Chris Neil absolutely SHREDS ex-coach Guy Boucher

Former Ottawa Senators enforcer Chris Neil raised more than a few eyebrows with his recent comments about former head coach Guy Boucher. 

As you may remember, it was Boucher who not only led the Tampa Bay Lightning to Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals in 2011, but would repeat the performance with the upstart Senators in 2017. Ottawa certainly overachieved, coming within a goal of reaching the Finals; the knuckle puck goal from Chris Kunitz that found its way past goaltender Craig Anderson still haunts the minds and dreams of Sens fans to this day. 

However, Ottawa was never able to repeat their performance on the ice in the subsequent seasons, and it would cost Boucher his job in March of 2019. But Neil departed from Ottawa shortly after their postseason run, and a major reason was because he was unhappy with his ice time under Boucher. And while he had offers to continue his career elsewhere, he ultimately decided to retire. 

And now, Neil is revealing his true feelings about Boucher, along with an assertion about how the rest of the team felt. 

"Montreal was really interested in me, so I would have been able to play against the Senators a lot and I would have been able to throw pucks at Boucher on the bench," Neil explained during an appearance on the Cam and Strick podcast. 

"He didn't have control of the locker room, it was more the players who had it," Neil said of Boucher. "We held each other accountable."

The full episode can be listened to here: 

Neil, who was selected with the No. 161 overall selection in the 1998 NHL draft by Ottawa, he would appear in a total of 1,026 career games while scoring 112 goals and 250 points. However, his most notable stat in his career was 2,522 penalty minutes.