D.J.. Smith came on the telephone from his hotel room in Tempe on Tuesday morning.
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EXCLUSIVE: Fired coach D.J. Smith leaves Ottawa Senators with his head held high
At some point or another Monday, one-by-one, every player and staff member that worked with Smith dropped by the bar to say thank you and wish him nothing but the best.
The going away meant a lot to him and he wanted that chance instead getting out of dodge immediately.
“It just shows they appreciated the time and effort I put in with them in building relationships,” Smith told Postmedia on Tuesday. “That’s 90% of coaching. As much as you want all the cut-outs, duotangs and the flashy stuff, at the end of the day, it’s about getting guys to give you everything they had.
“You can bring in other guys to help you with the details and the structure and all those things. If you can’t get your top players to play, and to play every day, it’s hard. Those guys played hard for me. They didn’t cheat me on effort. At the end of the day, that they came to say goodbye showed that they respected the effort and the time I put into them and their families.”
“I’m disappointed that we couldn’t turn the corner with this group for whatever reason,” Smith said. “Whether it was injuries or whatever the case may be. When we got it back to .500, you had to see that we needed to make a step and not continue to drop lower.
“I’m disappointed in that, but not disappointed in the whole body of work. I think I did my job in developing these young guys and turning them into real NHL players by giving them the confidence every day.”
Smith wanted to see players like captain Brady Tkachuk, Tim Stutzle, Drake Batherson, Josh Norris, Thomas Chabot, Jakob Chychrun and Jake Sanderson take the Senators to the next level.
But he can leave with his head held high.
“Absolutely, I’m proud of the amount of work that we put in, the amount of people we met and I’m proud of a lot of the players that we brought from young kids to what we think are really good NHL players,” Smith said.
“That job was to come in and do that. I think I leave with a lot of guys that are much better NHL players than when they came in. One of the most unfortunate part of this job is the injuries and you can’t control those. We had insurmountable amount of injuries over my time here.
“Whether it was goaltending, star players or centres. It’s not an excuse, but you need the tools to win in this league. The timing of these injuries were crushing.”
“The expectations were I was going to have Stutzle, Norris and Pinto down the middle. I thought that was outstanding depth, drafting, trading and everything that went into it. That’s outstanding building that group of three centres,” Smith said.
“I don’t know that I coached 10 games with those three guys in the lineup, there were lot of games with only one of those guys playing. When this team gets those three guys in the lineup with a healthy Chabot, they’re capable of winning every night.
His No. 1 goal coming into this season was to help the Senators turn the corner. He’s still confident that can happen under interim coach Jacques Martin with former captain Daniel Alfredsson as an assistant.
“For sure, I love players and I always have,” Smith said. “I don’t only want them to be successful for themselves, but also for the city to experience a winner again. It’s really close and unfortunately my time came up but this team is going to be really good.
“They have good leadership, players that care and like each other, and for a lot of reasons we didn’t find a way to win early in the season. That doesn’t mean this team can’t get it going. There’s too much in that room. I have no doubt that if I had stayed right to the end, we’d be right close to the playoffs.”
“My mom is a diehard D.J. Smith fan,” he said. “Wherever I am she’s watching the games and that is the hard part. She sees her son being fired and especially last little bit here. I don’t go on the social media anymore. I’ve cut that off probably a year ago.
“You could tell by the phone calls she was worried and also it’s a double-edged sword because her and my wife are probably sad, but they’re also probably happy they won’t be getting phone calls about what people are saying about you. That’s why your family is your crowd and regardless of how you’re doing, they are there to support you.
Those ridiculous “Fire D.J.” chants didn’t bother him as much as they were hurt his family. Yes, it’s a tough business, but it’s not just about Smith, it’s the people around him.
“I get the fans, they want to win, they have right to be mad. They want that and we should have been better. It’s on the coach to make them better. I was more worried for my family, not for me,” Smith said.
“My job is to fix it and win games. I thought we had it going. It looked like we had it back on the tracks. This road trip has derailed us more than we thought. I take this experience and I’m better coach and I will be a better coach going forward.”
I thought we had it going. It looked like we had it back on the tracks. This road trip has derailed us more than we thought.
D.J. Smith
Smith won’t let the decision ruin his Christmas. He’ll spend time with Christie along with Brock, 7, and three-year-old Mickey. They’ll head back to Windsor for the holidays and Smith will be able to watch his son, Colton, 19, with the Ontario Hockey League’s Windsor Spitfires.
“My younger children desperately miss Dad when he’s on the road and I don’t get to watch their hockey. That’s the positive and I can watch Colton,” Smith said. “I can watch them. That’s a positive that I get a chance to spend time with the people that have missed out.
“I chose the profession. I love hockey and I’m never going to leave it until they officially kick me out. I can’t think of the last time I didn’t go to the arena or took a day off. Those people miss out and this is a chance to give back until they call me to my next job. Then, it will be back we go and it’s part of the business.”
“You have to be steady on the rudder,” Smith said. “The highs and the lows with a young team were hard to control with them. The more older players you have on your team, the more it helps What I know is, the older players have steadied the group.
“One of our biggest losses from last year was Derick Brassard. If a healthy Derick Brassard could have given us one more year, it would have made a big difference in the locker room and the play of some of the players with consistency. You realize you’ve got to lean on those guys to help you with young players.
“I believe my communication and bench skills got better as it went on. I don’t want to lose the passion and emotion. I think I need to continue to find a way to be better in all those areas.”
“I think I created a better culture around the arena. I felt everyone felt included — whether it was the players, media or office staff, everybody felt comfortable being around. I never made it about me, I wanted everyone to enjoy it,” Smith said.
Before he hung up the phone to have some breakfast, Smith offered some closing thoughts.
“I had a good run. Last year was a lot of fun getting close and I thought without the injuries to the goalies we had a real chance,” Smith said. “I believed wholeheartedly this year we’d make the playoffs. Not to say that the team won’t, but I hope to see the Ottawa Senators playing in the playoffs.”
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It’s still difficult to put into words for reigning world decathlon champion Pierce LePage.
The 28-year-old from Whitby, Ont., had to withdraw from the Paris Olympics due to a herniated disc in his back. LePage suffered the injury in the spring but pushed to still compete. However, on July 17, he announced on social media that he would not be in Paris and needed surgery.
“I feel like there’s regret obviously — like, yes, I want to be there and things like that,” LePage said. “But I feel like there’s a lot of people and a lot of fans, friends, support, family, all the people that feeling I kind of let down, let myself down, let my coach down so I felt pretty guilty about that for a long time and still, you know going through the motions.
“Obviously it’s tough. I’m world champion. I had a lot of hopes and a lot of goals going into the Games,” he added. “It’s hard to put into words what I felt, but yeah, it sucked. But I was happy to push through as far as I could with the injury.”
LePage tweaked his back in the “end of March, early April,” doing an exercise in the gym. About two weeks later, while training for the long jump, he landed awkwardly, causing the herniated disc in his back.
LePage competed in several individual events in 2024, mostly indoors, but not a decathlon. He was also granted a medical exemption to not compete at Canadian national trials in June.
He said he knew it was “over” after a warm-up for his final competition in July before leaving for Paris. His pole broke prepping for the pole vault and hit the mat, but for the next couple of days had “a lot of nerve symptoms and a lot of pain” that stopped him from even jogging.
“Athletes go through injuries. It’s not anything new and I’ve always been someone who’s always been able to compete through injury, regardless of how severe it is,” LePage said. “So I thought that when it happened that that must be another case of small setback. I’ll be able to do it if I have some pain, like that’s fine, I’ll do whatever.
“But just the nature of the injury is that if it’s pushing on your nerves, you can’t get the results you want out of it.”
LePage, who will be one of 11 RBC Olympians who will be part of this year’s RBC Training Ground National Final on Saturday in Halifax, had surgery in August and says his progression in rehab has been good, although he doesn’t have a recovery timeline. However, he plans to be back well before the 2025 world championships in Tokyo next September.
LePage was coming off a massive 2023 season, claiming the first international title of his career in Gotzis, Austria, then winning his first world title in Budapest, Hungary, some months later. His mark of 8,909 points in Budapest was a personal best, world lead and sixth-best all-time score.
He also became the first Canadian to win a world title in the event. LePage earned his first worlds medal in 2022, with silver, behind world-record holder Kevin Mayer of France.
He finished 2023 as the top-ranked decathlete in the world, still holding that position until the Paris Olympics.
The 2023 season showed how tough LePage would be to beat, especially when healthy. He finished fifth at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 dealing with a torn patella in his right knee. At the 2022 worlds, he competed through a torn patella in his left knee.
Many expected Canada to decathlon win gold and silver in Paris. Damian Warner of London, Ont., was the reigning Olympic champion heading into Paris and earned silver behind LePage at the 2023 worlds.
However, Warner withdrew with just a couple of events left in the decathlon in Paris after failing to clear the opening height of 4.60 metres in the pole vault on all three of his attempts. Warner fell from second to 18th, with no chance of climbing back into the mix.
LePage pointed to reasons for both men to be driven for redemption in Tokyo next year.
“I’m the world champion. I want to defend my title next year,” he said. “I’m sure Damian feels similar thoughts on not wanting to stop right there.
“No one likes to not finish decathlon. That is definitely drive to doing it again and kind of redeem ourselves, I suppose.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 29, 2024.
The six-team Professional Women’s Hockey League is launching its expansion process with plans to add two franchises for the start of the 2025-26 season, a league executive announced Tuesday.
Speaking at the ESPNW Summit in New York, senior vice president of business operations Amy Scheer said the league will begin sending requests for proposals to several markets starting as early as next week, while also accepting applications.
”(We’re) looking for the right market size, right fan base, right facilities, right economic opportunity — so a lot of research to be done over the next couple months,” Scheer said, without specifying which markets the league might be targeting. “But yeah, looking to continue to build the league and grow the number of teams.”
Among the U.S. expansion candidates are Detroit and Pittsburgh, where the PWHL hosted neutral site games during its inaugural season last year. Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia would also be regarded as candidates after both were considered before the league established teams in Boston, New York and Minnesota. Denver and Seattle are also considered potential candidates.
In Canada, where the league has teams in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, Quebec City has already announced its intention of being a candidate for an expansion franchise. Calgary would be a potential option with the city previously being home to the Inferno from 2011 to 2019, before the Canadian Women’s Hocky League folded.
Scheer also announced the league plans to hold neutral site games in nine markets across North America, and is considering holding an outdoor game. Scheer added the league is also working on holding games in Europe, without specifying when that might happen.
The PWHL’s second season opens on Nov. 30, and features an expanded schedule with each team playing 30 games — up from 24 last year. The league has yet to announce where it’s neutral site games will be played.
Quebec City councilor Jackie Smith announced earlier on Tuesday that the PWHL has agreed to play a neutral site game at the city’s Videotron Centre on Jan. 19. The PWHL’s schedule has Ottawa playing Montreal on that day, with the site yet to be determined.
Smith called the development the first step in Quebec City landing an expansion team.
___
AP Women’s Hockey:
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
TORONTO – Canadian squash player Salah Eltorgman dropped a 7-11, 11-4, 11-9, 11-7 decision to Israel‘s Daniel Poleshchuk in quarterfinal play Tuesday at the Cambridge Group of Clubs Classic.
Eltorgman, from Toronto, was the lone Canadian left in the men’s draw of the Pro Squash Association tournament, which is a companion event to the Canadian Women’s Open.
The lone Canadian remaining in the women’s draw, Hollie Naughton of Mississauga, Ont., was scheduled to play Melissa Alves of France in the quarterfinals on Tuesday evening.
Naughton, the world No. 26, is ranked three positions higher than Alves, who dispatched top-seeded Nele Coll of Belgium on Monday.
Semifinals will be played Wednesday in the Allen Lambert Galleria at Brookfield Place.
The finals are set for Thursday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 29, 2024.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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