The Ottawa Senators' decision to fire coach John Paddock came as no surprise. The Sens have been in a serious slump and numerous reports out of Canada's capital indicated that the club stopped responding to Paddock. The Senators are simply too talented a team to be losing hockey games with such frequency.

Yet Ottawa is in a prolonged slump. After an impressive 15-2-0 start, the Sens are just 21-20-6 since which is the ninth best record in the conference in that time. Their once comfortable lead in the conference and the division has evaporated. Instead of impressive, the Sens look vulnerable and, at least lately under Paddock, almost indifferent.

The Sens will probably benefit in the short term from Bryan Murray taking over again behind the bench. Murray led the team to the Stanley Cup Finals last season and he certainly knows the team well and he knows how to press the right buttons to get them to perform. But there are some serious problems on the Senators that won't be solved simply because Murray took over as coach. Unless the Sens can resolve these issues, they must be considered a long shot to come out of the Eastern Conference in this year's playoffs.

First and foremost, the Senators have problems in goal. Neither Martin Gerber nor Ray Emery has taken control of the number one spot. Both have looked very good at times and very mediocre at others. Unless one of these goalies steps up and raises the level of his play, the Sens will have difficulty winning playoff rounds against goalies like Martin Brodeur, Henrik Lundqvist or Ryan Miller who have the ability to carry a team in a short series. In their first 17 games, the Sens yielded only 2.00 goals per game. Since then, their goals against has been 3.36. Right now, Ottawa is 23rd in the league in goals allowed with 195, hardly numbers that inspire confidence for the postseason.

Worse yet, Emery has been a distraction off the ice, showing up late for practices and generally engaging in questionable behavior that has caused problems for a team that should be concentrating on winning hockey games.

Yet Murray did nothing to address the goaltending situation. Everybody expected the Sens to deal Emery, which would have been addition by subtraction, improving the atmosphere around the team. The Sens need a talent upgrade at the position and to help clear the locker room. Murray accomplished neither at the deadline.

While the acquisition of Corey Stillman will help, the Sens remain a one line team until proven otherwise. The top line of Alfredsson, Heatley and Spezza has scored 90 of the Senators 208 goals or a bit more than 43 percent of the total. When you add the fact that the trio has missed a total of 24 games, the numbers become even more troubling. No other player has scored 20 goals this year in a Sens uniform. Unless they get more scoring from their second and third lines, the Sens will again have trouble advancing deep into the postseason.

Although they lost Murray's first game behind the bench last night to the Flyers, the Sens appeared revitalized and more energetic. But that probably won't be enough to overcome the team's flaws come the spring.

The Pittsburgh Penguins went from thrilled to frightened in one game. Newly acquired sniper Marian Hossa was injured in a knee-on-knee collision with Glen Murray and left the game after receiving a bit more than 10 minutes of ice time. He is expected to miss about a week of playing time. If you think about it, that's roughly 18 percent of the entire time the Pens will have Hossa as a rental player, at least during the regular season. If Hossa is not healthy and ready for the playoffs, the trade will go down as an unmitigated disaster.

I have to give credit to Blue Jackets' GM Scott Howson. Columbus was just five points out of a playoff spot at the trade deadline, yet he traded away veterans Adam Foote and Sergei Fedorov for the long-term benefit of his team. Howson realized that although Blue Jackets' fans are hungry for a post season appearance, even if the Jackets would have qualified for the playoffs, they would have almost certainly been eliminated in the first round by Western Conference superpowers like Detroit, Dallas, Anaheim or San Jose. Instead, he took steps to improve his team so they can compete with those teams on equal footing in the future. Howson added defense prospect Ted Ruth and a pair of draft picks in the two trades including a possible first round selection. The easy thing would have been to be buyers, but Howson took an honest look at his team and realized it was wiser to be a seller at this time.

Bob Gainey's decision to trade goalie Cristobal Huet at the trade deadline was a bit of a surprise. The Habs are one of five teams who have a realistic chance of coming out of the wide open Eastern Conference. Now, they are leaving their fate in the hands of two talented but untested goalies in Carey Price and Jaroslav Halak. Price will likely get the first chance to become the number one netminder in Montreal. The Canadiens have a history of winning Stanley Cups behind relatively unknown goaltenders. Both Ken Dryden (1971) and Patrick Roy (1986) won Cups in Montreal as rookies. Gainey thought the Habs couldn't afford to let Huet go this summer without any compensation, so he acted now. Time will tell if lightning can strike a third time.