The Ottawa Senators have fired head coach Paul MacLean following an 11-11-5 start, 27 games into the season. The news comes on the heels of a 4-3 comeback win against the Vancouver Canucks after being down 3-0 early.
That win on Sunday snapped a five game losing streak in which four of the defeats were by a single goal. In fact, of the 16 defeats suffered by Ottawa so far in 2014, 11 of them have been by a single goal. If they are able to send half of those games to overtime then they would be sitting in fourth place in the Atlantic Division and in one of the wild-card spots in the Eastern Conference
MacLean, the 2013 Jack Adams Award winner has been coaching the Senators since the 2011-12 season. Over the course of his four years of coaching in Ottawa, MacLean coached the Senators to a 114-90-35 record in 238 games. Last season, the Senators went 37-31-14 and five points short of making the playoffs for the first time since 2011.
Assistant coach Dave Cameron will be the team's interim head coach for the time being.