Silver Nuggets: The Importance of Tim Murray
Recently, Nuggets have been about things that are hot topics everywhere, the end of the lockout, the state of the blueline and Jakob Silfverberg. Today I go a little outside to a thought I had just yesterday about an important part of the Senators organization.
Yesterday's big story in the NHL was obviously the firing (or technically 'demotion') of Brian Burke in Toronto by the Leafs' new owners. Say what you will about the man's success and style as a GM (I tend to think he fleeced teams in trades as often as he himself was fleeced) but as a man, he is loyal, he sticks to his principles and I have an enormous amount of respect for him and what he has done as part of You Can Play. If he wants one, I am certain he will land on his feet with a new GM job very soon.
His replacement was immediately announced as Dave Nonis, who is a close friend of Burke, and has taken his job twice. But if the Leafs had wanted to go in another direction, wanted to look at the rest of the league for talent that is not currently in a GM job, who would they have looked at?
The sexy picks like Steve Yzerman have been scooped up and there aren't many other former players out there who are ready for that kind of job yet. They could go to the perennial runner up in Pierre McGuire (which would have been way too funny). Or they could have canvassed the impressive list of assistant GM's in the league.
They would have come to the usual big names like Jim Nill in Detroit with the Red Wings, but eventually someone is going to be looking for a GM and someone is going to realize that Tim Murray is very very good at his job.
I have always been a fan of Bryan Murray, even during the dark ages (TM), and he deserves oodles and oodles of credit for rebuilding and turning this team around. But alongside him every step of the way has been Tim. He has done a great job the last few years of luring quality veterans to Binghamton, and it is TIM who runs the scouting department with Pierre Dorian. He is an extremely good judge of talent.
The natural thing (unless things blow up in Sens Universe again) would be for Tim to take over as GM when his uncle retires. I just hope that happens before someone else scoops him up, because he's quite the catch.
Sens Links
- Delving into the fanpost section today, one from one of my all time favourite writers SLC schools me on how to write the post I tried to write on Monday. [Fanpost]
- And here is one excited Oldmonk with some pretty reasonable predictions for the upcoming season. I think his totals for Latendresse are too high, but I'd love to be pleasantly surprised. [Fanpost]
- And just a reminder, if you have an amazing idea for a post, head to the Fanpost section! Its super intuitive and easy to use, and we love reading what our amazing community has to say!
- Six current Bingo-Sens that have a legit shot at making the team out of camp. Poor Luke Richardson. [Panzeri]
- Speaking of Luke, here he is saying he couldn't be happier about losing his top players (while presumably there are tears streaming down his face). [SensExtra]
- Speaking of my main man Tim Murray, here he is talking to the team 1200 about Cody Ceci, Mika Zibanejad and more! [6thSens]
- In an effort to
kiss fans' asseswin back fans, training camp will be open to the public. I expect you all to be there with Silfverböner shirts on. [SensExtra]
League Links