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Year ONE
YEAR ONE
The road to the Stanley Cup is always difficult. But this year, in the haze of COVID-19, the NHL has been fully
Reviewing DJ Smith’s First Year on the Job
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By Steve Warne @tsnsteve
he road to the Stanley Cup is always difficult. But this year, in the haze of COVID-19, the NHL has been fully lost on it - still trying to safely make its way home. This week the league unveiled what they hope will be a reliable map for their return to play, finally unhitching the wagon carrying the Ottawa Senators (one of the NHL’s 7 worst teams) and what’s left of its regular season. With the 2019-20 season now officially over for the Senators, it’s time to review what they did over the winter. Did they truly take a step forward and improve? 62 | FACES MAGAZINE
Are they really on track to realizing their own promise of unparalleled success? They certainly appear to be. Sure, it’s all baby steps right now, but that’s because the cornerstones of this franchise are, in fact, babies - including the high end assets they’ll pull out of this year’s draft. Nudging the infant metaphor just a little further, every kid needs someone to properly teach and lead them. Despite his own inexperience, Ottawa Senators’ head coach D.J. Smith showed this season that not only can he do that, he loves that. “It’s the opportunity to make kids better,” said Smith. “The opportunity to get up every day and do something you love absolutely energizes me.” Smith and the Sens finished the abbreviated season with 62 points, almost what they had (64 points) the season before – a season that cost Guy Boucher his job. But Boucher’s bunch (and later Marc Crawford’s) had the advantage of playing 11 more games and could chuck over the boards players like Mark Stone, Matt Duchene and Ryan Dzingel. While the
improvement under Smith wasn’t headline-grabbing, the change in culture was apparent to everyone around the team. “He instills winning,” says Senators’ play by play man Dean Brown, who’s seen every coach come and go. “Everything is about winning to him. Seeing who can unwrap their gum the fastest is a thing with DJ because it’s just another thing to win.” Smith made it clear on arrival there are no shortcuts to winning. “I’m a guy that’s going to hold the players accountable. I’m a coach that’s going to make the guys work hard. I’m intense, but I’m also going to be a players’ guy in a way that they’re going to know I trust them. But they’re also going to have to do it a certain way. Players don’t need a friend, they need a coach, but they also sometimes need a pat on the back and I’ll be there to do that. I get to know people first, then coach them second.” Smith also wants guys who can find another gear in big moments. “Ultimately, those are the guys that are going to stick around, the guys who can push through some adversity and willing to play tough,
