Sens at Land’s End

I decided to invite Dany Heatley to my birthday party.

I asked him if he’d like to come, and he said he’d definitely be happy to be there. Then he asked me when it would be. I told him the date, but he said he’d need more options: a list of potential dates to choose from, or he couldn’t possibly decide whether to attend.

I told him I only had one other possible date, and that didn’t work for him. He said okay; he’d come on the original date if he had to, but he’d still rather I changed it to something else.

Then he said he didn’t really envision himself in the role of “guest” at my party. He’d hoped to play a more “integral” role in the gathering. I told him fine, you can be my date and co-host, and help greet people. At first, he seemed okay with that idea. After a while, though, he said he wanted to have the party for his birthday instead of mine.

I put my foot down. It’s my freaking birthday, after all. “If date/co-host isn’t good enough for you,” I said, “maybe you can just go back to being a guest.” He didn’t really respond, but I got the feeling he wasn’t going to give up the co-host role that easily.

Well, at this point I’d had enough. What do I want a sulky co-host for? I called him up and said I’d thought of an even better and more important role for him to play at the party: entertainment! I figured he’d like that because it would put him in the spotlight. He did, but he asked if he could still be my date and keep the title of co-host too. I said fine, whatever.

The day of the party arrived and Heatley showed up. He went up on stage to do his thing, and even though he came up with some good material everyone threw things at him and booed him constantly. It was very entertaining. Meanwhile, I ignored him all night and let Dustin Penner, Andrew Cogliano, and Ladislav Smid drive me home.

(Credit to Dan for inspiring and unwittingly help compose this post via Twitter.)

Heatley will be accompanied in Kelowna by agent Stacey McAlpine who says we shouldn’t expect his client to shed much light on why the star winger wants out of Ottawa.  “There are several factors and a variety of reasons,” McAlpine told TSN.  “However, out of respect to the Ottawa Senators and all involved, Dany is not getting into specifics…that will remain confidential.” (TSN)

The conference call was initiated by Hockey Canada, which wants the Heatley distractions out of the way before the Olympic team orientation camp next Monday through Wednesday in Calgary. Steve Yzerman, executive director of the Olympic team, empathizes with Senators fans and says Heatley has to provide some answers in order that he not become a sideshow.

“In fairness to the Senators’ fans and the media, it needs to be addressed,” Yzerman said. “It has to be addressed. We’ll get it done. Obviously, it will be a hot topic for one day. Everybody get it out of the way. Everybody ask the questions that need to be asked. Dany, answer those questions. And everybody move on.” (Ottawa Citizen)

Two very different ideas of what needs to be said. One wonders what exactly the Heatley camp’s vision of this conference call is. If he’s not going to talk about why he wants out, what does he have to say that is relevant to our lives in any way? He has never respected anything but his own interest in this situation. Why start now? Could it be because his reasons will make him look like a giant asshole? If so, I’ve got news for you, Dany: that ship has sailed.

J.P. Barry also states that Heatley will report to camp if he’s not traded by then. His exact words: “It was never our interest not to show up.” Someone else might have used the word “intent” there. Not these guys.

At any rate. It’s nice to know Stevie Y and Hockey Canada have our backs.

He speaks at 1pm Eastern, 10am Pacific. The Team 1200 will carry it live. Should be scintillating.

Dany Heatley will speak to the media tomorrow, for the first time since his trade demand. I admit, I’m surprised. I thought if Hockey Canada tried to force the issue he would probably just skip the Olympic camp rather than put himself through any unpleasantness. Apparently his desire to play for Canada next year cannot be underestimated.

As I’ve watched the story of Heatley’s turn to douchebaggery unfold this summer, I’ve also been watching my way through One Tree Hill. Perhaps surprisingly, I’ve noticed some striking similarities between the two dramas. In case you’re not familiar with it, One Tree Hill is a CW show (read: prime time teen soap opera) revolving around the lives of the citizens of Tree Hill, North Carolina. The premise of the show is simple: two half-brothers, Lucas and Nathan, have the same father but different mothers. Both go to the same high school and play for the same basketball team, but they’ve had very different lives. Their father, Dan Scott, abandoned Lucas’ mother Karen, his high school sweetheart, when she found out she was pregnant. He went off to college where he met the wealthy Deb, who was pregnant with Nathan within a few months. Dan married Deb and Nathan was raised in relative wealth, while Karen and Lucas, whom Dan never acknowledged as his son, struggled to make ends meet. Unsurprisingly, Nathan and Lucas, only three months apart in age, grow up to be rivals on and off the basketball court. Drama ensues.

Got all that? Okay.

Let’s take a closer look at the character of Dan Scott, the father who created the whole brother vs. brother situation. Now that I’ve watched all of One Tree Hill, I have come to the conclusion that Dan Scott is the most evil character on television. No one else even comes close. The Cylons from  Battlestar Galactica? Sure, they annihilated the human race, but other than that they were actually pretty okay.  Smallville’s Lex Luthor? Dan would wipe the floor with him. Whoever that guy was on the season finale of Lost? Dan is way more manipulative. Even my favourite TV supervillain, Mayor Wilkins from Buffy, was ultimately defeated by his human weakness, in the form of his love for Faith. Something like that would never work on Dan Scott. Why? Because Dan Scott has no positive human emotions. Dan Scott doesn’t care about anything but winning, and he’ll do just about anything to prop up his own ego. Here is a brief survey of some of the things Dan has done during the show’s first six seasons:

• Constantly badgers and belittles his favourite son Nathan, to the point where Nathan decides to get legally emancipated at age 17.
• Counsels Lucas and his girlfriend Brooke to get an abortion when they have a pregnancy scare … just like he wishes Lucas’ mother Karen had aborted Lucas.
• Viciously fouls Nathan during a father-son basketball game to prevent him from scoring the winning basket. Is also physically violent with both his sons at various times off the basketball court.
• Blackmails wife Deb into staying married to him by threatening to go after Nathan if she divorces him. By “go after,” I don’t mean as in get custody of him. I mean as in make his life a living hell and destroy him.
• Hires a woman, Jules, to pretend to fall in love with his brother Keith. Laughs after Jules leaves Keith at the altar.
• And the piece de resistance: kills Keith in cold blood, using the aftermath of a school shooting at Tree Hill High to cover up his crime. Yes, he frames the dead kid responsible for the school shooting — who didn’t actually kill anyone but himself — for his brother’s murder.

I could go on, but you have the idea. Dan Scott is a very bad person. It’s not just about the big evil gestures with him. Evil is his way of life. Hardly a moment goes by that he isn’t either plotting something or tearing someone down.

You are probably thinking: what the hell does this have to do with hockey? Aside from the fact that Paul Johansson, the actor who plays Dan, is the son of Stanley Cup trivia answer Earl Johnson, not much. But if we look back far enough to find the root of Dan’s evil, I think we can see a lesson in all this for our snotty sniper.

You see, Dan first became a douchebag when he was a high school basketball player. His team, the Ravens, made it to the state championship and lost. Why did they lose? Well, there was some conflict between the team’s star player (Dan, naturally) and the coach, Whitey Durham.

Dan: Back when I played for Whitey, his word was law. He was always right. Even when he was wrong. So eventually I called him on it.

Nathan: And he benched you in the state championship.

Dan: Yeah, so he claimed. He covered and acted like he benched me. But you should know the truth. I refused to go back in that game. We were ahead in the fourth quarter, and Whitey wanted to stall. What did I tell you about playing with the lead?

Nathan: Be aggressive.

Dan: Exactly. Be aggressive. Plus, there were scouts who were there to see me. This guy was checking me … I disobeyed Whitey and I scored on him … so Whitey called a time out and starts screaming about how it’s his system that got us there and no one player was bigger than the team. So I sat down and I called his bluff.

Nathan: And they lost.

Dan: Yeah, I felt bad for the guys. But he needed to know I’m the one who got us there. Not him and not his system.

Sound familiar? I thought so.

In season six of One Tree Hill, Dan is out of prison (he eventually confesses to Keith’s murder) and looking to get back into Nathan and Lucas’ lives. Unfortunately, almost everyone in Tree Hill hates him. His jersey number has been unretired by the high school. His sons are so glad to see him after he rescues his grandson Jamie from a kidnap plot that they beat the crap out of him. Also, karma has finally caught up with him, in big and really quite ridiculous ways. He gets kidnapped by the same psycho nanny who tried to steal Jamie. He’s dying of heart failure which leads to everyone making jokes about his lack of heart all the time. He has to resort to pre-buying his own tombstone — a giant monument for a man with a giant ego — to ensure that someone, anyone will remember him. And then a dog eats his heart. Literally. When he goes in for a transplant, a dog eats his heart. While he watches.

What lies ahead for Heatley?

After spending some time walking into the ocean dramatically and cursing God, Dan decides to look for redemption. He visits Whitey and begs for forgiveness, not for killing Keith, but for being such an egotistical asshole and horrible teammate. It’s the state championship that he sees as the beginning of the end for him:

I wish I’d gone back in that game. The state championship. When I look back at my life and see where it all went wrong, that’s where I always end up. Fourth quarter, time running down, sitting on the bench at the state championship, and refusing to play. At night, in my dreams, I do go back in. In my dreams. I take it back. All of it. And then I wake up. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for that day and every day since.

I think the message here is obvious. There is nothing good at the end of the path Heatley has chosen. If he doesn’t want to end up a broken man with no friends and a literal lack of heart instead of a figurative one, he’d do well to re-evaluate his attitude. As he prepares to speak to the media, he should keep Dan Scott’s fate in mind.

Woo hoo!

I’m extremely happy to report that Hockey Canada just announced the addition of Jason Spezza to the roster for the Canadian Olympic team’s development camp, which takes place in Calgary from August 24th to 27th. He is the Senators’ lone likeable, non-douchey representative at the camp. I think he completely deserves this invitation and I wish him the best of luck. GO SPEZZA GO!

Finishing up the school term has left me not much time for blogging lately, so I have not one, not two, but three rounds of draft picks to fill you in on from the NHL Re-Draft. Without further ado:

4th round, 97th overall: Brent Seabrook (D)

I thought it was about time the team had someone other than Cam Ward minding its own end, so I decided to go for a top pairing defenceman. Brent Seabrook has been earning a lot of praise (and an invitation to the Canadian Olympic camp) for his performance on the Blackhawks’ top defensive unit, and at a cap hit of $3.5 million I thought he’d be a good fit. He’s mostly known for his solid defensive play, but he’s also said to be a good passer with at least some offensive potential. His 26 points last season would have put him second among Sens’ defencemen.

5th round, 144th overall: Derick Brassard (C)

As you may know, I watched a lot of Blue Jackets games last season. If Derick Brassard hadn’t hurt himself (in a fight!) after 31 games, I think he’d have given his teammate Steve Mason a run for his Calder Trophy. Brassard is very young (only 21) and very inexperienced (only 48 career NHL games), but he’s got a ton of potential and, apparently, the will to live up to it. Plus, the upside of youth and inexperience is, of course, a cheap contract: we get him for just $1.247 million fake dollars. I really like the idea of a first line of Nash-Brassard-Hemsky. C’est aussi sûrement important pour les Sénateurs d’avoir un joueur qui parle français, et Brassard, qui est né à Hull, remplit ce rôle.*

6th round, 157th overall: Stephen Weiss (C)

You know what would be nice? If the Sens had a real second line centre, and if that second line centre made only $3.1 million. I love Mike Fisher as much as the next person who watched the 07 playoff run, but 32 points for $4.2 million? Really? Weiss led the Panthers in scoring last season with 61 points and has the reputation for being a player who makes his linemates better. Some Panthers fans view him as a future team captain. I believe he played on their first line last season, so I’d also view him as an alternative first liner for the Fake Sens in the obviously highly unlike event that Brassard should hit a sophomore slump.

So, we now have six players. I like the way the team is shaping up. I went into this process without much of a strategy but as I’ve gone through the lists of players trying to decide who to pick, I’ve noticed a few factors that make me add guys to my list, and a few that make me back away. The first thing is the contract. I don’t want any overblown dead weight contracts on this team. This has been a huge strike against most guys making over $5 million (because the really good ones were snapped up right away, and the ones left now are the totally super crappy ones anyway). The Fake Sens are also turning out to be quite a young team: so far, our oldest player is Stephen Weiss, who is just 26. This is partly a coincidence because the first three guys I drafted all happened to be 25. But since then youth has become a big part of the team’s identity in my mind.

My next pick is a long way off at 204 (pick 171 — Mattias Ohlund to Atlanta — is the most recent as I write this). Until then, you can as always follow along over at Cycle Like the Sedins. If anyone out there is looking to keep track of the Fake Sens’ roster and cap information, I have made this very beautiful depth chart page for your reference.

Re-Draft Horror: An Apology

I have the unpleasant duty of informing you that Daniel Alfredsson, who should be a Senator For Life even in the Fake NHL, was drafted in the third round by …

… the Anaheim Ducks.

Yes. It’s true. I feel terrible. I really dropped the ball here, and I apologize in advance for any nightmares you might have about Alfie wearing Ducks colours.

*I apologize if my French was offensively bad too.