Sens at Land’s End

This morning when I checked in at the Ottawa airport before catching my flight back to Vancouver, WestJet offered me a free copy of the Ottawa Citizen. I wasn’t going to take it until I saw the headline “Heatley Hurting” at the top of the front page, and then I changed my mind because that was just too good to resist.

A couple my fellow Sens bloggers have already commented on the article in question, entitled ‘Everybody is crucifying Dany,’ and I don’t have much to add, really. But it made me mad again, so I’m commenting anyway.

• “Nobody mentions that this is a guy who gives up a month of his summer every year to play for Team Canada.” Right. Because I’m sure that’s a major chore for him and not something that he does because he loves it or anything.
• “Molloy wrote a letter to The Citizen sports department because the Heatleys told him they didn’t have ‘a forum’ to express the other side of the story.” The 6th Sens pretty much covered my feelings on this nugget in their post, but really. If you want to talk, try talking?
• I shall paraphrase the next bit. Heatley doesn’t think the Sens believe in him (even though they signed him to a long-term contract and gave him an A) and doesn’t like seeing his minutes reduced and being put on the second power play unit (despite the fact that the Sens were desperately trying to find secondary scoring), blah blah, blahblahblah. I ran this portion of the article through my douchebag to English translator and here’s what came out: ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME.
• “The Senators’ decline since ‘07 was a factor in Heatley wanting out. ‘Two years ago, they looked like the old Montreal Canadiens,’ Molloy said, ‘but they haven’t been able to right the ship since.’” Interestingly, that same decline is what has allowed our selfless hero to devote himself to Team Canada for a month every summer. I guess maybe playing in the Worlds really is a big chore for him. Strangely, that doesn’t make me like him more.

This article has to be one of the worst attempts to garner sympathy in the history of the world. James Gordon gets it exactly right: if Heatley doesn’t want to be hated, he’s going to have to speak up at some point and offer more of an explanation for all this. The more time goes by, the less anyone is going to care what he has to say. Take me, for example: I already don’t give a crap.

Draft 2009

I did make some notes on this year’s Draft (the first round, anyway) but I haven’t had a chance to make them into an actual post yet. I might still do it, but for now I will just welcome giant Jared Cowen and all the other draft picks, especially that goalie whose dad is Henrik Lundqvist’s goalie coach (awesome!), to the team. They’re our hope for a douchebag-free future.