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Ottawa Senators fire coach D.J. Smith, name Jacques Martin interim coach
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- Ottawa Senators fire coach D.J. Smith, name Jacques Martin interim coach
Ottawa Senators coach D.J. Smith was fired Monday after four seasons of no playoff appearances and a last-place start this season.
The Senators brought in two franchise leaders in a bid to turn around the slumping team.
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Jacques Martin, 71, who holds the Senators record with 341 regular-season coaching wins, was named interim coach. All-time leading scorer Daniel Alfredsson was named assistant coach, replacing Davis Payne. Martin had been hired as a coaching consultant earlier this season.
"Detailed, structured, organized, disciplined," Senators president of hockey operations Steve Staios said of Martin. "So, for me, in theory, he's a perfect fit for what we had been lacking in those areas."
Smith is the fourth NHL coach to be fired this season, following the Edmonton Oilers , Minnesota Wild and St. Louis Blues . The Oilers and Wild took off since their moves and the Blues won two in a row.
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Smith was in a tough situation this season because there is new ownership in Ottawa under Michael Andlauer . Andlauer brought in Staios in an executive role but kept Smith and general manager Pierre Dorion.
Dorion was gone first after the NHL docked the team a first-round pick over its role in a rescinded trade involving a former Senators player, Evgenii Dadonov .
Smith joined the Senators in 2019-20 and finished either seventh or sixth in his first four years, even though Ottawa made major upgrades in the fourth year with Claude Giroux , Alex DeBrincat and Jakob Chychrun . DeBrincat was traded , but Dorion added more players this past offseason , including Vladimir Tarasenko and Joonas Korpisalo .
Regardless, the Senators were last in the Eastern Conference at the time of the firing. Smith finishes with a 131-154-32 record in Ottawa.
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"When I saw our game revert back to where it was before, that's when I felt it was time (to make a move)," Staios said.
Martin, who has 613 regular-season NHL wins, will be tasked with trying to turn around a team that has lost four in a row and eight of its last 11 games. His first game back behind the bench will be Tuesday in Arizona .
Ottawa has played the fewest games in the conference and the team will get Shane Pinto back at some point from his gambling suspension . But the Senators will have a road-heavy schedule down the stretch.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Senators coach DJ Smith fired; Jacques Martin named interim
