The Binghamton Senators and their parent NHL organization, the Ottawa Senators, had a variety of management changes this week as both teams received new head coaches.

On Monday, Feb. 2, it was announced that Ottawa Senators general manager Bryan Murray had fired head coach Craig Hartsburg after a disappointing 17-24-7 start to their 2008-09 NHL season.

“I felt that if we continued on the same path everything would just be negative,” Murray said in a press conference. “The value of our players and the performance of our players didn’t appear to be changing.”

Murray later named Binghamton Senators head coach Cory Clouston to fill the vacancy in Ottawa.

Clouston is the fourth new head coach behind Ottawa’s bench in the past two seasons and is expected to help fix a franchise that has been struggling to find its composure after being defeated in the 2007 Stanley Cup finals and getting swept in the first round of the playoffs a year later.

“We just finished playing three games in three nights in Binghamton, so yesterday was supposed to be kind of a relaxing day by watching the Super Bowl. Then the phone rang, and here I am,” Clouston said to the media in Ottawa on Monday.

On Tuesday night Clouston managed his first game behind the bench with the big club, which was a 1-0 loss to the visiting Los Angeles Kings.

Back in Binghamton, the team momentarily didn’t have a head coach, which created some concern heading into Wednesday night’s matchup against the visiting San Antonio Rampage.

Curtis Hunt, who was fired alongside Hartsburg as the assistant coach of the Ottawa Senators, was given an offer earlier in the week by Murray to become the head coach of the Binghamton Senators.

Hunt mulled the decision over for a few days because this new coaching job would mean relocating his young family.

He accepted the offer Wednesday afternoon and arrived in Binghamton mere hours before the scheduled 7:05 p.m. faceoff.

Due to Hunt’s late arrival, Binghamton Senators assistant coach Mike Busniuk was given the nod to coach the team for Wednesday night’s game, which was a 4-3 win for the B-Sens over the Rampage in front of 3,921 fans at the Broome County Veterans Memorial Arena.

Hunt watched the team from the press box, and a press conference was scheduled after the game to introduce the new head coach.

“I was quick to finalize my decision to take the job, but the most important thing was to remove the disappointment of what we weren’t able to do in Ottawa,” Hunt said.

Before leaving the B-Sens, Clouston managed the team to a 25-16-3-3 record, an impressive feat considering the amount of player shuffling the club has experienced as players got sent to and from Ottawa, and sometimes suffered injuries.

“I’m really just excited right now. I watched tonight and I see a lot of character coming from a team that works and has tenacity on the puck,” Hunt said.

Hunt’s resume includes coaching seven seasons in the Western Hockey League between the Moose Jaw Warriors and Regina Pats, and compiled a career win-loss record of 232-212-32-28. In his 2007-08 tenure with Regina, he managed the team to a 44-22-6 record, which was enough to earn them a first-place finish in the WHL’s Eastern Conference.

Hunt has also won gold medals as an assistant coach for Team Canada at the World Junior Hockey Championships in 2006 and 2007.

As a player, Hunt played in 173 American Hockey League games with the now-defunct St. John’s Maple Leafs, registering 12 goals and 37 assists.

“Going on the road is a great opportunity to get to know the players as people, and I plan to go to work from there,” Hunt said.