was being played here.

Previous Ottawa teams buckle in the playoffs and nothing happens at the top; this team gets to the final and the GM gets shown the door.

The answer is timing. Muckler's bad; Murray's good.

And team owner Eugene Melnyk's impatient with any time at all.

Murray was coming off an impressive year of coaching, taking the Senators from stumbling disarray in the late fall to the elite of the regular season.

Murray's coaching contract would be up at the end of this month, making him effectively — in the words of the Ottawa Citizen's Wayne Scanlan — the team's most significant "free agent" of the summer.

There was open talk of Murray, 64, being offered jobs in Columbus and Boston. And he had previous experience as GM in Detroit, Florida and Anaheim, with a deserved reputation for recognizing young talent.

As for Muckler, perhaps his major encumbrance was his age (73), though Melnyk denied that ageism "was a factor" in the firing.

"John is 73 going on 45," Melnyk argued by conference call.

But Muckler is also 73 going on 74, with a year left on his contract and two years beyond that as "consultant." There was, Melnyk said, the matter of "succession."

The two natural candidates from within the Senators' organization — Peter Chiarelli and Anders Hedberg — both left in the past year, Chiarelli to become GM of the Boston Bruins, Hedberg to return to his native Sweden as a scout.

There was, of course, also the matter of Muckler's record, but it could be looked at from both sides of the spinning coin that decides management careers in sport.

Despite five previous Stanley Cups while working for the Edmonton Oilers, Muckler's luck as a general manager has never been great.

While in Ottawa, he may have lost his best chance at a Cup during the lockout year, when the Senators would have iced the most talented team in its short history.

In the season that followed, Muckler banked entirely on goaltender Dominik Hasek, who was brilliant right up until that moment in the Olympics when he left the ice with a pulled groin and eventually became a no-show in Ottawa's disastrous postseason.

This year Muckler bet on a new goaltender, Martin Gerber — who was spectacular in the Olympics — and gave him a three-year, $11.1-million (all currency U.S.) contract to sit on the bench, eventually, as backup to Ray Emery.

He gave Joe Corvo — a defenceman with every tool but thought — a four-year deal worth $10.6-million.

To afford such contracts, he let, perhaps wisely, the likes of defenceman Zdeno Chara and forward Martin Havlat go elsewhere for huge deals.

Muckler's best move may have been to save money and contract time by essentially flipping Marian Hossa to Atlanta for Dany Heatley, who went on to record two consecutive 50-goal seasons for Ottawa.

But he will be remembered for late-season deals and non-deals.

Earlier moves flopped. This year, he traded midseason for Mike Comrie when he failed to land his first choice, Petr Nedved, and Comrie went on, surprisingly, to be significant in the Senators' good postseason run.

His greatest failure, though, was in not landing local favourite Gary Roberts at the trade deadline.

While Roberts ended up in Pittsburgh, and the Penguins fell in five games to Ottawa, Ottawa fans continued to feel Muckler had fumbled the deal and Roberts would have prevented the Anaheim Ducks from running roughshod over the Senators in the final.

But all that, of course, is history now.

Just as is Muckler's end-of-season reason for wanting to remain as general manager.

"I'm having too much fun."