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Greg Wyshynski, ESPN
The Ottawa Senators fired head coach D.J. Smith and assistant coach Davis Payne on Monday, replacing them with veteran coach Jacques Martin on an interim basis and franchise legend Daniel Alfredsson as an assistant coach on the bench.
Why did this happen? What comes next for the struggling Senators — and can they make the playoffs? Here’s a look:
Why was D.J. Smith fired?
The Senators are one of the season’s biggest disappointments. Many expected them to become the breakout team in the Atlantic Division, which ended up being the Detroit Red Wings for the first two months of the season. Instead, the Senators were second-to-last in the Eastern Conference when Smith was fired, with a .423 points percentage — ahead of only the lowly Columbus Blue Jackets (.391).
Smith was the NHL coach in the most job peril, having topped our recent head coach hot seat index as “scorching.” Ottawa fans were serenading him with “Fire D.J.!” chants at home games. The Senators were spiraling, having lost four straight games and five of their past six contests. Rare is the NHL coaching change announced while the team is on a prolonged road trip, but that just underscores how dire things had gotten for Ottawa. Martin will debut at the Arizona Coyotes on Dec. 19 before the Senators finish the road trip at the Colorado Avalanche on Dec. 21.
Smith was hired by Pierre Dorion from the Toronto Maple Leafs‘ coaching staff in 2019. But Dorion was dismissed in November in the wake of an NHL investigation that caused the team to forfeit a first-round draft pick. New owner Michael Andlauer named Steve Staios, the team’s president of hockey operations who was hired on Sept. 29, as interim general manager.
There was a perception that Smith could last the season, with the club opting not to pick up his option for 2024-25 in the summer. Andlauer stressed that he wanted stability in the organization. Staios is expected to hire a new general manager — whispers are Tampa Bay Lightning assistant GM Mathieu Darche tops their wish list — so why fire a coach who was going to be changed by the new GM anyway?
Staios gave Smith a vote of confidence, too.
“The players respect D.J. They play hard. They’ve never cheated us on effort. They look organized going into games,” Staios said when Dorion was let go. “We’re dealing with some injuries right now and some adversity, but I have confidence that this team will move in the right direction.”
Alas, the Senators only went 7-11-0 after Dorion’s dismissal, for a .389 points percentage.
Jason York, a former NHL player who hosts the “Coming In Hot Sens” podcast, told ESPN’s “The Drop” on Monday that he wasn’t sure if Smith would make it to the summer.
Turns out, he didn’t even make it to the winter.
Should D.J. Smith have been fired?
Unlike some other recent firings in the NHL, there wasn’t really a case for Smith’s continued employment.
Ottawa never made the playoffs in his previous four seasons as coach, and finished with a points percentage better than .500 only once, which was last season (.524).
While they were 10th in goals per game (3.35) this season, the Senators were 26th overall in goals against per game (3.42). They were 19th in shot-attempt percentage and 22nd in expected goals percentage at 5-on-5, while their power play (21st) and penalty kill (31st) made Ottawa one of the league’s weakest special teams units.
Now, in fairness to Smith, he faced the same problem that coaches like Dean Evason (Minnesota Wild) and Jay Woodcroft (Edmonton Oilers) faced when they were fired this season: His goaltending stunk.
Joonas Korpisalo and Anton Forsberg were expected to be one of the NHL’s strongest tandems. Instead, they Senators have the 28th-best save percentage in the NHL as a team. Both goalies are in the negative in goals saved above expected, with Forsberg having a considerable regression to minus-8.7 goals in 11 games.
He also had standout defenseman Thomas Chabot limited to just nine games due to injury — although expecting Chabot to be in the lineup has been difficult in recent seasons. Smith didn’t have 23-year-old center Shane Pinto in his lineup either, as Pinto was suspended for the first 41 games of the season after violating the NHL’s policy on sports wagering.
Some things were in Smith’s control. Some were not. But there wasn’t a compelling reason to have him remain as coach of the Senators. The only mild surprise was the timing.
Why were Jacques Martin and Daniel Alfredsson hired?
Martin, 71, was brought on as “a senior advisor to the coaching staff” for the Senators on Dec. 6. Hopefully he was able to offer some sage wisdom on how to handle it when a senior advisor takes the job of the coach he’s advising.
Martin is an interim coach for the Senators, but not an unfamiliar one. He was the third coach in Senators history when he was hired in 1995-96 and coached the team through the 2003-04 season. He amassed a 341-235-20 record with 96 ties in 692 games. The Sens made the playoffs for eight straight seasons under Martin, including a trip to the conference finals in 2002-03.
He spent three unsuccessful seasons with Florida and then coached Montreal for three seasons, including their shocking run to the conference final in 2010. The last game NHL game he coached was on Dec. 15, 2011, making this over 12 years since he was last behind the bench as a head coach.
But he has stayed in the NHL. Martin was an assistant coach for the Penguins for five seasons and then the Rangers in 2020-21.
He’s an experienced coach with a steady hand. His calling card is defense. Given how leaky the Senators have been, perhaps that’s where he could make the most difference.
But York said the Senators also need an attitudinal change, and that Ottawa’s players frequently play like “they think they’re better than they are.” Perhaps a veteran coach can offer a reality check.
Alfredsson replacing Payne was a surprise. For years, there’s been speculation that Alfredsson would be everything from a team owner to a team president. He reconciled with Ottawa last summer after meeting with Andlauer, but his role with the organization was ill-defined.
Perhaps that taste of being an assistant coach during the team’s games in Sweden this season whet his appetite. Perhaps he senses that this is a group that could use some structure from Martin and some leadership and inspiration from the franchise’s greatest captain — no offense intended to Brady Tkachuk.
One coach is there for experience. The other coach is there for vibes.
What the bench will look like next season is anyone’s guess until the new general manager takes over — and again, people keep telling me that it won’t be Staios doing his Kyle Dubas “the search is over and the best candidate is me!” impression.
It’s hard to imagine that coach will be Martin. Heck, it’s hard to reconcile that the head coach is currently Martin, given the proximity to his last head-coaching gig and the fact that he’s three years older than Rick Bowness — the NHL’s oldest head coach before Monday’s news.
Can the Senators turn this season around?
The most encouraging number for the Senators is 26.
That’s how many games Ottawa had played before Smith was fired. That’s six fewer than, say, the Tampa Bay Lightning have played. There’s still a lot of runway here for Ottawa to make a move up the standings — Money Puck gives then a 19% chance of making the postseason, which is better than 10 other NHL teams. But the turnaround has to start now.
Changing coaches is on trend now. The combined record of in-season hires Kris Knoblauch (Oilers), John Hynes (Wild) and Drew Bannister (Blues) is 19-7-0. Perhaps Ottawa can find similar lightning in a bottle.
They need Chabot back. They’ll get Pinto back on Jan. 21. They need Korpisalo and Forsberg play to their expected standards — and Korpisalo has shown at least a little hope of that in his past six starts.
But the damage might already be done. Catching the top three teams in the Atlantic is out of the question. That leaves the wild card, and that’s a crowded field that the Senators can’t even claim to be a part of yet.
In truth, it might be in the Senators’ best interest not to rally and fall short, but instead to improve their draft lottery odds by wallowing in mediocrity. But if that was their aim, then Smith would probably still be behind the bench.