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Tiger Trauma
03-26-2006, 01:13 AM
Bruins fire general manager Mike O'Connell


BOSTON (AP) - The Boston Bruins fired general manager Mike O'Connell on Saturday, telling him he wouldn't be back next season so there was no point in finishing out this one.

Assistant general manager Jeff Gorton will assume the GM's duties for the rest of the season, team president Harry Sinden said before the Bruins' game against the Buffalo Sabres.

"When you think something has to be done ... you have to do it," Sinden said. "It was not proper to let him keep doing what he was doing - signing players, making plans for the future - when we knew that at the end of the year we were going to relieve him of his job."

O'Connell was not surprised by the decision.

"Whenever you don't win in professional sports and you're the general manager of the team, this is to be expected," he said from his home in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

O'Connell said he hadn't decided whether to get right back into hockey, but said he wanted to get back into shape after letting his conditioning slide in six years on the job. Asked if he would watch the game that night, he said, "I haven't thought about it."

Sinden's hand-picked choice as his successor, O'Connell takes the fall for the Bruins' disastrous decision to purge their roster of long-term contracts heading into the NHL lockout. Instead of the spending spree they thought they were preparing for, the new agreement with the players left Boston with no advantage and O'Connell was forced to scramble to fill out a roster.

Still, O'Connell boldly said that the Bruins could contend for their first Stanley Cup victory since 1972.

"That was the strategy we took and I'll live with it," he said. "That's the way it goes."

But the team started poorly and in November traded Joe Thornton, a former overall No. 1 pick, to the San Jose Sharks. Earlier this month, the Bruins traded the talented but often injured Sergei Samsonov, another former first-round draft pick, to the Edmonton Oilers.

"Management traded away whatever they felt would improve the team," Sinden said, stressing the O'Connell alone should not shoulder the blame for those deals. Making a change in the front office, "was not on our minds at that point."

Boston beat Buffalo 5-4 Saturday to improve to 28-32-12. The Bruins are well out of the postseason picture in 13th place in the Eastern Conference, nine points out of the eighth and final playoff spot.

"We fell out of it pretty substantially," Sinden said.

Sinden said the move does not affect coach Mike Sullivan. "We'll probably address that at some later date," Sinden said.

Gorton is in his 14th season with the Bruins and his sixth as the team's assistant GM. He will be among the candidates for the job when the team hires a less temporary replacement after the season.

"Obviously, it's a difficult day," Gorton said. "I have worked with Mike for a long time. He's a good friend of mine.

"Certainly, this is a job I've always wanted and dreamed of having. But, under the circumstances, it isn't how I'd have drawn it up.

The 50-year-old O'Connell played parts of six seasons in Boston during a 13-year NHL career. He was in his sixth year as GM after six years as Sinden's hand-picked assistant. With O'Connell in charge, the Bruins twice topped 100 points but never made it out of the first round of the playoffs.

"Coming in and getting that bomb dropped on us was heartfelt, of course," said Bruins right wing Tom Fitzgerald, who signed with the Bruins in 2004. "I am so grateful for Mike O'Connell to give me an opportunity to live out a childhood dream - to come to Boston and put on the Bruins sweater. On the flip side, I feel responsible for him losing his job."

In 2003-04, the Bruins went 41-26-15 - the second-best record in the Eastern Conference and won their second Northeast Division title in three years. But the Montreal Canadiens eliminated Boston in the first round of the playoffs in seven games.

Tinner
03-26-2006, 10:42 AM
i'm not a bruins fan, but this guy had to go. he trades top or front line players, and for all intents and purposes, got nothing back. Another guy or guys that have to go and go quick are the Ferguson/Quinn tantam. They have made one mistake after another and the Leafs will certainly miss the playoffs, which is not good if your a Leaf fan, or live in Toronto......yes TSN and Sportnet wont be able to cover exclusively the sad sack Leafs and that bods well for the rest of Canada.
Maybe the West will get some national coverage!

Tiger Trauma
03-27-2006, 02:44 AM
You gotta wonder what he was thinking after that Joe thornton trade. I'm not really a bruin's fan either...but i bet many of them are happy they let this guy go

nivek_wahs
03-27-2006, 03:28 AM
O'Connell knew his demise was coming
(from tsn.ca via Associated Press)

3/26/2006 7:13:21 PM

BOSTON (AP) - On the day he was hired as the coach of the Boston Bruins, Robbie Ftorek said he knew that every day brought him one step closer to getting fired.

''He's the guy who's going to get rid of me eventually,'' Ftorek said, casting a glance over to general manager Mike O'Connell. ''You're going to get released. It's part of the job.''

Two years later, Ftorek was gone. And O'Connell, who cut Ftorek loose with nine games left in the 2003 regular season, got the same treatment on Saturday when team president Harry Sinden fired him with 11 games remaining, conceding the playoffs are probably out of reach.

''When you think something has to be done, and you believe it has to be done and the consensus is that it has to be done, you have to do it,'' Sinden said. ''And Mike, in some of the things he did when he was here, believed in the same principle.''

Under O'Connell, the Bruins went through four coaches in six years; he even took the bench himself after firing Ftorek. This season took on an even more desperate tone as the Bruins traded stars Joe Thornton and Sergei Samsonov in a push for the playoffs.

''It happens in the league,'' Samsonov said in Vancouver after his Edmonton Oilers beat the Canucks 3-2 on Saturday night. ''He made those calls, he was the GM at the time and that's the business we play in. It seems like if you don't perform, trades happen and sometimes it goes even higher.''

One of the NHL's Original Six, the Bruins have not won the Stanley Cup since Bobby Orr led the team to titles in 1970 and '72. Boston reached the finals five times since then during a record-setting string of 29 consecutive playoff appearances that ended in 1997.

But the franchise had an equally consistent run of losing its stars, from Orr to Ray Bourque to Thornton, whom O'Connell traded in November as a last-ditch effort to turn around the last-place club. Samsonov was sent to the Oilers this month.

''When a team is struggling, somebody has got to pay and I guess it was his turn,'' Samsonov said. ''The team went through so many changes this year, a lot of things changed, and it seemed like it was almost natural just to go even higher.''

Along with Sinden, O'Connell presided over a disastrous strategy heading into the NHL lockout that cost the league the entire 2004-05 season. The Bruins spent years purging their roster of all long-term deals in the hopes that they would be in position for a spending spree when the games resumed.

''This team, the way it's set up with the rule changes, I think that we have to be considered one of the favourites for the Stanley Cup,'' O'Connell said in August after signing captain Thornton to a three-year contract.

But the new agreement with the players wasn't the one the Bruins expected, and they didn't come away with any advantage. O'Connell scrambled to fill up the roster but was unable to convince big names like Peter Forsberg and Mike Modano to sign up.

''That was the strategy we took and I'll live with it. That's the way it goes,'' he said from his home in a telephone interview with The Associated Press shortly before the Bruins took the ice against Buffalo on Saturday night. ''Whenever you don't win in professional sports and you're the general manager of the team, this is to be expected.''

The Bruins were 27-32-12 when O'Connell was fired; they are last in the Northeast Division, 13th in the Eastern Conference and nine points behind Montreal in the playoff race. In all, O'Connell's teams went 207-203-71 and twice topped 100 points, but never made it out of the first round of the playoffs.

''He tries to put a team together - and obviously he can't play. So we have to do the job on the ice, and we didn't get it done,'' forward Glen Murray said after the 5-4 victory over the Sabres.

''This game is all about wins. No matter what you say, it's obviously about getting more wins than losses - a lot more wins than losses - and getting into the playoffs. And obviously we're a long way from that. We shouldn't have been in this situation to begin with.''

A defenceman, O'Connell played more than five seasons in the Blackhawks organization before coming to Boston in 1980 in a trade for Al Secord. In six years with the Bruins, O'Connell scored 50 or more points three times and played in the 1984 all-star game.

He spent two seasons as the head coach of Boston's AHL affiliate in Providence and was named the assistant general manager in Boston in 1994. He became GM in 2000 when Sinden moved upstairs after 28 years in the job.