In an interview with Yahoo Sports, Bruce Boudreau provided some additional detail on his negotiation with the Ottawa Senators, confirming that no offer was actually made. They talked contract parameters but at no point was Boudreau actually offered the Ottawa job.
As I understand it, Ottawa told Boudreau’s agent they’d be willing to go three years on the deal and when the Wild upped their offer to four, Pierre Dorion told Boudreau to go ahead and accept because they weren’t willing to give the additional year.
But I guess what Dorion knew all along was that Guy Boucher was his number one choice. It’s a window into how these negotiations can work and it’s apparently not all that uncommon.
@SensChirp Dave Poulin was on with us today and said it’s standard practice to talk financial terms with finalists – and it’s not an offer.
— Ian Mendes (@ian_mendes) May 10, 2016
You want to know exactly where you stand with each of the finalists so that contract specifics can actually be considered in the final decision. Presumably they would have had a similar conversation with Mike Yeo’s representatives.
It’s a bit of an eye-opener for fans, for media and for bloggers. A lot of us have been going on about the Melnyk-is-cheap narrative for a while now so when something comes up that seems to fit that narrative, we are quick to judge. In reality, we (and I absolutely include myself in this statement, perhaps more than anyone else on here) shouldn’t always be so quick to judge.
I should have put a little more faith in the process and in particular, in Pierre Dorion. The guy is a notoriously straight-shooter and his word during Guy Boucher’s press conference should have been all the confirmation we needed.
At the same time, we were all sort of mislead by the media on this one and all of us “bought-in” to the Bruce Boudreau hype leading up to and immediately following the interview. Whether it was the interview with Boudreau at his hotel, or the quote from hockey insiders, we really did have every reason to believe Boudreau was the top candidate for the Ottawa job.
And I don’t know that any of this is as clean-cut as one side being right and the other side being wrong.
It seems pretty clear to me that Boudreau and his agent used Ottawa’s interest to leverage an additional year and probably even thought that based on the preliminary conversation they had with Dorion, they had a legitimate shot at the Ottawa job if the contract talks went well.
What is probably most important to take away from all of this is to have confidence in the process Dorion and his staff ran to identify a new Head Coach. They were extremely thorough and in the end, landed their number one candidate. A candidate that based on his initial press conference, appears more than ready to lead this Ottawa Senators team.
Oh and probably their number four candidate too, in Marc Crawford. He’ll meet with the Ottawa media at 9:15 AM this morning.
