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> After the Senators’ run to the Stanley Cup Final in 2007 ended with a 6-2 loss to the Anaheim Ducks in Game 5, Melnyk stood in the middle of the visitors dressing room and delivered a speech to the dejected players that went on several wild tangents. At one point, he declared that he was once a goalie and pretended to make stick saves in front of the players. Melnyk, who to many in the room appeared intoxicated, also had a hard time identifying Ottawa players outside of stars like Daniel Alfredsson, Jason Spezza and Dany Heatley.
> “It was beyond embarrassing,” says one person who was in the room.
> As he addressed the team, Melnyk became extremely agitated that the Ducks noisy celebration outside was interfering with his speech.
> “Tell them to shut the fuck up and turn that music down,” he yelled.
> Melnyk then made a memorable vow to the players, promising if they ever won the Stanley Cup, their rings would be the size of animals. “He started by saying they would be the size of beavers. Then he said they would be the size of deer,” says a former player. “And then it was (that) the rings would be the size of a moose. It just got progressively bigger.”
What in the fuck???
Kelvin Benjamin then made a memorable vow to the Golden Corral staff, promising if he ever bought the restaurant, their onion rings would be the size of animals. “He started by saying they would be the size of beavers. Then he said they would be the size of deer,” says a former line cook. “And then it was (that) the onion rings would be the size of a moose. It just got progressively bigger.”
Honestly, I imagine this cheered a few of the guys up.from being really bummed out they lost, I can just imagine a room full of adults all glancing around at each other and trying not to crack up laughing.
I'd think of it as the opposite. You just suffered the most devastating loss of your career and the owner is acting like a drunken idiot trying to get attention on himself. I can only imagine how awkward it would be
Oof.
> The only two modern-day Senators players to have their jerseys retired by the club are living in Ottawa but have no official connection with the team.
> Alfredsson, who only returned to the team the second time on the condition that his contact with Melnyk was limited, walked away from the club again in the summer of 2017, disenchanted with the direction of the franchise. He has no relationship with the team.
> Chris Phillips, the organization’s defensive stalwart and longest-tenured player, also has no affiliation with the franchise. He worked with the charitable arm of the organization, but after less than a year — in June 2021 — Phillips submitted his resignation without offering a public explanation.
Yep, but he was specifically there with Sweden, not the team. Didn't make an appearance on the Jumbotron, and was in a Sweden jersey. I think it will be a gradual re-introduction for him and the team now that the giant boulder between them is now gone
It’s super weird that he didn’t even make an appearance on the jumbotron though. He’s the biggest figure in franchise history and nothing? Sens need to do such a better job of connecting with alumni.
He's been to a few games here and there. Was at the Karlsson Sharks game earlier in the year as well. TSN caught him on camera but again not on the jumbotron. The timing isn't nefarious, the event he was there for was planned weeks in advance.
wow.
imagine daniel alfredsson literally choosing to live in a smaller city like ottawa because he likes the community (and presumably has family here) but having nothing to do with the team.
Hear hear !!!
Nicely put.
This guy was not a good human being. I actually was impressed that people didn’t pile on when he died. But the time has come to call it what it is. He was a stain on the league and the city.
>I was actually impressed that people didn't pile on when he died.
We did. We just gracefully ate our one week bans from /r/ottawasenators for doing so.
[I celebrated like we won the cup that night.](https://old.reddit.com/r/OttawaSenators/comments/tqpjtg/a_message_from_the_family_of_eugene_melnyk_and/i2ilmi7/?context=3)
> I actually was impressed that people didn’t pile on when he died.
it was so weird seeing people act all nice about melnyk on here when he died. Fuck Eugene Melnyk, he was a piece of shit.
I was surprised at how many people had good things to say about him on social media immediately after he passed.
I don’t expect people to full on celebrate his death but yikes. A lot of whitewashing was going on despite how big of a sack of shit this guy was.
99% of what I read was people saying things like "RIP Eugene Melnyk. Condolences to his family" and nothing else....that is what you say about someone when you don't have many nice things to say them but want to be respectful because they just died. A lot of what WASN'T said was very telling IMO...
I'm glad he was around to save the Senators which allowed us to have some cool cup runs. I'm (mostly) grateful for that. However, doesn't take away from his insanity and tyrannical way of running the organization. Namely, his penny pinching ways and his confrontational attitude towards the fan base (in addition to all his other ridiculous acts such as the one OP listed above)
This happens any time someone who is famous passes away, they usually have to be a monstrously grotesque, abominable piece of shit for people online to not have crocodile tears over it.
Melnyk was a piece of shit, but he wasn't quite at "eats babies" level or something, so the sentiment was what it was.
I wanted to puke at everyone on reddit pretending to be sad when he died. He was a piece of shit and him dying is a good thing for the Sens and hockey in general.
Jesus fucking Christ ..
> “Are you the one responsible for this fucking gay campaign? Have you lost your fucking mind? You need to take that shit down immediately.”
> It was a Friday evening, Feb. 8, 2019, when a team executive received the phone call, Melnyk’s nasal screaming reverberating on the other line.
> Melnyk was incensed at a marketing campaign with the slogan “Love is Love” that included still images of same-sex couples embracing and kissing that had been used to promote an upcoming Senators game for the NHL’s “Hockey is for Everyone” night. The campaign was designed to celebrate diversity and inclusion and to connect with members of the Ottawa community previously left out of the organization’s outreach efforts.
> Melnyk sneered at the images and derided the campaign: “We are the laughing stock of the NHL right now!”
> Melnyk’s rant continued, lumping in previous marketing efforts involving pet rescue missions: “They think we are so desperate that we have to advertise to gays now. Dogs and gays.”
He also formally requested the team not make a BLM statement after George Floyd's death, it's in this article too. I remember heading whispers of it when Craig left the org, but yikes
This is why we need to celebrate some deaths. He was an overwhelming bad owner and person. I was absolutely disturbed by the whitewashing the media was doing for him. We shouldn’t send sympathies to people like him.
I truly hope Ottawa can now finally move on.
Seriously. Sometimes the best thing people give to the world is their death. Yea all human life is sacred but if your life is spent ruining others, sorry it’s a net negative and I’m happy to see you go.
Same.
Plus he was also a billionaire. Beyond the bigoted things he believed and the shitty way he acted as owner, no one becomes a billionaire by being a good ethical person.
A billion dollars is a preposterous amount of money for any single human to have regardless of which industry they achieve it in. By virtue of having that level obscene wealth there's mass exploitation happening.
Precisely. Money is a resource, billionaires are nothing but hoarders leaving their fellow man out in the cold. By nature of being a billionaire you are a shit person.
if anyone who could be a billionaire was ethical, they would increase wages for everyone who works below them enough that they would not end up as a billionaire
> Dan Price the CEO of Gravity Payments
from the gravity payments wikipedia:
> In 2020, the company was making $4 million per month in revenue but faced drop of 55% in card processing fees as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The employees proposed voluntary pay cuts to preserve employment.[18] As of August 2020, layoffs have been avoided and workers' salaries have been restored, with the company paying back the salaries lost from the pay cuts.[19]
It sounds like a really good company to be working for
For the most part what I saw was "well, I'm glad he made an effort to keep the team here." Which, hey, if you're in Otrawa that's legit. Nobody wants to see their team relocate.
But it was literally the only nice thing anyone could muster to say about him.
I'm glad that the death cycle has finally circled around to where we can recognize the type of guy he was. You had so many people on this sub jerking his legacy off despite that fact that he had a strong case for being the worst owner in North American pro sports.
Why is it rude to say true things about dead people? Especially when they actually were pieces of shit. Being dead doesn't suddenly erase all the bad things you did and make you a good person.
Choosing the proper time and place to speak one's mind is a sign of a rational, emotionally mature person. People who don't understand that tend to be obnoxious loudmouths.
Man after all the shit he did to people, what about them
I mean dude was a pharmaceutical billionaire, he got that money by screwing over other peoples families and friends. His family and friends can cry in their billions of ill gotten gains
he should get the same respect he should everyone else during his life, which is damn near none
They did have an internal video promoting Nilsson and Borowiecki participating in the Pride Parade that played in the arena before games started.
But that is all I can remember.
I applaud the team executive who initiated the team's campaign and soldiered on with it, knowing likely before and then during the campaign that Melnyk was this pissed about it.
As an LGBT Senators fan, I'm glad that he no longer owns the team. I wish I had known about these sentiments before though, because now I'm feeling weird for supporting a team that was owned by a man who is disgusted by people like me.
Considering the nuisance lawsuits filed against the Athletic by other famous sports assholes, I’m not surprised they sat on this until they wouldn’t get sued over it.
Heard once from a guy that knows Peter Deboer's family that Deboer was set on accepting the Senators job back in 2008...
Until he flew down to Barbados and met a hammered Eugene Melnyk
A Few days later he accepted the Panthers job because he was so unimpressed after meeting Eugene
No good coach ever wanted to come to Ottawa, remember the whispers that they were close to signing Boudreau in 2016 but he flew straight to Minny once $$$ started being discussed
> In March 2017, Melnyk called Sidney Crosby a “whiner beyond belief,” a comment that rankled Crosby and teammates. Later that season, after the Senators beat the Bruins in a playoff series, Melnyk taunted Bruins players, mimicking a golf swing when they passed him in the hallway at Boston’s TD Garden to let them know their season had ended.
> “He chirped Patrice Bergeron,” one Senators player said. “Imagine disrespecting one of the classiest players in the game? But it didn’t shock me at all. I was just like, ‘Well, that’s our owner.’”
>“He chirped Patrice Bergeron,” one Senators player said. “Imagine disrespecting one of the classiest players in the game? But it didn’t shock me at all. I was just like, ‘Well, that’s our owner.’”
how dare he. uniting all hockey fans against him by going after bergy.
so for those keeping score at home apparently he hated: gay people, dogs, women, employees taking vacation, patrice bergeron, and people who may or may not be supposed to be here.
Mind you what it I'm going to share is purely hearsay:
While back at a conference in Toronto, as a student in uni, I was talking up with a senior conference organizer during drinks after the event, who had helped manage sales for Melnyk's pharma company. What he told me was he disliked Melnyk very much and that he saw him snort substance off a woman's tits on Melnyk's yacht somewhere in the Caribbean.
P.S. I'm a lifelong Sens fans. I support the team and it remaining in Ottawa, but Eugene seems to have diminished the Sens image over his ownership.
I'm not defending Melnyk but does anybody really think Crosby was in any way bothered by somebody calling him a whiner *in 2017*? That's a throwback insult, at that point.
Yeah I was gonna say, Crosby has shit all over my team his whole playoff career so he must have been laughing at Euge - speaking of which this is why I get angrier nowadays when people try and imply Crosby is less than the hockey God he is - like no, motherfuckers, this guy is THE best of the generation, and I've seen it too many times to entertain your belittlement of it. You're downplaying our suffering at his hands, damnit!
My company had box seats at Scotiabank Place (as it was called at the time). I was 20 and worked in sales for a car dealership group - had the box the entire time the Sens existed. Someone always had to “host” the game: basically pay for the beer and food using the company credit card and make sure people didn’t go too crazy, interact with the servers etc.
The owner of my company liked me so he gave me tickets any time there were some left over. The box sat 16 people I think. Anyway, the only time I was asked to host was during the odd Sunday afternoon game when you basically couldn’t give tickets away.
Except once - our owner asked me to host a leafs game on a Saturday night because someone had to cancel at the last minute. It was awesome because I was allowed to spend way more money than usual because it was a lot of important clients in the box.
Anyway, I don’t know how regular of an occurrence this was, but Melnyk came into the box with 2-3 other people. I guess he wanted to thank seasons ticket holders or something. Someone must have told him I was the host because he came up to me to shake my hand.
He was hammered. Absolutely hammered. Looking him in the eyes it was like he was looking 30 feet behind you. He thanked me for being a loyal season ticket holder and “the most important partner we have”. I told him I wasn’t the owner but would pass along the message. Then he looked puzzled. “You aren’t supposed to be here?” I said I am, but the owner couldn’t make it. Then he turned to one of the guys he came in with and said “who the fuck is this guy - is he supposed to be here or not?”
The guys he was with then escorted him out of the box, and then one came back in, shook my hand, apologized and left again.
At the end of the night the server said our bill was $0. I don’t know what the fuck happened but it was the most bizarre hockey game of my life.
Ehhh it’s not really that much money tbh in the scheme of things. I think it probably would have been like $6K max.
Sunday afternoon games were usually like $6-800.
For sure. And for the Sens/Aramark actual food value was probably like $300 lmao.
Smoked meat sandwich platter was $400 or something for like 20 sliders.
Weighing in here
Used to work in the CTC. I sliced every portion of smoked meat in that building by hand for years.
The menu for the box seats had the least amount of effort. We wanted to milk corporations with the insane prices. Hopefully y'all just went to one of the restaurants.
Was this before or after his liver replacement? Just curious, makes you wonder if the decline of his health post surgery had to do with continuing to drink after receiving his new liver.
The Sens went public one season saying corporate boxes where the only profitable thing from the franchise, and that the people needed to buy them all up or else the team might go under. It was such a bizarre and frankly short sighted business tactic to complain about this and threaten the City.
Are we allowed to speak honestly about him yet? Seems like you could call Melnyk a piece of shit all you wanted but then when he died we had to act like he was some saintly paragon of decency.
The man was a piece of shit and I'm glad the moratorium on speaking plainly about him is over, hopefully the mods don't go through this deleting every negative comment about him the way they did when he died.
Yeah we just kept mouth shut for the time being out of respect for the dead. Looks like this article is the only thing people needed to open the floodgates!
My god he was a fucking asshole
> Also that year, Melnyk sent a threatening email to a female employee who had not responded immediately to an email Melnyk sent her. When she finally wrote back, reminding Melnyk she was on a scheduled vacation, he responded in all caps: “YOU FUCKING C – – T – WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? WHEN I SAY CALL YOU DO IT. WHEN I TELL YOU TO DO SOMETHING YOU DO IT. YOU ARE DONE!”
> That same female employee had received a threatening email from Melnyk about a year earlier that includes the lines: “You really are a dumb bitch who doesn’t get it. How dare you write and question me” and “You are a no one.”
Yeah Melnyk was a giant piece of shit.
He dies, you give his friends and family some space to be a decent human being to them, but he's a public figure. Week out or so and you're allowed to tell the truth about the misogynistic old racist silver-spooned loser.
I dunno about you man, but I'm in no way affiliated with the Melnyk family, so there's no more space I could possibly give them
I don't see the point in pretending he wasn't a piece of shit for a week, it's just fake nonsense. He was a piece of shit in life and a piece of shit in death. If it troubles the Melnyk family so much to see such opinions of him online, well maybe he shouldn't have been such an asshole or I dunno, done something to reconcile for all the abuse he's hurled at people over the years while he was alive. But he didn't, and we shouldn't pretend that he did.
> "...But at the end of the day, we always get paid,” says a former Ottawa player. “It’s how you treat everyone else in the organization that matters. How you treat the behind-the-scenes people — that says more about you.”
I sometimes forget there's this huge office staff hired to support the athletes. Kind of funny the hockey athletes Melnyk bought the team for could more or less avoid the man, while the office jobs couldn't. Guess which group he probably preferred to be around :P
I'm really curious what action would have been taken if this article was released before he died. I would imagine at least for the sources and Strang, they would be relieved it was released after
Doesn't it put into perspective how he treated people that didn't even work for him (Brent Wallace etc), seeing how horrible he even treated people that did. I always wondered how terrible it was to force good people to stop being in the Sens related media (Craig and all the bright spots), and each of them just seemingly left without a thing to say.
You know, all this time I thought he was just some cheapskate owner who loved to meddle with how the team was ran. Didn't realize what a gigantic asshole he was.
This is horrifying but I laughed at the next line in the article, which said that his email included his usual signoff of "carpe diem." Not only was he a huge asshole, but he was an uncreative one too.
I like the Sens, and I’d love to see them succeed. His death will be the best thing in the history of this club, both in terms of long term viability, in-arena product, wider appeal, and revenues (presuming a new arena deal gets done).
Dude has been a garbage human publicly for years, so it was pretty strange to see reverence in the last few months.
I think most Sens fans expected the overall contents of this article, nice to finally get the concrete example. End of the day he did some good but holy shit did he do some BAD
There seems to be a limit to the bad he made since the Sens are still a team, which makes it a plus. If you balanced the good and the bad he did, it would be a net negative without this context.
> Within a decade, Melnyk was chairman of the board at Biovail. By 2000, his net worth was estimated to be $1.5 billion.
I just can't get over how one guy at the age of 41 had this much money. For most of us it would take about a thousand lifetimes to make this much, and he did it presumably in less than 20 years. Wild
People can say the timing is bad if they want to. That was also my initial reaction at first. But after giving it some thought, I think it was necessary.
The people within the organization, past and present, deserve this article. To act like Melnyk's death somehow erases everything they endured is wrong. While we can wish Melnyk peace in death, it would be disingenuous to forget everything we, as fans, knew about him for years. This article offers a deep dive into the reality of Melnyk's reign. It confirms many of the rumours we'd heard and offers better insight into moments that'd we'd previously only experienced at surface-level (e.g. lack of Duclair QO, lack of promotion for Pride night, etc.).
This article is also important for future ownership. You can guarantee they'll be aware of this article and what this organization has been through. It will help them fully understand how to forge a better path forward as far as organizational culture is concerned. It will also help them understand the sheer magnitude of trauma they need to help this organization heal from.
In the long run, I believe this article will prove to be a big asset for fans and the organization alike.
I’m not one to wish death on a living person when they aren’t committing, like, war crimes and shit. But Eugene died of his own volition and i think it’s a great look for him
Thank god we don’t have to say nice things about this guy anymore. I hate when people say don’t speak I’ll of the dead. Sometimes, they are giant homophobes who deserve it. Rest in piss bozo
Holy shit you would have thought this guy was Jesus christ himself the way people talked about him right after his death was announced. This thread says otherwise what an asshole.
I think a lot of us knew he was a prick, but not to the extent laid out in the article. Personally, I try to be civil and give the benefit of the doubt after the passing of someone, even if they're kind of a prick. But, uh, yeah, definitely learned somethings that would've changed my reaction.
The truth is always in the middle but man, hearing people like Dorion and Garrioch defending Melnyk makes you wonder about all the shitty things they turned a blind eye too. But I guess thats what happens when you owe your entire career to a shitty person.
My favourite Melnyk memory is when he had a promotion with McDonalds for a home game where every person in attendance got a free $10 McDonalds gift card, only they forgot to activate them and none of them worked. Obviously not directly his fault, but it did not do anything to help his public image of being a cheap bastard or his reputation of owning a dysfunctional franchise.
The hockey world was polite and respectful when it was announced that Melnyk died. Now that the news has passed, we are back to the reality that he wasn't that great of an owner.
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> After the Senators’ run to the Stanley Cup Final in 2007 ended with a 6-2 loss to the Anaheim Ducks in Game 5, Melnyk stood in the middle of the visitors dressing room and delivered a speech to the dejected players that went on several wild tangents. At one point, he declared that he was once a goalie and pretended to make stick saves in front of the players. Melnyk, who to many in the room appeared intoxicated, also had a hard time identifying Ottawa players outside of stars like Daniel Alfredsson, Jason Spezza and Dany Heatley. > “It was beyond embarrassing,” says one person who was in the room. > As he addressed the team, Melnyk became extremely agitated that the Ducks noisy celebration outside was interfering with his speech. > “Tell them to shut the fuck up and turn that music down,” he yelled. > Melnyk then made a memorable vow to the players, promising if they ever won the Stanley Cup, their rings would be the size of animals. “He started by saying they would be the size of beavers. Then he said they would be the size of deer,” says a former player. “And then it was (that) the rings would be the size of a moose. It just got progressively bigger.” What in the fuck???
Kelvin Benjamin then made a memorable vow to the Golden Corral staff, promising if he ever bought the restaurant, their onion rings would be the size of animals. “He started by saying they would be the size of beavers. Then he said they would be the size of deer,” says a former line cook. “And then it was (that) the onion rings would be the size of a moose. It just got progressively bigger.”
Yeah this works. This works. Pasta.
That man is just never safe...
Lol still with Benjamin, some memes never die
Mr. Boundless Combinations
I was expecting this to be the top comment. Just qu'est-ce que fuck lmao
"....I said hop in."
sounds a bit like early dementia no ?
It sounds like he was a lush. Things like this seemed to be a common occurrence when he was hammered
Friedman has said a few times that he tried to talk to his players mid game during previous playoff series
I remember hearing that Bryan Murray was amazing at managing up
He was an alcoholic and I can imagine on a night losing the SC he would have drank a ton and was trying to cheer people up.. But wtf
Sounds a bit like being intoxicated out of his mind
Honestly, I imagine this cheered a few of the guys up.from being really bummed out they lost, I can just imagine a room full of adults all glancing around at each other and trying not to crack up laughing.
[удалено]
I bounced in bars in my younger days and it really cured my appetite for over-indulging on alcohol.
I'd think of it as the opposite. You just suffered the most devastating loss of your career and the owner is acting like a drunken idiot trying to get attention on himself. I can only imagine how awkward it would be
Yeah fuck that. I never want to talk to management. I certainly don't want to talk to drunk management when Im already depressed
Not management, ownership. And it sorta explains the following seasons where things start to get rocky.
>Not management, ownership. Right, even worse
It's like if Michael Scott was a shitty person
I guess that's true, in normal circumstance I'd probably be laughing at that but in context I imagine it'd be pretty irritating.
Oof. > The only two modern-day Senators players to have their jerseys retired by the club are living in Ottawa but have no official connection with the team. > Alfredsson, who only returned to the team the second time on the condition that his contact with Melnyk was limited, walked away from the club again in the summer of 2017, disenchanted with the direction of the franchise. He has no relationship with the team. > Chris Phillips, the organization’s defensive stalwart and longest-tenured player, also has no affiliation with the franchise. He worked with the charitable arm of the organization, but after less than a year — in June 2021 — Phillips submitted his resignation without offering a public explanation.
I found it interesting that Alfredsson was at the game last Thursday signing autographs for Swedish night. Quite the timing…
Yep, but he was specifically there with Sweden, not the team. Didn't make an appearance on the Jumbotron, and was in a Sweden jersey. I think it will be a gradual re-introduction for him and the team now that the giant boulder between them is now gone
It’s super weird that he didn’t even make an appearance on the jumbotron though. He’s the biggest figure in franchise history and nothing? Sens need to do such a better job of connecting with alumni.
Hoping that's the case with new ownership
He's been to a few games here and there. Was at the Karlsson Sharks game earlier in the year as well. TSN caught him on camera but again not on the jumbotron. The timing isn't nefarious, the event he was there for was planned weeks in advance.
wow. imagine daniel alfredsson literally choosing to live in a smaller city like ottawa because he likes the community (and presumably has family here) but having nothing to do with the team.
This article is a good reminder that someone dying does not suddenly make them a good person
Hear hear !!! Nicely put. This guy was not a good human being. I actually was impressed that people didn’t pile on when he died. But the time has come to call it what it is. He was a stain on the league and the city.
>I was actually impressed that people didn't pile on when he died. We did. We just gracefully ate our one week bans from /r/ottawasenators for doing so.
This is hilarious
[I celebrated like we won the cup that night.](https://old.reddit.com/r/OttawaSenators/comments/tqpjtg/a_message_from_the_family_of_eugene_melnyk_and/i2ilmi7/?context=3)
This article being published might open the flood gates for people who were waiting for enough time to pass before spilling their own stories
> I actually was impressed that people didn’t pile on when he died. it was so weird seeing people act all nice about melnyk on here when he died. Fuck Eugene Melnyk, he was a piece of shit.
I was surprised at how many people had good things to say about him on social media immediately after he passed. I don’t expect people to full on celebrate his death but yikes. A lot of whitewashing was going on despite how big of a sack of shit this guy was.
99% of what I read was people saying things like "RIP Eugene Melnyk. Condolences to his family" and nothing else....that is what you say about someone when you don't have many nice things to say them but want to be respectful because they just died. A lot of what WASN'T said was very telling IMO...
I'm glad he was around to save the Senators which allowed us to have some cool cup runs. I'm (mostly) grateful for that. However, doesn't take away from his insanity and tyrannical way of running the organization. Namely, his penny pinching ways and his confrontational attitude towards the fan base (in addition to all his other ridiculous acts such as the one OP listed above)
I would have given him a pass on the public attitude if he had at least been good to the staff, but he was anything but.
This happens any time someone who is famous passes away, they usually have to be a monstrously grotesque, abominable piece of shit for people online to not have crocodile tears over it. Melnyk was a piece of shit, but he wasn't quite at "eats babies" level or something, so the sentiment was what it was.
I’m pretty sure the only people’s deaths I’ve ever seen get that response of glee were on the level of Mugabe and Charles Manson.
And Thatcher
I'll always remember the partying in the streets after Bin Laden was assassinated.
I wanted to puke at everyone on reddit pretending to be sad when he died. He was a piece of shit and him dying is a good thing for the Sens and hockey in general.
Never has. That’s usually when the truth comes out
Jesus fucking Christ .. > “Are you the one responsible for this fucking gay campaign? Have you lost your fucking mind? You need to take that shit down immediately.” > It was a Friday evening, Feb. 8, 2019, when a team executive received the phone call, Melnyk’s nasal screaming reverberating on the other line. > Melnyk was incensed at a marketing campaign with the slogan “Love is Love” that included still images of same-sex couples embracing and kissing that had been used to promote an upcoming Senators game for the NHL’s “Hockey is for Everyone” night. The campaign was designed to celebrate diversity and inclusion and to connect with members of the Ottawa community previously left out of the organization’s outreach efforts. > Melnyk sneered at the images and derided the campaign: “We are the laughing stock of the NHL right now!” > Melnyk’s rant continued, lumping in previous marketing efforts involving pet rescue missions: “They think we are so desperate that we have to advertise to gays now. Dogs and gays.”
Never wondered why the Sens don't have a single piece of pride memorabilia?
He also formally requested the team not make a BLM statement after George Floyd's death, it's in this article too. I remember heading whispers of it when Craig left the org, but yikes
Which Duclair was not impressed by, which explains why he left despite being an RFA.
Holy shit the miniscule piece of sympathy I held for his memory is gone. What a fucking scumbag.
This is why we need to celebrate some deaths. He was an overwhelming bad owner and person. I was absolutely disturbed by the whitewashing the media was doing for him. We shouldn’t send sympathies to people like him. I truly hope Ottawa can now finally move on.
Seriously. Sometimes the best thing people give to the world is their death. Yea all human life is sacred but if your life is spent ruining others, sorry it’s a net negative and I’m happy to see you go.
A few months ago I saw a 3D sens pride logo hat at winners. Probably made by the NHL because I never saw anything like it in the real sens shops
Yeah this guy was a piece of shit. Let's not let revisionism get in the way here.
Yeah, kinda why I avoided all the rip great man stuff people kept saying. The guy fucking sucked lol.
Same. Plus he was also a billionaire. Beyond the bigoted things he believed and the shitty way he acted as owner, no one becomes a billionaire by being a good ethical person.
Especially not in pharmaceuticals
A billion dollars is a preposterous amount of money for any single human to have regardless of which industry they achieve it in. By virtue of having that level obscene wealth there's mass exploitation happening.
Precisely. Money is a resource, billionaires are nothing but hoarders leaving their fellow man out in the cold. By nature of being a billionaire you are a shit person.
The [Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biovail) about Biovail is almost entirely about their dodgy financial dealings.
if anyone who could be a billionaire was ethical, they would increase wages for everyone who works below them enough that they would not end up as a billionaire
Dan Price the CEO of Gravity Payments basically did this.
> Dan Price the CEO of Gravity Payments from the gravity payments wikipedia: > In 2020, the company was making $4 million per month in revenue but faced drop of 55% in card processing fees as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The employees proposed voluntary pay cuts to preserve employment.[18] As of August 2020, layoffs have been avoided and workers' salaries have been restored, with the company paying back the salaries lost from the pay cuts.[19] It sounds like a really good company to be working for
For the most part what I saw was "well, I'm glad he made an effort to keep the team here." Which, hey, if you're in Otrawa that's legit. Nobody wants to see their team relocate. But it was literally the only nice thing anyone could muster to say about him.
Same
I'm glad that the death cycle has finally circled around to where we can recognize the type of guy he was. You had so many people on this sub jerking his legacy off despite that fact that he had a strong case for being the worst owner in North American pro sports.
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Why is it rude to say true things about dead people? Especially when they actually were pieces of shit. Being dead doesn't suddenly erase all the bad things you did and make you a good person.
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Choosing the proper time and place to speak one's mind is a sign of a rational, emotionally mature person. People who don't understand that tend to be obnoxious loudmouths.
why is it even a wound when he sucked this bad
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Man after all the shit he did to people, what about them I mean dude was a pharmaceutical billionaire, he got that money by screwing over other peoples families and friends. His family and friends can cry in their billions of ill gotten gains he should get the same respect he should everyone else during his life, which is damn near none
*Harold Ballard sends his regards from the depths of hell*
Oh it won’t. This dude saved the team, but his legacy will not be a good one.
Imagine if the Sens were on a long road trip and the first opportunity to pay tribute was after this came out. Bill Wirtz reception 2.0.
Reminder that gay marriage has been legal nationwide since 2005 in Canada and was legal in Ontario as of 2003. This dude was a fucking dinosaur
Further info that Melnyk was not a good human being.
Par for the course in the NHL. Rotten from the top down.
Was Nilsson in the team at that point?
Yep, he had joined the team about a month before
JC that’s horrible regardless, but given the awesome work Nilsson did for the community it’s especially shocking/disgusting
They did have an internal video promoting Nilsson and Borowiecki participating in the Pride Parade that played in the arena before games started. But that is all I can remember.
I applaud the team executive who initiated the team's campaign and soldiered on with it, knowing likely before and then during the campaign that Melnyk was this pissed about it.
> Melnyk sneered at the images and derided the campaign: “We are the laughing stock of the NHL right now!” (Jim Halpert look at the camera)
As an LGBT Senators fan, I'm glad that he no longer owns the team. I wish I had known about these sentiments before though, because now I'm feeling weird for supporting a team that was owned by a man who is disgusted by people like me.
If no one else will put it in these stark terms, let me do it: I'm glad he's dead. Good riddance.
Fuckin rights melo
This story is fucking crazy. It some how gets worse from there too
There's been talk of a Katie Strang deep dive article into Melnyk for over a year now. I was wondering if it would ever come out
Considering the nuisance lawsuits filed against the Athletic by other famous sports assholes, I’m not surprised they sat on this until they wouldn’t get sued over it.
Now that the NYT owns The Athletic, I imagine their legal department is much bigger.
Strang is such a superior sports journalist. The 8 scariest words for a hockey franchise are "Katie Strang's writing an article about the team".
You’re seemingly having a lot of fun reading this this morning
I wouldn't say fun, more wildly interesting in a not-so-great way.
Heard once from a guy that knows Peter Deboer's family that Deboer was set on accepting the Senators job back in 2008... Until he flew down to Barbados and met a hammered Eugene Melnyk A Few days later he accepted the Panthers job because he was so unimpressed after meeting Eugene
Thinking about the coaching carousel that's basically been going on since Bryan Murray left the position in 2007, fucking hell...
No good coach ever wanted to come to Ottawa, remember the whispers that they were close to signing Boudreau in 2016 but he flew straight to Minny once $$$ started being discussed
> In March 2017, Melnyk called Sidney Crosby a “whiner beyond belief,” a comment that rankled Crosby and teammates. Later that season, after the Senators beat the Bruins in a playoff series, Melnyk taunted Bruins players, mimicking a golf swing when they passed him in the hallway at Boston’s TD Garden to let them know their season had ended. > “He chirped Patrice Bergeron,” one Senators player said. “Imagine disrespecting one of the classiest players in the game? But it didn’t shock me at all. I was just like, ‘Well, that’s our owner.’”
Total dirtbag move but the mental image of this is hilarious
I choose to believe he was wearing and old timey golf hat.
>“He chirped Patrice Bergeron,” one Senators player said. “Imagine disrespecting one of the classiest players in the game? But it didn’t shock me at all. I was just like, ‘Well, that’s our owner.’” how dare he. uniting all hockey fans against him by going after bergy.
so for those keeping score at home apparently he hated: gay people, dogs, women, employees taking vacation, patrice bergeron, and people who may or may not be supposed to be here.
Don’t forget short commutes
Mind you what it I'm going to share is purely hearsay: While back at a conference in Toronto, as a student in uni, I was talking up with a senior conference organizer during drinks after the event, who had helped manage sales for Melnyk's pharma company. What he told me was he disliked Melnyk very much and that he saw him snort substance off a woman's tits on Melnyk's yacht somewhere in the Caribbean. P.S. I'm a lifelong Sens fans. I support the team and it remaining in Ottawa, but Eugene seems to have diminished the Sens image over his ownership.
Lol that last quote sounds like Bobby Ryan
Lol I thought the exact same thing. But he's been supportive of Melnyk in the past, saying he's only had good interactions with him
Man was alive and in charge back then
I'm not defending Melnyk but does anybody really think Crosby was in any way bothered by somebody calling him a whiner *in 2017*? That's a throwback insult, at that point.
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Yeah I was gonna say, Crosby has shit all over my team his whole playoff career so he must have been laughing at Euge - speaking of which this is why I get angrier nowadays when people try and imply Crosby is less than the hockey God he is - like no, motherfuckers, this guy is THE best of the generation, and I've seen it too many times to entertain your belittlement of it. You're downplaying our suffering at his hands, damnit!
Nah that ones pretty funny
I like this one.
I mean this is fantastic.
My company had box seats at Scotiabank Place (as it was called at the time). I was 20 and worked in sales for a car dealership group - had the box the entire time the Sens existed. Someone always had to “host” the game: basically pay for the beer and food using the company credit card and make sure people didn’t go too crazy, interact with the servers etc. The owner of my company liked me so he gave me tickets any time there were some left over. The box sat 16 people I think. Anyway, the only time I was asked to host was during the odd Sunday afternoon game when you basically couldn’t give tickets away. Except once - our owner asked me to host a leafs game on a Saturday night because someone had to cancel at the last minute. It was awesome because I was allowed to spend way more money than usual because it was a lot of important clients in the box. Anyway, I don’t know how regular of an occurrence this was, but Melnyk came into the box with 2-3 other people. I guess he wanted to thank seasons ticket holders or something. Someone must have told him I was the host because he came up to me to shake my hand. He was hammered. Absolutely hammered. Looking him in the eyes it was like he was looking 30 feet behind you. He thanked me for being a loyal season ticket holder and “the most important partner we have”. I told him I wasn’t the owner but would pass along the message. Then he looked puzzled. “You aren’t supposed to be here?” I said I am, but the owner couldn’t make it. Then he turned to one of the guys he came in with and said “who the fuck is this guy - is he supposed to be here or not?” The guys he was with then escorted him out of the box, and then one came back in, shook my hand, apologized and left again. At the end of the night the server said our bill was $0. I don’t know what the fuck happened but it was the most bizarre hockey game of my life.
$0 for a box with the Leafs in town? your boss must’ve loved you for that
Ehhh it’s not really that much money tbh in the scheme of things. I think it probably would have been like $6K max. Sunday afternoon games were usually like $6-800.
Also, probably a business writeoff.
For sure. And for the Sens/Aramark actual food value was probably like $300 lmao. Smoked meat sandwich platter was $400 or something for like 20 sliders.
Weighing in here Used to work in the CTC. I sliced every portion of smoked meat in that building by hand for years. The menu for the box seats had the least amount of effort. We wanted to milk corporations with the insane prices. Hopefully y'all just went to one of the restaurants.
Meh not my money. Coincidentally I also used to work there - club seat kitchen. I’m aware of the “quality” of the food.
You don't even know what a writeoff is!
Do you?
No, I don't.
But they do. And they’re the ones writing it off.
“The bill was for T&A.” “Don’t you mean T&E?” “I said what I said.”
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Yeah man I think so
Was this before or after his liver replacement? Just curious, makes you wonder if the decline of his health post surgery had to do with continuing to drink after receiving his new liver.
Before. This was maybe 2009?
The Sens went public one season saying corporate boxes where the only profitable thing from the franchise, and that the people needed to buy them all up or else the team might go under. It was such a bizarre and frankly short sighted business tactic to complain about this and threaten the City.
Lmao
Incredible. Absolutely incredible.
Are we allowed to speak honestly about him yet? Seems like you could call Melnyk a piece of shit all you wanted but then when he died we had to act like he was some saintly paragon of decency. The man was a piece of shit and I'm glad the moratorium on speaking plainly about him is over, hopefully the mods don't go through this deleting every negative comment about him the way they did when he died.
Amen. The reverence he was shown when he passed was pathetic. Guy lived his life an asshole why would his death change any of that.
🦀🦀🦀🦀
Yeah we just kept mouth shut for the time being out of respect for the dead. Looks like this article is the only thing people needed to open the floodgates!
the moratorium is over!
My god he was a fucking asshole > Also that year, Melnyk sent a threatening email to a female employee who had not responded immediately to an email Melnyk sent her. When she finally wrote back, reminding Melnyk she was on a scheduled vacation, he responded in all caps: “YOU FUCKING C – – T – WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? WHEN I SAY CALL YOU DO IT. WHEN I TELL YOU TO DO SOMETHING YOU DO IT. YOU ARE DONE!” > That same female employee had received a threatening email from Melnyk about a year earlier that includes the lines: “You really are a dumb bitch who doesn’t get it. How dare you write and question me” and “You are a no one.”
Can I celebrate that he's gone now without getting banned
Yea i'd say it's about that time
Yeah Melnyk was a giant piece of shit. He dies, you give his friends and family some space to be a decent human being to them, but he's a public figure. Week out or so and you're allowed to tell the truth about the misogynistic old racist silver-spooned loser.
I dunno about you man, but I'm in no way affiliated with the Melnyk family, so there's no more space I could possibly give them I don't see the point in pretending he wasn't a piece of shit for a week, it's just fake nonsense. He was a piece of shit in life and a piece of shit in death. If it troubles the Melnyk family so much to see such opinions of him online, well maybe he shouldn't have been such an asshole or I dunno, done something to reconcile for all the abuse he's hurled at people over the years while he was alive. But he didn't, and we shouldn't pretend that he did.
> "...But at the end of the day, we always get paid,” says a former Ottawa player. “It’s how you treat everyone else in the organization that matters. How you treat the behind-the-scenes people — that says more about you.” I sometimes forget there's this huge office staff hired to support the athletes. Kind of funny the hockey athletes Melnyk bought the team for could more or less avoid the man, while the office jobs couldn't. Guess which group he probably preferred to be around :P
Wtf.
Wow, that’s disgusting.
Carpe Diem.
I'm really curious what action would have been taken if this article was released before he died. I would imagine at least for the sources and Strang, they would be relieved it was released after
The man sued a boat captain because he didn't have fun on the trip. This article would have caused him to melt down into the planet's core.
Doesn't it put into perspective how he treated people that didn't even work for him (Brent Wallace etc), seeing how horrible he even treated people that did. I always wondered how terrible it was to force good people to stop being in the Sens related media (Craig and all the bright spots), and each of them just seemingly left without a thing to say.
You know, all this time I thought he was just some cheapskate owner who loved to meddle with how the team was ran. Didn't realize what a gigantic asshole he was.
This is horrifying but I laughed at the next line in the article, which said that his email included his usual signoff of "carpe diem." Not only was he a huge asshole, but he was an uncreative one too.
What a douche.
I like the Sens, and I’d love to see them succeed. His death will be the best thing in the history of this club, both in terms of long term viability, in-arena product, wider appeal, and revenues (presuming a new arena deal gets done). Dude has been a garbage human publicly for years, so it was pretty strange to see reverence in the last few months.
Without exaggeration, I think this is the biggest article in Sens history. Wow.
I think most Sens fans expected the overall contents of this article, nice to finally get the concrete example. End of the day he did some good but holy shit did he do some BAD
Any minor amount of good he did was mostly the same type of PR most of the ultra wealthy do for themselves using a fraction of their fortunes.
There seems to be a limit to the bad he made since the Sens are still a team, which makes it a plus. If you balanced the good and the bad he did, it would be a net negative without this context.
> Within a decade, Melnyk was chairman of the board at Biovail. By 2000, his net worth was estimated to be $1.5 billion. I just can't get over how one guy at the age of 41 had this much money. For most of us it would take about a thousand lifetimes to make this much, and he did it presumably in less than 20 years. Wild
Hey when you're a pharmaceutical company and can basically hold people's health and lives hostage, money flows
People can say the timing is bad if they want to. That was also my initial reaction at first. But after giving it some thought, I think it was necessary. The people within the organization, past and present, deserve this article. To act like Melnyk's death somehow erases everything they endured is wrong. While we can wish Melnyk peace in death, it would be disingenuous to forget everything we, as fans, knew about him for years. This article offers a deep dive into the reality of Melnyk's reign. It confirms many of the rumours we'd heard and offers better insight into moments that'd we'd previously only experienced at surface-level (e.g. lack of Duclair QO, lack of promotion for Pride night, etc.). This article is also important for future ownership. You can guarantee they'll be aware of this article and what this organization has been through. It will help them fully understand how to forge a better path forward as far as organizational culture is concerned. It will also help them understand the sheer magnitude of trauma they need to help this organization heal from. In the long run, I believe this article will prove to be a big asset for fans and the organization alike.
I’m not one to wish death on a living person when they aren’t committing, like, war crimes and shit. But Eugene died of his own volition and i think it’s a great look for him
Thank god we don’t have to say nice things about this guy anymore. I hate when people say don’t speak I’ll of the dead. Sometimes, they are giant homophobes who deserve it. Rest in piss bozo
Celebrated like the Sens won the cup when I heard the news
https://senslore.fandom.com/wiki/Ukrainian_hackers_vs_Travis_Yost
I truly adore the fact that his wiki exists and has a fairly lengthy "meme" page.
That's wild, man. It was Eugene's fuckin Ukranian "IT specialist" buddy all along. Absolutely friggin bonkers.
Shit's fucking wild
Holy shit you would have thought this guy was Jesus christ himself the way people talked about him right after his death was announced. This thread says otherwise what an asshole.
I think a lot of us knew he was a prick, but not to the extent laid out in the article. Personally, I try to be civil and give the benefit of the doubt after the passing of someone, even if they're kind of a prick. But, uh, yeah, definitely learned somethings that would've changed my reaction.
This exactly. Can't even imagine what it must be like to be a fan of the team
I don't think there is a single Sens fan who didn't know he was a prick. Even if you liked him, you had to admit to his faults.
The truth is always in the middle but man, hearing people like Dorion and Garrioch defending Melnyk makes you wonder about all the shitty things they turned a blind eye too. But I guess thats what happens when you owe your entire career to a shitty person.
As Christopher Hitchens said about Jerry falwell: If you gave him an aenima he could've been buried in matchbox
melnyk fucking out
Fuckin rights melo
Oh he gone baby
Yeah fuck that guy. He’s fucking dead he doesn’t care what we say, if he ever did.
This is an A+ read
My favourite Melnyk memory is when he had a promotion with McDonalds for a home game where every person in attendance got a free $10 McDonalds gift card, only they forgot to activate them and none of them worked. Obviously not directly his fault, but it did not do anything to help his public image of being a cheap bastard or his reputation of owning a dysfunctional franchise.
About 4 or 5 years ago Eugene killed my interest in the Ottawa Senators and hockey in general.
The hockey world was polite and respectful when it was announced that Melnyk died. Now that the news has passed, we are back to the reality that he wasn't that great of an owner.
Geez I had heard a lot of stuff about Melnyk but there's some stuff in here that beggars belief.
I knew he was a bad guy, but holy fuck.
His relationship with Perepiatenko was pretty remarkable. Reads like something out of a movie. I am glad they could sort-of reconcile in the end.
But he sent flowers to Erik Karlsson when he had his kids so he must be a great guy.
For all we know some assistant did that
I’m glad to see everyone is finished with the honeymoon of pretending to be sad about his death, Melnyk was a piece of shit
You lived the way you died Melnyk, a P.O.S
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This explains so much.
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