The Danys of our lives: In which we go broke appealing to the highest common denominator

Ottawa Senators fans are right to fume over DanyDebacle '09. The point remains, as noted yesterday, that the "endless flame-fanning and rip-jobs in the Ottawa media ... got really old really fast."

Call it naive, whatever, there was a time this cowboy would have been one of the 450 get-a-lifers on the Fuck Dany Heatley Facebook group. It is just hard to see the gain in slamming Heatley day after day for not just surrendering his "negotiated right through the no-movement clause to have a strong say in where he gets traded." (Pierre LeBrun, ESPN.com.) It's negotiated. Contrary to what some bar patron quoted in the Ottawa Sun, the Senators cannot actually "stick him in the minors and let him rot." This came to mind before Jason Spezza stood by his wingman in an article posted on the website, by the way.

Being a fan is not expressed by venting the kind of rage typically seen on cable news (please don't take that last part literally, it's just a good article). There is no desire to side with Heatley (AKA Joseph Stallin) side for the sake thereof. It would just be nice if the city's rank-and-file looked a bit better informed about sports. There is an exemption if you write half-funny, like Scott Feschuk at Macleans ("A small number of Ottawa residents are still keen to give him the key to the city, though only if he agrees to accept it rectally.")

Anyway, it's not a defence, but Alanah McGinley at Kukla's Korner has an all-things-considered post on the whole mess that reasonable-minded Senators fans ought to read.

"... most of the rhetoric floating around seems to go off the charts.

"And why? Well, the justification for this is clear, we're told. First, Heatley went public with his desire to leave Ottawa. Next, he turned down a possible escape trade to Edmonton, making the situation infinitely worse.

"However, being that I’m willing to give Heatley the benefit of the doubt, I’m also willing to believe in at least the possibility that there were other factors at play in the choices he’s made in the last few weeks. After all, it wasn't so long ago that a goalie named Ray Emery was in the hot seat, getting blamed for all the destruction around him as his once-mighty Senators took an abrupt and unexplainable plummet into the crapper. And back then, everyone whispered all sorts of unsubstantiated and shocking gossip blaming Emery for the team’s fortunes.

"But then Emery left and seems to have done reasonably well since then. And yet Ottawa is still... Ottawa.

"So isn’t it remotely possible — just an tiny bit possible — that the problems in Ottawa might have more to do with the Senators organization itself than any one player? If so, then maybe Dany Heatley's comments to Darren Dreger last night, implying he felt he was getting deliberately screwed around by the team, are at least reasonable from his point of view. (Not that I have any reason to believe he was, simply that I'm no more likely to let the Senators off the hook than I am to let Heatley off for this mess.)

"On the other hand, Heatley is the one that made this public and that wanted out of a contract that HE willingly signed in the first place, so he has plenty of fault in this no matter what. And I’m not saying the Senators are the 'bad guys' in this drama, either. Only that we don’t necessarily know the whole story. And since Heatley strikes me as a reasonably smart guy able to anticipate he'd look pretty bad in all this, I can only assume he felt he had good reasons to take this path.

"Whatever the truth, it seems likely there's far more back-story to this than simply 'Dany Heatley is an evil psycho,' and everyone's sanctimonious moaning about how terribly Heatley has treated the 'poor Ottawa Senators' strikes me as an infantile over-reaction. At the end of the day, it's just business, and conflicts aren't unheard of in business, especially given the amounts of money at stake.

"... until some clever and gutsy Ottawa hockey journalist writes a tell-all book about Heatley and/or the Senators, I'm reserving judgment."

Point being, it's a little much to hear people making statements such as, "He's hurting the city's reputation." Hurting the city's reputation is supposed to be Larry O'Brien's job ... at least for the next couple weeks.

Meantime, LeBrun's column is a pretty balanced take on the ramifications of Heatley killing a trade. Freudian slip fans will note he refers to the Ottawa media as "the Senators' media," which is odd. Self-serving though it might be, agent J.P. Barry told LeBrun the Senators kind of screwed themselves:

"I specifically told (Bryan Murray) two days ago, long before the trade happened, 'Do not trade him to Edmonton until you have other options.' And he turned around and consummated the trade despite my request. The result of which is that I get a phone call from a guy that I really respect in Steve Tambellini, who was excited, and I had to inform him what happened.

"I think it was completely mishandled by (Murray). It was a pressure tactic. He loaded up the gun and put the gun against our heads."

"We advised Bryan continually that Dany requires more than one option (team) to make a decision and, as of last night, we still only had one option, so he still wasn't able to make a decision, given that there still was only one option in front of him."

Meantime, fans have a right to be livid. They also have an option to play it smart and unlike the option Heatley had, it doesn't involve having to pack for Edmonton. Bonus! Oh, sorry, shouldn't use that word.

Remember, we're all in this together.

As a post-script, Down Goes Brown imagined how a conversation between Heatley and Oilers president Kevin Lowe might have unfolded:

"Lowe: Now, just so I'm clear on your side of things, you're demanding a trade because...

Heatley: ... because I can't spend another day in Ottawa. I'm miserable beyond any measure of human understanding. Every day I spend in Ottawa is the worst of my life, and the only joy I find is in the knowledge that every day wasted in that god forsaken town brings me one day closer to the icy relief of death.

Lowe: I see. And you're not waiving your no-trade clause because...

Heatley: ... all that still sounds better than spending the winter in Edmonton."

John Tavares, Reggie Bush redux and the Gretzky no one remembers

One question du jour is whether Garth Snow will really take someone whose name does not rhyme with "avares" for the New York Islanders with the No. 1 overall pick.

Actually, it's three questions, posed the way Homer Simpson did when he and Apu met the head of the Kwik-E-Mart: Are you really not going to take John Tavares? Really? You?

Ours is not to divine the intent of Snow, who has warned he "won't be ruled by popular opinion." (Newsday.) One point that might not have been as emphasized as it should have been is that what's happened with Tavares over the past several weeks also goes back to something a young Wayne Gretzky pointed out 30 years ago.

The rules in hockey for players under the age of 20, which tend toward the one-size-fits-all, make sense for 99.9 per cent of the players. As you know, Tavares ended up with four seasons of junior before becoming eligible for the draft, instead of the standard two. He had an extra season at the front end, when the OHL let him into the league as a underaged 15-year-old in 2005. The OHL acted logically. There was no budging the age cut-off for the NHL draft, even though Tavares was clearly one player who had overcome early-year bias to become regarded as Everyone's First Overall Pick.

You likely know that Gretzky turned pro at age 17 in 1978, signing with the World Hockey Association, which folded a year later (the Edmonton Oilers and three other teams from "the Waaaaaaah" joined the NHL in an expansion which the league called a merger, but was really an expansion). What is less remembered is Walter Gretzky's version of how that came to pass, as he told it in Gretzky: From the Back Yard Rink to the Stanley Cup, a memoir published in the mid-'80s.

As the elder Gretzky put it, Wayne suggested going after his junior team, the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds, made a mid-season coaching change. He called home and asked his father to call the late John Bassett, Jr. Bassett, who owned the Birmingham Bulls, was a bit of a precursor to Jim Balsillie, a rich guy from Southern Ontario who was not above firing a shot across the bow of the NHL. In Bassett's case, that meant signing players before they were old enough for the NHL draft (at the time, the league drafted players at age 20)

"... in the very year the two leagues had agreed to go ahead and keep hands off under-age players, he'd gone and signed Ken Linseman, an 18-year-old playing for the Kingston Canadians. The way Wayne had it figured, if Mr. Bassett would sign one under-age player, maybe he'd sign two.

"He was really upset. I tried to clam him down and said I'd call Mr. Bassett. Twenty minutes later the phone rang again. 'Did you get him?' Wayne asked. 'What did he say?'

"Now, I had no intention of calling Mr. Bassett. I just let on I had while I tried to settle Wayne down. 'Stay in junior,' I said. ... 'You've got three more years of junior. You can play one year as an over-age ... In four years ou can go just about wherever you want and name your price!'

" 'If I stay here four more years," he said, "I'll never play pro. The longer you stay the more fault they'll find. Call Mr. Bassett! Please!" (Emphasis mine.)

That seems to shed light on what's happened with the public perception of John Tavares. The two extra seasons in junior gave everyone a longer window to conduct their fault-finding mission, pick at his skating, his dedication to defensive play. They simply had a better chance to build a case that he's less The Franchise than a premier offensive talent.

(It's also fair game to ask what playing a half-season for the London Knights, whom some call "The U of junior hockey," did for Tavares' rep. The Knights, in certain puckhead circles, are a bit like the Miami Hurricanes in college football back in the day. They're talented, but tend to let people know it, which doesn't play well in hockey.)

The point Gretzky made 30 years ago is something to consider as background to whatever you have/will read about Friday's NHL draft. Everyone has just had so long to size up Johnny T. the way one would an apple, and start paring off pieces. For pity's sake, even an estimable hockey writer such as Pierre LeBrun stresses, "I really don't know the gap between Tavares, (Swedish defenceman Victor) Hedman and (Brampton Battalion's Matt) Duchene other than what NHL scouts tell me," so who really knows with certainty which of them should be the first pick?

Like LeBrun says:

"The average hockey fan has been hearing about Tavares for a few years, the same way fans were warned repeatedly of the eventual arrivals of Alex Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby and Patrick Kane in recent years.

"If Snow doesn't select Tavares, he better be sure of himself. The backlash in his market, I think, would be sizable; Isles fans have been talking up Tavares since Christmas."

One does wonder how analogous this might be to the lead-up to 2006 NFL draft and what happened with USC teammates Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart. The average football fan heard more than her/his fill about those two from 2004 through '06.

There was talk Leinart might have been a No. 1 overall pick after his junior season. In the fall of 2005, as he led USC to a 12-0 regular season, it became evident Leinart was little more than, "a gutsy Heisman winner who doesn't have the physical ability to succeed when the guys on defense get bigger and faster." (Josh Lewin, Slate, Oct. 17, 2005.)

The talk became that Bush, who ran like like the second coming of Gale Sayers for three seasons at USC, was the drop-dead No. 1 pick. The above-linked article concluded, "in a few years, the accountants will be lining up outside Reggie Bush's door." All the wiseguys were making Bush Bowl cracks when the Houston Texans and San Francisco 49ers, who were vying for the worst record in the NFL, met in a late-season game.

You know the rest of the story. The kneejerkers howled when the Houston Texans took Mario Williams, a pass rusher from North Carolina State. Doing so meant passing on Bush, not to mention a Texas Longhorns QB named Vince Young, who was a Houston native. (Leinart, meantime, dropped all the way to the 10th overall pick.) Meantime, three years on, Williams is an All-Pro defensive end. Bush, who went No. 2 overall to the New Orleans Saints, has gained fewer rushing-receiving yards in his first three seasons than the Minnesota Vikings' Adrian Peterson has in his first two. Young is a head case. Leinart is a punchline.

That might be an apples-to-pears comparison. Different sport, eh. There are a few common threads. One is that fans and by extension the media had heard a lot more about one player than another. Another is that both involved a franchise struggling to build an identity and brand awareness. The Houston Texans were (and are) an expansion franchise which has never made the NFL playoffs and they share a state with the Dallas Cowboys.

The Islanders are so lost in the shuffle in the New York media market that, as George Vecsey reflected in a great piece for The New York Times last month, it's reasonable to wonder if "hockey has come and gone on Long Island."

Anyway, who knows what Garth Snow is thinking going into the final 96 hours for draft night. Chris Botta, the team's former public relations staffer turned blogger, has been a first explainer, hinting that something crazy might go down on Friday night. Again, who knows. The point is the obvious, the longer a player is in the spotlight, the greater chance to disprove the hype. It will probably happen next season with Kingston's Taylor Hall, who like Tavares had to wait an extra year to be drafted due to where his birthday falls.

That is why it keeps coming back to what Wayne Gretzky supposedly told his dad three decades ago. It turned out No. 99 had nothing to worry about, but he sure was on to something about the folly and wisdom of talent evaluators, though.

(As for the NHL draft, the main interest for this site is when the Kingston Frontenacs' Ethan Werek is taken. Bob McKenzie has him ranked 41st.

Habs' Hamrlik, Kostitsyn bros. linked to drug trafficking; centennial season become

(Updated, 5:30 p.m., Feb. 20.)

The Habs' centennial season has become open season; it's just matter of how big the window.

The rumours are flying fast and furious. Having two Russian players, Andrei and Sergei Kostitsyn, being accused of being "mobbed up" is the burning flame that draws the media moths. It goes without saying. The Canadiens, as Pierre LeBrun noted today, are followed in a way unlike that no other team in the NHL, maybe all of North American sports ("You don't trade priests," as Guy Lafleur once said).

At this point, little is known other than a pair of young jocks were hanging out an alleged criminal. It can't be shrugged off, but nothing happens in a vacuum.

Montréal is the organized crime capital of Canada. It has been a town where a character such as Pasquale Mangiola can draw a lot of water. Nothing which has happened since Nov. 15, 1976 has done anything to work against that. It's a more rough-hewn place than anywhere else in Canada, but it's also more alive, more vital than other cities whose names start T and rhyme with oronto.

It has its good and its bad. It's impossible to imagine someone from Toronto having the same meteoric rise as Georges St. Pierre and being worshiped the way GSP is in his home city and province. He embodies that flinty Montréal toughness.

It has a rough edge, though, personified more or less by bad dudes such as Mangiola. It's not really surprising it would eventually get mixed up with the mystigue of Les Canadiens.

(Alex Kovalev is back at practice, but that is more a hockey decision, since the Habs really cannot trade him.)

Original post, overnight on Feb. 20

It appears that the NHL is about to get hit with one its biggest scandals in history.

La Presse is reporting that three Habs, Roman Hamrlik and brothers Andrei and Sergei Kostitsyn will named in connection to a network of drug trafficking. Although it's unclear whether they will be arrested, police need to speak to the players.

All three have been taped and filmed associating with a man arrested for gang activities earlier this month.

Related:
Scandale des Canadiens: Les frères Kostitsyn et Hamrlik auraient de mauvaises fréquentations
Canadiens scandal rumours abound (From The Rink)

Snark break...

Hey, we'll always have cheaper beer at the ballpark ...

Doug Smith, on the endless (and ignored by the media) Raptors/Rogers/TSN2 controversy: "Where to look next? How about the sponsors? How about letting them know that, say, you won’t shop at whatever store the omnipresent Galen Weston owns? Or you won’t get your car serviced by whatever bailed out auto giant buys an ad?

"Where to look next? How about the sponsors? How about letting them know that, say, you won't shop at whatever store the omnipresent Galen Weston owns? Or you won’t get your car serviced by whatever bailed out auto giant buys an ad?" That would be Loblaws, and Ford, to name but a few.

Former Buffalo Sabres tough guy Larry Playfair (1,812 PIMs), to ESPN.com's Pierre LeBrun: "I think, in my lifetime, there will be no more fighting in the National Hockey League. I think the day is coming. And that's OK. The game is so much better than when I played. The game is skill on skill. It's fun to watch."

Perish the cynicism over Edmonton Oilers owner Daryl Katz buying the city's Golden Baseball League team. Some would say he made made $400,000 investment in the Cracker Cats in hope Edmonton will build him a $600-million arena.

Doesn't Katz know that the owner of a Canadian-based NHL team (if not a Canadian-based owner of a NHL team) should be trying to build a soccer stadium miles from the city core, where most of the footy-minded folk live? That's how you do it.

Remember, death is not an option: Who's more credible, Gary Bettman talking about the Phoenix Coyotes or Eugene Melnyk talking about the Senators' prospects?

Honestly, not a headline about Bernard Madoff, but about basketball: "Boomers lick their wounds."

The unspoken scandal about the teenage camera operator in Oshawa who was reassigned for talking to Don Cherry: That so many city-owned OHL arenas are run by private American firms. Ask everyone how that arrangement is working out in Kingston.

OK, so NCAA hoops won't be on your radar screen for another month, but Duke had its worst loss in almost 20 years last night. Hey, you look happier already.

Snark break: Oh, but it's new to us, love

Obligatory sideswipe at MLSE: Steve Yzerman is not good enough to rebuild the Leafs, but Wayne Gretzky says it is "no secret" he is good enough to be GM of Team Canada at the 2010 Olympics. Pierre LeBrun has also been hinting about Stevie Y for a couple days, but it's more definitive coming from the Great One.

(That would be Gretzky.)

Here's a prop bet: The Liberals will get back in office about the same time Michael Bishop gets through an entire CFL season without being benched.

Long story short, The Guardian over in England -- they speak really good European over there -- ran the same silly article about the Leafs that you've read 1,000 times. Cox Bloc has fired back.

NHLer Chris Chelios believes the doofus from Def Leppard placed the Stanley Cup upside-down on purpose.

There is no need to announce that Game 6 of the World Series will be pushed back to air a special by Barack Obama. It will long be over by then — the Series, not the election.

(See. Non-partisan political humour is possible. It's just blander than the federal leaders in Canada — all of them.)

The Portland Winter Hawks will soon have their new owner. And another domino falls in Doug Springer's quest to be hailed as the worst owner in the Canadian Hockey League.

(The Guardian is great, yet somehow "peak" instead of "peek" made it into print, proving once again that spell check will make idiots of us all, eventually. Also, apparently pointing out that "north of the U.S. border, ESPN's hockey coverage lasts a good deal longer than it does in the U.S.," is an apposite observation overseas).

This post is worth nothing, but this is worth noting

• A couple junior hockey players from our neck of the woods, Jeremy Franklin of Bath, Ont., and David Pratt of Napanee, who play with the Wellington Dukes, have been selected to play for Canada East at the World Junior A Challenge in Camrose, Alta., in next month.
  
  As further proof all Canadians know each other, David Pratt's mother teaches with Kathie Sager, Official Mom of Out of Left Field, whose former students include Jeremy Franklin.
  
  David Pratt is apparently planning to play NCAA hockey at Clarkson University, by the way.
• Taking Note reports that the Kingston Frontenacs' Taylor Doherty and Ethan Werek are both among the Top 30 NHL draft prospects, according to Central Scouting. Doherty is No. 20 on the International Scouting Service list.
• John Murray, the overage goalie who was a bit of a band-aid on a brain tumour for the Frontenacs last season, has signed with the ECHL's Ontario Reign. The team is based in California, by the way.
• There's another Doornekamp coming down the pipeline ... the Whig-Standard had a feature on a 15-year-old basketball player named Laura Doornekamp (cousin of Aaron and Nate, for those of you scoring at home).