NHL: Struggling Senators fire former coach of the year Paul MacLean
Monday 8 December 2014 21:01, UK
Former NHL coach of the year Paul MacLean has been fired by the struggling Ottawa Senators
MacLean has been replaced by assistant coach Dave Cameron with the Senators sitting in seventh place in the eight-team Atlantic division after an 11-11-5 start to the NHL's 2014-15 season.
"I think there's an obligation for a lot of people to perform better, the players included," Senators general manager Bryan Murray said during a news conference.
MacLean led the Senators to the Eastern Conference quarter-finals and won the Jack Adams Award as the league's best coach in his first year in charge.
The senators reached the conference semi-finals a year later but missed on on the postseason last year.
Cameron, 56, will be behind the Ottawa bench for their next game on Thursday at home versus the Los Angeles Kings.
A former player who spent three seasons in the NHL with the Colorado Rockies and New Jersey Devils, Cameron had been serving as the assistant coach in Ottawa since 2011.
Cameron, a former head coach in the Ontario Hockey League and American Hockey League, was behind the bench for Canada's national junior team during the 2010-11 campaign and won a silver medal at the 2011 world junior championship.
