Sens at Land's End

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.