SENShobo
This Needed No Scars, But Heatley Can Still Heal It
by SENShobo on 06/30/09 at 02:55 PM ET
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What if this whole Heatley situation had been different? Would there have been hope for a better ending, even if that ending saw #15 heading away from our nation’s capital?
It’s hard to imagine a situation much worse than this, nor timing more impeccably wrong. But there were options for Heatley. There’s till time to let both him and Murray walk away with some sense of hope, and for his parents to breathe a little easier.
I’ve had a fried brain over this for a good while now, and it was bound to come out, scrambled in my head as it’s been. It’s become far too personal.
It wasn’t so long ago that the Senators ended their worst campaign in memory, ending the second-longest active playoff appearance streak in the League. Fans were asking for change, and as much as Melnyk wanted reporters who voiced this frustration for the fans to go blow themselves up, change was needed. Unfortunately, only Heatley, Spezza, Alfie, and Fisher had enough salary to allow a trade to really shake things up. With no value for Fisher at his price, nothing down the center with Spezza gone, and no way Alfie could be touched (let alone the trio all having roots far deeper in the city and the area), Heatley could have said more than ‘I want to be traded.’ He could have suggested he’d take the bullet for the team, being arguably the team’s top asset. But instead, he chose to say nothing.
It’s a smart decision for Louis Leblanc, the Canadiens’ first round pick in this draft, to have committed to completing his full four years at Harvard (and an obvious one that the Senators’ second to last pick, Brad Peltz, would do the same with Yale, if you’ve heard of his family). You have to understand a little more about the world these days to get by. Heatley should have been able to realize that the $4 million lump sum due to him on Canada Day would turn this into ruin (see McCabe last year), and make him look ever more dastardly in every hockey fan’s eyes. There’s still a chance Murray will be able to turn to other GMs and mention that of the $7.5 million a season he’s owed over the next five years, they will have taken a whopping $6.5 million off of that, between the $10 million he was paid last year and that bonus. Taking back other players whose salaries will be spread out and not in lump sums alongside Heatley will play a role, but even Heatley should know that in this economy, this downturn, he’s not the seventh most valuable player in the League, not at that salary signed right before the bust was seen coming.
Heatley was actually heading down something of a good path not so long ago. He has undisputable offensive talent that would make any GM gawk, but earlier this season he talked about wanting to be a more all-around player, working harder at the other end of the ice as well. He also wanted to be a leader, taking Redden’s ‘A’ at the start of the season, something that would not happen without Heatley making a case for it. But that’s where the scant similarities to the legacy of Steve Yzerman end. Whereas Yzerman took a true hometown discount even before there was such a thing as the cap, even when it was signed the only hometown support Heatley’s deal gave was that he did not walk away and leave the team with nothing on July 1st, let alone how monstrous it seems today when you compare it to deals signed just a short while later. While Yzerman would fight through any on or off ice troubles, Heatley already appears to be wilting at the slightest indignation.
The comments from his parents certainly aren’t helping. No, it’s nothing but unpleasant to hear everything coming out against him, but justify your defense. He gives a month of his time to the Worlds (and will for the Olympics next year) because it is an honour, and there are plenty of others who’d gladly take his place. His teammates did and probably still do like him, but you can tell from what they told media upon hearing of the news that they were clearly disappointed and upset. A real captain of any stripe understands that those who don’t perform won’t get the ice time. The Leafs appreciate those who know this, taking Kadri who responded well after being sat for a game as an example to the team. Not only that, but Heatley’s job should never have been in question; those who started getting more minutes under Clouston were the players who bought in immediately, ones in danger of losing their job at season’s end, and were given a chance to claw it back from the abyss of a season it’s been for the whole team. Even Clouston gave Heatley the out that he could have taken, just being slower to adjust to the new system, but he refused to take it. Yes, the team has been on decline, but this isn’t a team where management is forced to let players go because owners won’t spend; Melnyk’s given Murray free reign to do virtually anything and everything to bring this team back.
This is the city that had to trade its first overall selection, Berard, because he refused to play here. They had to trade the talented but low on character Yashin when he put them through seasons of torture. They had to trade Corvo and the well-liked Eaves when the former decided he liked the paycheques but not the accountability that came with Ottawa’s media. They had to get rid of Emery when he took his lifestyle too far, and he should be thanking them for that wake up call by now. They had to trade Nikulin when he decided that, contrary to what he’d shown on the ice, he deserved to be in the NHL.
This is also the city that has more heart and love of the sport and the team than another filled with five times the population, almost falling apart this season. They are the fans that appreciated Spezza enough to let him live in the city in relative calm after the initial excitement of a superstar in their midst and not hidden out in the wilderness wore out. They are the fans that allegedly came out in greater numbers to see their yet-again defeated heroes come back from losing the Cup to Anaheim at the airport than showed up in Anaheim to celebrate the victory in beautiful California summer for a Stanley Cup victory celebration.
This is a city that knows that it’s about more than the numbers on the stats sheets, that it’s about character, drive, and heart, and rewards those who aren’t afraid to show it. Somewhere inside him, Dany Heatley has all those things, and I still believe one of Roenick’s few non-sarcastic remarks, that “He is only going to good things for our league, he’s a better person than he is hockey player.”
He just has to remember that it’s never too late to take maybe some of the hardest steps and say some of the hardest words to show it.
Filed in: NHL Teams, Ottawa Senators | SENShobo | Permalink
Tags: Dany+Heatley,
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