Ottawa Senators: Eugene Melnyk’s circus continues

Eugene Melnyk’s popularity in Ottawa has been going downhill. Yesterday, the Ottawa Senators majority owner was back in the media to take inflammatory shots at a whole lot of people.

Eugene Melnyk’s popularity has been on the decline since 2017 when he made threatened Ottawa Senators fans with the idea of relocating the team. He said this right before the celebration of the NHL’s 100th birthday, during which his team played against the Montreal Canadiens in an outdoor game.

Ever since, Senators fans have been petitioning to make him leave, buying four billboards in Ottawa that read “#MelnykOut”. His unpopular comments, combined with the struggling team, made for a toxic situation in the nation’s capital, which has only gotten worse.

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The alleged situation between the wives of Erik Karlsson and Mike Hoffman, the Uber incident, and the firing of head coach Guy Boucher showed how poorly run the entire organization is. Of course, the recent collapse of the LeBreton Flats deal not helping either.

While firing Guy Boucher and not getting a downtown arena deal isn’t great, general manager Pierre Dorion actually made strong moves before the Trade Deadline, dealing away Matt Duchene, Ryan Dzingel, and Mark Stone for a boatload of picks and promising young players. The team’s future looked brighter, and Ottawa faded back in terms of media controversies.

Then, last night, Eugene Melnyk was on Sportsnet 590 the Fan, where he started to harp on Senators’ fans.

"“I think the key for us is, first of all, to identify who is a Senators fan or not … for our fans that are real fans, we’re doing the best we can. All we can do is keep doing what we’ve been doing.”"

The comments got more inflammatory this morning when Melnyk got interviewed on CFRA 580, hosted by Bill Carol. There, he went off on a myriad of tangents, calling out the Ottawa media, the mayor Jim Watson, and trashing the Toronto Maple Leafs’ rebuild.

He called respected Senators’ journalist Ian Mendes “bush league”, saying, “He is so lucky that I keep my mouth shut” when asked about Watson, and had this to say about the Leafs: “mistakes were made. Somebody forgot about defense.”

As this interview got more traction, the hashtag #MelknykOut started to trend on Twitter again. It’s obvious that there is no love for Melnyk, there hasn’t been for two years. So why on earth did he think that these comments were going to help? He continues to threaten Senators’ fans who are the very people who are supposed to be buying season seat tickets, and he makes such ridiculous comments that make it clear that there is a disconnect between management and the fanbase.

There was no reason for these comments to be made public and it just makes him look like a fool and makes fans despise him. This is the exact opposite way to manage a franchise and he’s going to get the message. He will hear it online, he will see it with billboards, and most importantly, he will see it with the drop off in season seats sold next season.