Hartley has his eyes on Ottawa

Bob Hartley says he’d love to be the next coach of the Ottawa Senators.
“For sure, ” said Hartley, who won the 2001 Stanley Cup with the Colorado Avalanche, but was fired by the Atlanta Thrashers, six games into this season.
“I’m from Hawkesbury. I’d just have to take Highway 17 and on the way in make a couple of stops for some great french fries.”
In 1986, Hartley, now 47, left a steady job with a windshield manufacturing company where he was making $55,000 a year to become fulltime head coach of the Hawkesbury Hawks Junior A team for $12,000. He told his fellow workers he was departing “to win a Stanley Cup.”
Which he did, and along the way he won a Memorial Cup with Laval Titans and the American League’s Calder Cup in the 1997 final over the Hamilton Bulldogs.
Since he was fired, he’s been watching lots of junior and minor hockey in the Ottawa Valley and helping young coaches learn their craft, “the way older coaches helped me when I started out.
“This has been the worst year of my career. I’m parked in the stable. I’m like a pony who can’t run.”
He’s doing some analysis for French-language broadcaster RDS but told The Spec before Saturday’s game that he’d like a shot to win his second Stanley Cup with an Ottawa team he regards still deeply talented. The Sens were dispatched in four first-round games by Pittsburgh.
Ottawa has not yet contacted him or, to anyone’s knowledge, any other candidate for the job which GM Bryan Murray did after firing John Paddock in February.
“It’s out of my hands,” he said. “I don’t think you can get a more experienced general manager than Bryan Murray. He coached against me when I was playing in the Central (Junior) League.
“Mr. Melnyk (Ottawa owner, Eugene) has made it clear that he wants to win a Stanley Cup and there’s nothing more I’d like to do than bring a Stanley Cup back to my hometown, where I played and learned to coach.”

-Steve Milton

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