In Defence (no, really) of Dany Heatley

Just kidding. Now, to read the article…

Leaf fans hated Komisarek. Now we love him.

Just wait until this afternoon.

Everyone’s situation changes(bosses, coworkers, etc) but to sign a contract in good faith and then go about his trade request the way he did?

Your argument, though well laid out, is not compelling to me.

If he really wanted to get out of Ottawa as bad as he says, he should have taken the trade to Edmonton. Then he would have just been a former Sens player who made a poor judgment call on how he decided to ask for a trade.

As for being picked to the Olympic team evaluation camp I will go on record now saying I don’t want him at the Olympics. We have enough great, talented, hard working players who deal with all the media and pressures and still manage to have an amazing character.

Leading scorer for Canada in International competition? Sure. Good guy? Not from where I am sitting.

Do we really want to have him representing our country? Be fully aware that I also don’t agree that Pronger should be there, this is not a ‘Hate Dany Heatley’ party.

As far as your comment that he is human and he just wants to screw the Sens, I present this argument.

Bryan Murray sits Heatley down and says this – You will accept the next trade proposal we put together, or you will not see any icetime until after December 31st. We can and will kill any chance you have at making the Olympic team.

Now that is being vengeful and hateful, but sometimes you have to respond in kind.

Oh, and I really don’t like the Senators and a little suffering now and again for them is good, but there is no need for Heatley to be such a douche.

i commented in a Fanshot that he shouldn’t be on the olympic team a couple of days ago, and i stand by that

I hate Heatley, never want to see him play for Canada, hate that he tried to get an outright release from Atlanta, hate that he was told a week before the crash to use the local race track if he needed to get speed out of his system, hate that he never finished his community service in Atlanta, hate that he asked for a trade publicly and then publicly torpedoed Murray’s attempt at damage control (actually, I also laughed heartily), and I hate that he’ll wear the Maple Leaf just as much as I hated it when Bertuzzi was there.

I completely disagree with your opinion about Team Canada. In fact I’m dead against him being on the team as are numerous others on this site as well as various radio commentators. It was even a topic of Off the Record the other day in which the majority opinion was that Heatley should not be on Team Canada as he is not a team player.

Heatley’s an ass and I hope Ottawa follows a similar plan to mine and refuses to trade him.

I’d be happy if Heatley was left off Team Canada. You’d think if there was a player out there who should be counting his blessings more then Mark Bell, it’s Heatley. Just doesn’t get it, I guess. I also think that if a player asks for a trade then any NTC or NMC they might have had should automatically become null and void.

Thanks for the fairly reserved responses.

Clearly there is some fan sentiment against him being on Team Canada, and if it was on OTR then that is the first MSM I have heard of to mention it. Where is the Star/Citizen/Globe article denouncing him? I’m sure it will come, I’m just surprised it wasn’t jumped on right away.

He’s a hero to me!

…but it assumes away the (most recent) reason for public anger at Heater, I think.

Right off the bat, you say that you won’t defend the “manner in which Dany Heatley has gone about asking for, and subsequently blocking, a trade.”

But those are the very things that make this request so unusual. It’s not just that Heater wants to be traded, it’s the way he’s allowed that request to become public, handcuffing the GM of his team and virtually ensuring that Mushmouth can’t get even close to market value for an otherwise very valuable commodity: a proven goal scorer. Heatley’s actions reveal that he is thinking of himself not just “more” than anything or anyone else, they suggest that he is thinking of himself almost to the exclusion of anyone else (certainly to the exclusion of his teammates) and that – especially when considered against the circumstances of his automobile accident – provokes legitimate concern about character-related issues.

I think there are a lot of people (though I’m not suggesting anyone in the present discussion) who hypocritically spew venom at a guy like Heatley for being a “killer”, toss back the last bit of their pint and stagger out the door of the pub, car keys in hand – and somehow fail to recognize their own moral failing. So I believe that, to a certain extent, a frenzy over a guy like Heatley can easily – but falsely – get generated in the popular consciousness (selfish killer named to Olympic hockey team!), a conversation that has nothing to do with the actual issues involved. The public imagination gets inflamed because Dany Heatley, rightly or wrongly = “thoughtless killer” in the public consciousness and the debate about whether he ought to be on the Olympic team gets subsumed by that emotional baggage and ceases to bear any real relation to the events that triggered the discussion: his trade request.

I don’t know Dany Heatley, I’ve never met him. I have concerns about his character from what I have observed. Steve Yzerman obviously doesn’t; for what it’s worth, I think Stevie Y is better positioned to make that judgement than I am. It doesn’t mean I can’t express an opinion about the issue, but as much as I hate all Sens and all Red Wings and all parochial kidding aside, if Yzerman judges Heatley’s character not to be an issue for the Olympic team, then so be it.

The Sens gave Heatley the right to do what he’s doing right now. He can say he wants out, and he can specify where he doesn’t want to go. So if the Sens want to try to recover that $4 million they had to pay him just now, it’s going to be very difficult (unless there’s something in his contract we don’t know of…)

But it’s somewhat amusing to see such low demand for someone who just two years ago was coming off of consecutive 50 goal seasons. With many GMs not wanting Heatley at all, and probably many others are on Heatley’s “I don’t want to go there” list, the Sens don’t have a lot of options here. And it’s funny that since the Sens had to put up the $4 million, Bryan Murray wants more for Heatley. Good luck with that. He’ll be lucky to get something similar to what the Oilers had offered.

Sure, what Heatley is doing is very wrong and probably needs to be addressed in the new CBA. But…part of this is Bryan Murray’s fault, giving him a contract with a no movement clause. And for some bizarre reason Bryan Murray is still the Sens GM despite all the damage he’s done to the Sens.

Oh well, not our problem. We (finally) have a GM who knows better ;)

Yes, Heatley is well within his rights to demand and refuse a trade, but the style with which he did it is a large part of why there’s been such a backlash against him.

As to your second point, I don’t think it matters who makes the demands. Players that do this sort of thing publicly (Pronger, Roy, Roger Clemens, Iverson, etc.) tend to be vilified by the media and fans of their respective sport.

The problem with argument three is how many employers hold an exlcusive contract over their employees? If I want to quit, resign or take another position my options are pretty much wide open. I don’t have to make any demands on my employer for me to find a new job. Employment in professional sport is unlike almost all other workplaces.

Can you expand on your fourth argument? Considering Heatly has an NTC, I don’t see how he’d lose any leverage by keeping his trade demands private. If the team doesn’t want to honor them, he can escalate by threatening to go public. Seems like broke protocol and jumped right to the triple dog dare on this one, but I may be missing something here…