This whole Dany Heatley thing has got me thinking. Maybe we really are a bad Hockey Town?
Now I don’t want to suggest that Ottawa is a lousy place to play, but recently a friend of Dany Heatley suggested just that in his letter to the Ottawa Citizen.
As an Ottawa Senators fan and supporter of the team, I find it hard to believe that anybody wouldn’t want to play here. But Ottawa is developing a pretty good history of players who don’t want to be here. Even from our first years we’ve had a fair share of people saying thanks but no thanks. The following are just some of the few players who have spurned Ottawa, with Dany Heatley adding his name to this illustrious list.
- In the Expansion Draft of 1992, Ottawa’s table had no working electrical outlet. The batteries in the laptop were also dead. Is it perhaps possible that this was a elaborate scheme from draft-eligible players to not be drafted by Ottawa?
- Former Senators goalie Don Beaupre once claimed “Hockey isn’t fun anymore” when asked about playing in Ottawa.
- When Damien Rhodes was traded to Ottawa, he cried about it. Come on, we weren’t that bad, were we?
Is Heatley just another name in the Photo Album of players that hate Ottawa?
- It’s well known that Bryan Berard did not want to play in Ottawa when he was drafted by the team. In what led to the Wade Redden trade, Berard was one of the first to say he didn’t want to be an Ottawa Senator.
- A lot of people tend to forget that Pavel Demitra was drafted by Ottawa, and even dressed as a Senator. In 1996-97, even he didn’t want to play here and was eventually traded to St. Louis.
- Alexei Yashin is always a fun story to tell over and over, only because we might have gotten the better of his leaving by adding Chara, Spezza and Bill Muckalt to the team. I wonder if Marshall Johnston would have nixed that deal if Muckalt wasn’t involved?
- Tyler Arnason is a name you don’t hear to often in Ottawa, largely because he didn’t do much. But he also made his displeasure known after the season finished and his butt got sore from sitting in the press box.
- In what turned out to be a very good move for Ottawa, Alexei Kaigorodov was moved to the Phoenix Coyotes for Mike Comrie. But Kaigorodov hated it here, and made it quite apparent he wouldn’t play for Ottawa. As it turns out, he hasn’t done much since, but still, didn’t like Ottawa.
- In another case of Russian players not liking it here, Alexander Nikulin bolted from the Senators organization last season to play in the KHL. Like Kaigorodov, he didn’t enjoy the Ottawa organization.
All this isn’t to say that Ottawa is so bad. There are still a number of players who loved their time here, and others who still want to come back. But maybe there’s something to this whole Heatley thing. Maybe we just don’t know how to handle prima donnas well in this city.
So Sens fans, stay classy knowing that we haven’t driven away the entire team….yet.
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