Boucher not concerned about entering season as lame duck head coach

Guy Boucher isn't focusing on his contract situation entering the 2018-19 season.

The Ottawa Senators' bench boss will be on the final year of the three-year contract he inked in 2016. But he isn't concerned about his uncertain future.

"I've had that before and I won a championship," Boucher told Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Sun. "Ask Barry Trotz how he liked his year (in Washington)? I don't do things in life for money, I never have. I don't do things for contracts. I do things because I like being there and I want to do them.

"I put my name at the bottom of that contract for three years and that's what I plan to do and to do it well, and that's exactly what's happening."

In two seasons with the Senators, Boucher has posted a 72-71-21 record, but with wildly different outcomes. In 2016-17, he led the Senators to within one goal of the Stanley Cup Final, only to follow up with a 30th-place finish last season.

After a disastrous 2017-18 season, Senators general manager Pierre Dorion put Boucher through a review period and stressed that, in order to return behind the bench, he must play more young players and hold more practices. That meeting seemingly went well, as Boucher remains in Ottawa.

Boucher is the Senators' seventh coach since 2007.

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