The Ottawa Senators feel they are ready to take the next step this season
Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Sun: The Ottawa Senators made some free agent signings and a couple of trades in a busy offseason for GM Pierre Dorion.
“This was the busiest off-season as far as being active,” Dorion told Postmedia in an interview last Thursday. “We were more active than we’ve been on the unrestricted free agent market, we were really busy with the number of restricted free agents that we had and, at the same time, we made quite a few trades.”
Dorion adds that the rebuild has been done and they are ready to take the next step.
“A lot of the work in the rebuild has been done. Now, we have to perform and we have to perform well,” said Dorion. “To me, this is where I see our team taking the biggest step. I say that because we’re all on the same page on where we need to be: Owner, GM, coach and staff.
“I want our fans to be proud of this team. I’m from Ottawa, we’ve all taken our lumps here, but I want people when they see me on street to know how competitive we are as a team. And, we’re going to be a team, not just a bunch of individuals.”
Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Sun: Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk said that Ottawa Senators are on the right path and they are getting closer to adding the veteran pieces that would take them to the next level.
“We have turned the corner. We just now need to execute on what we have,” Melnyk said last week from his home in Toronto. “This is the team, with what we have right now, I believe can win a Stanley Cup already, and that’s without adding some veterans, which we plan to do.
“We’ll be a team that’s active at the trade deadline and not as sellers, but as buyers, just like we used to be. If you look at my track record on spending on players, we were always up there. We were never at the top, but we were always right there or around the centre. Now, we’re going to stay somewhere in the centre, depending on where it’s at. Our budgets are always somewhere around $70 million, which is in the centre.”