Ottawa Senators Fire Head Coach Guy Boucher

The Ottawa Senators have the worst record in the National Hockey League and it was obvious they were going nowhere a couple of months ago. Now they’re without a head coach. The team has fired head coach Guy Boucher after nearly three disappointing seasons. The Senators went 94-108-26 during his tenure and made the playoffs only once. The playoff appearance came after his promising first season in which the Senators went 44-28-10 and finished second in the Atlantic Division. They had a solid playoff run that year, reaching the Eastern Conference Finals where they extended the eventual Stanley Cup Champion Pittsburgh Penguins to the full 7 games.

Unfortunately, it was all downhill from there. Ottawa went 28-43-11 last season finishing 7th in the Atlantic Division and 15th in the Eastern Conference. With only 67 points they had the second worst record in the entire NHL. This season ‘second worst’ would be an improvement from their current position. The Senators currently have a record of 22-37-5 for 49 points giving them the worst record in the NHL. That’s 5 fewer points than the Los Angeles Kings who have the second worst record in the league.

Ottawa’s management clearly understands the position they’re in which is why they traded away their three top scorers at the deadline. They know that a rebuild is ahead but the assumption has been that Boucher would finish out the year and wouldn’t be brought back. GM Pierre Dorion said that with the way the team’s play continued to erode the decision was made that there was no reason to wait until the end of the season:

“We just felt as recently, as probably this morning, Guy wasn’t going to be our coach moving forward. For both parties, we just felt it was time to move on.”

When asked for more detail on why the decision was made to fire Boucher now GM Dorion declined to elaborate:

“I’m not going to go into specific details. Today is a tough day for Guy Boucher and family. It’s a tough day personally. Guy and I had a relationship and I really enjoyed that relationship.”

He did say that he made the decision on Thursday night but wanted to ‘sleep on it’:

“All I will tell you as that I pretty much made up my mind (Thursday) night, I wanted to sleep on it, I advised (owner) Eugene (Melnyk) this morning and I phoned Marc afterwards and when Guy came in I let him know he wasn’t going to be our coach anymore.”

Boucher’s trajectory in Ottawa has uncanny similarities to the way his previous coaching gig with the Tampa Bay Lightning played out. Boucher took over the Lightning before the 2010-2011 season and led the team to a 46-25-11 record for 103 points. Tampa Bay then went on a solid playoff run reaching the Eastern Conference Finals before losing to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins in 7 games. The team came nowhere near that success the following season going 38-36-8 for 84 points and missing the playoffs. He was fired by the Lightning 32 games into his third season with a 13-18-1 record.

Associate coach Marc Crawford will assume the duties of head coach for the rest of the season. Crawford has previous head coaching experience with the Quebec Nordiques/Colorado Avalanche, the Vancouver Canucks, the Los Angeles Kings and Dallas Stars. He won a Stanley Cup with Colorado in 1995-1996.