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UPDATE:
Read these threads and tell me this isn't extremely fishy. A bunch of accounts recently created with obviously fake names and photos, and they are all saying the same things about Melnyk...
These are clearly burner accounts, but the next question is who made them? It almost has to be someone from within the organization, or at least somebody close to Melnyk.
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The facts are right here in front of us. If a reporter that covers the Senators every day is going to talk poorly about the organization or run a story that paints them in a bad light, Eugene Melnyk is going to do everything he can to stop it. He is a dictator within the ownership world.
This isn't just speculation now either, as
Michael Traikos had a scathing article about Melnyk earlier today. In it, he mentions how Ken Warren was literally kicked off of the team flight heading to Tampa Bay today, and the Ottawa Sun and Citizen are no longer allowed to travel with the team. I encourage you to read the rest of the article if you haven't already, but I'll go over the main points here too.
It's clear that this is in response to the Ottawa Citizen/Sun not taking down the Uber video from Monday despite the Senators best efforts. I will say that I wasn't the biggest fan of the Citizen posting the video, mainly because the original video only had 50 views on Youtube and after it was deleted, it probably never would have seen the light of day. I understand that this story was of course going to get traffic on their website and it's hard to argue against that, but they at least had the opportunity to not create another divide in the dressing room. It's just unfortunate that the way the world works is that it was beneficial for the Citizen to hurt the team, even though nothing the players said was earth-shattering.
Having said all of that, the media has a right to cover the team, and it's ludicrous to try to silence them similarly to how Donald Trump has tried to silence Jim Acosta.
Traikos also had this extremely interesting piece of information about Brent Wallace:
"Also on the Senators’ growing no-fly list is TSN reporter Brent Wallace who, prior to the team’s Parliament Hill game last December, had the audacity to ask owner Eugene Melnyk about a report that suggested he had been withholding bonus money from his employees.
Melnyk denied the allegation.
Once the cameras were turned off, bystanders saw him turn to Wallace and say, “I’m going to bury you.”
Since then, Wallace’s seat on the charter has also been revoked, leaving Sylvain St-Laurent of French-language newspaper Le Droit with one of the remaining few seats. Well, until he writes something that Melnyk doesn’t like."
There were rumours about this Wallace interaction before, and I see no reason to doubt its validity anymore. It was a legitimate question from Wallace, and I'm glad that he didn't just throw Melnyk softballs at the time. It looks like he's having to "pay the price" now though, but I'm not sure how long that will last. What an incredibly childish response to a question that actually sounds plausible.
Another fantastic excerpt from the article talks about how this isn't any one reporters fault, since it all comes back to Melnyk:
"The thing that Melnyk doesn’t seem to understand is that it’s not the media making the noise. They’re just the ones filing the complaint.
It wasn’t the Ottawa Citizen/Sun that chased away franchise icon Daniel Alfredsson from a front-office job.
We didn’t trade Erik Karlsson and Mike Hoffman for a bunch of magic beans after the two became embroiled in a cyber-bullying scandal.
Who was it that threatened to move the team if attendance didn’t pick up?
Who got caught sexually harassing a shuttle-bus driver at the draft?
Who failed to lottery-protect a first-round draft pick in a regrettable trade for Matt Duchene that was only made because ownership didn’t want to pay Kyle Turris his market value?
It certainly wasn’t Ken Warren.
The Ottawa Citizen and Ottawa Sun didn’t install a hidden camera in an Uber to catch the private conversation of the team’s players. For that matter, the Ottawa Citizen/Ottawa Sun didn’t pay for the video."
Melnyk can blame the reporters all he wants, but the fact of the matter is that all of these controversies have been happening under his watch. They aren't all within his control, but you cannot get angry for reporters reporting the news. I still think releasing the video was a bit of a different circumstance, but I can definitely see other people's point of view in that it was a newsworthy story. It was just an unfortunate situation all around.
I know I'm pretty much summarizing Traikos' article here, but it's one of the best I've seen on Melnyk in a while. He points out that this "Ubergate" situation came out on Monday and could have easily died down yesterday or maybe today. But instead, the Senators continue to keep the story alive by asking to take the video down and then kicking Warren off their flight. They aren't doing themselves any favours here.
It's another example (of many) that the Senators organization just has no idea what it's doing, and almost all of that comes back to Melnyk. In this instance he is acting like a dictator by deciding that Warren is going to be too negative in his coverage. Meanwhile, Bruce Garrioch, who would never say anything as scathing as Traikos did today, continues to fly with the team because Melnyk can trust him.
It's incredible to me that anybody could still have any ounce of positivity towards this owner.
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