Bryan Murray Vs Dany Heatley: Who Blinks First?

http://www.ctvolympics.ca/hockey/news/newsid=14895.html?cid=rsstsn

Pretty good article here. Basically says that being booed in Calgary could be an awakening for Heatley. It also states that Wilson said that clearing space on the payroll could be for 'future transactions'.

davetherave wrote:Cas> as we have seen, teams are still making moves...Vancouver's trade with the Sharks; and Tanguay's decision to go to Tampa, may create some ripple effects among both West and East clubs.

BM has shown he is not a GM who makes rash moves...and he does have a game-changing player in DH who can be useful to a club that wants to 'go for it'.

Bryan hasn't blinked yet.

The 'poker game' remains interesting.

True DTR: BM hasn't blinked.

I just think its funny that after this long, with so much speculation and so little movement, that people are still "realistically" discussing the possibility of getting prime assets in return. The only 80+ point player we have a possibility of getting from this scenario is Dany Heatley. That seems to have been made abundantly clear, at this point.

SpezDispenser wrote:http://www.ctvolympics.ca/hockey/news/newsid=14895.html?cid=rsstsn

Pretty good article here. Basically says that being booed in Calgary could be an awakening for Heatley. It also states that Wilson said that clearing space on the payroll could be for 'future transactions'.

He also said it could be to round out his lineup.

cas wrote:

davetherave wrote:Cas> as we have seen, teams are still making moves...Vancouver's trade with the Sharks; and Tanguay's decision to go to Tampa, may create some ripple effects among both West and East clubs.

BM has shown he is not a GM who makes rash moves...and he does have a game-changing player in DH who can be useful to a club that wants to 'go for it'.

Bryan hasn't blinked yet.

The 'poker game' remains interesting.

True DTR: BM hasn't blinked.

I just think its funny that after this long, with so much speculation and so little movement, that people are still "realistically" discussing the possibility of getting prime assets in return. The only 80+ point player we have a possibility of getting from this scenario is Dany Heatley. That seems to have been made abundantly clear, at this point.

Cas>you make an excellent point.

Had BM made that trade promptly--even back at the March deadline last year, if the suggestion Heatley made in his remarks that the subject had been raised even then, can be interpreted as such--his return could have been higher.

The 'leak' seems to have been the element that has scuppered effective negotiation.

The 'leak' put both Murray and DH in 'no-win' positions.

Once the media piranhas got hold of the news, it was a circus. The blogosphere made the frenzy exponential.

BM was being shown as a GM 'desperate to do business', and DH as 'disgruntled' (among other things).

But to this day, no journalist has come out and identified the party responsible for spilling the beans.

The 'Hate Heatley' campaign, stoked by Brennan and his ilk, certainly didn't help matters.

It's not unusual for players and coaches to have conflicts, just like workers have conflicts with their bosses.

People change jobs all the time for those reasons. Is a hockey player really any different in that respect?

If Heatley doesn't think he can play effectively for Clouston, it doesn't mean he thinks CC's a bad coach. They just see things differently.

Hockey players are also dependent on a certain level of emotional and psychological comfort/discomfort...the intuitive part of their game is as important as their skill and physical quality.

If Clouston and Heatley have a divergence of perspectives on how the game is played, one expects someone and/or something has to give at some point.

The media loves to jack this up, though...so they fill their spaces with screaming headlines and innuendo.

Look how they took last season's 'incident' where Clouston said something that supposedly characterized DH as 'having to move his feet more'. That was blown up into a major crisis...whether it was or not.

And the media have had a field day with this one.

DH didn't OK the deal with Edmonton? He was just exercising his contractual right to not decide based on the stated fact he wanted to look at more than one option.

Nothing against the city or the team per se, but realistically, are the Oilers a contender? Not really. Is the city the place a young single hockey superstar wants to be? Maybe not. Were/are San Jose/New York City, for example, more attractive destinations? Based on those questions, and apparently to DH (as they are on his 'wishlist'), yes.

So Heatley's not a 'bad guy' because he doesn't jump at the Oiler offer.

Yeah, he's thinking of himself first. What do people expect, for him to 'sacrifice himself' to make it easier for Bryan Murray?

Heatley may thinking he's got one shot to go to a team he is prepared to commit to for the rest of his career. He seems to indicate that the Senators are not that team.

You can, of course, question his wisdom in signing the megadeal--IMHO he would have been much smarter to play out his option that year and then test the UFA market. But it is what it is.

Whether DH gets traded now, or later, negative messages from the media only encumber BM in trying to get a deal done. And the invective--whether it comes from the journos and/or the fans--certainly won't make Heatley more productive on the ice.

In a 'Mexican standoff', there are few winners.

BM has been very patient...and maybe, DH has been right to say as little as possible...because every time he says something, he gets ripped to shreds.

Heatley's a darn good hockey player, and hopefully this gets worked out to everyone's satisfaction.

But at some point, as you say, expectations have to be reasonable on all sides.

SpezDispenser wrote:http://www.ctvolympics.ca/hockey/news/newsid=14895.html?cid=rsstsn

Pretty good article here. Basically says that being booed in Calgary could be an awakening for Heatley. It also states that Wilson said that clearing space on the payroll could be for 'future transactions'.

Yeah, I read that too. But the part about Wilson, my first reaction was (both when hearing of the trade and reading this article) was that he has a roster to fill out -- $4M for something like 5 players does not make room for Heatley.

Dave, I'm not going to quote your entire previous post (gotta save bandwidth ) but I have to comment on one part.

Clouston coached for a grand total of 34 games. Back in March that total would have been much, much smaller. If Heatley *really* was thinking of asking for a trade back then, and his reasons *really* had to do with his diminished role (not just under Clouston, but over the last two seasons), then I really have to ask these questions:

Why didn't Heatley start playing his a$$ off when Clouston came in? If he saw his role being diminished over the last couple of years, here was a new coach coming in -- surely an excellent chance at giving a great first impression. It's not like Clouston came in and demoted him to the 2nd PP unit on his first day.

If Dany's issues were primarily with Clouston and not really going back 2 years (Paddock, Hartsburg, Murray?) then, if he was raising his concerns in March, you're talking about a $7.5M player with 5+ years left on his contract, giving up on working out an issue with a coach with no contract beyond the current season, after only a handful of games.

I don't know about you, but none of that makes any sense to me. This is just Heatley making yet another bad decision as to how to handle the situation. The better way would have been to say he had "personal issues" he did not want to discuss. Heatley's problem is he is right-minded (but not in a good way). He will stand by his earlier assertion (that it's not his fault, that his ice time and role were diminished), even though the entire hockey loving community sees that as petty, childish reasons.

As for the leak, you are right, it created problems for both sides. Trouble is, one side would have been certain that it would creat problems, the other side has shown bad decision-making skills in the past. I think it's possible that Heatley talked about his "diminishing role" but felt that it wasn't taken seriously. Murray probably told him (if it happened at all) that he should sit down with Clouston and work it through or something similar you'd say to an adult. If that did happen, then I can easily see how Heatley (or someone from his side) would leak the trade request as a means of setting things in motion.

Bad thinking, bad decision making, nad situation made worse.

Prager> again, just taking Heatley's statements in context, they seem to suggest he had issues with the entire direction of the team from the beginning of the 2008-09 campaign, including Hartsburg and Clouston.

Bad decision to sign that megadeal in the first place, you mean? It seems DH now thinks so.

The leak and the media circus are a big part of why Bryan Murray's task is so difficult, though you won't hear the media admit their responsibility.

From Sun Media this morning:

"They don't want him in camp and that could change the way negotiations have gone," a National Hockey League executive said yesterday. "Murray has spent almost three months trying to get his best deal for this guy and it's going to be a total sideshow if Heatley shows up at camp. Not for the players. Heatley will be the only one who has to deal with it on a daily basis.

"The reality is he's going to get dealt at some point or another, so Murray may as well get it done now. Murray looks at this and says: 'He's a two-time 50-goal scorer and he's got value.' The teams that are having discussions are looking at this as a guy who wants out, so why should they pay top dollar?"

"Sooner or later, he's going to get dealt. It could take six days, six weeks or six months, but Heatley won't finish his career with the Senators."

---

So it's reasonable to believe BM will make a move at some point...

I don't even think we should speculate on sexual preferences, why don't we just keep the talk to hockey, and if we deal with personal issues of players, we should try to stick to things we are fairly certain about, such as the Emery blow, Kostitsyn mob ties. I just don't think this needed to be posted.

Good point, Robby, I zapped it.

At this point, I have absolutely no idea who leaked the request. At first I thought it was BM but my reasoning for it was proved DEAD wrong. Then I was convinced Heatley leaked it, but he assures it was wasn't his camp that was responsible.

So what do we know?

a) This public request has Diddle BM in a BIG way.
b) This public request has kept Heatley in Ottawa, thereby Diddle Danny too.
c) Through this situation, the "fire BM" voice has been silenced - or converted to "trade Dany"
d) Murray has done everything in his power to completely stop info from leaking from his org. and, to this point, has been extremely successful.
e) Dany and his camp have shown some pretty poor decision making skills.
f) Murray wanted a formal written trade request submitted prior to actively engaging in trade discussions.
g) Dany's camp were all over the radio the very next day after the written request had been submitted.
h) Both Heatley and Murray claim they were not the ones who made the request public.

- Murray likely has the foresight to envision getting the best of both worlds: 1) getting the public back on his side, 2) eventually getting the proper return for Heatley.
- Heatley definitely lacks the foresight to see that making the request public likely precludes the possibility of actually getting traded.

Does anyone have a way of getting through all that and deciphering the most likely leak?

cas wrote:At this point, I have absolutely no idea who leaked the request. At first I thought it was BM but my reasoning for it was proved DEAD wrong. Then I was convinced Heatley leaked it, but he assures it was wasn't his camp that was responsible.

So what do we know?

a) This public request has Diddle BM in a BIG way.
b) This public request has kept Heatley in Ottawa, thereby Diddle Danny too.
c) Through this situation, the "fire BM" voice has been silenced - or converted to "trade Dany"
d) Murray has done everything in his power to completely stop info from leaking from his org. and, to this point, has been extremely successful.
e) Dany and his camp have shown some pretty poor decision making skills.
f) Murray wanted a formal written trade request submitted prior to actively engaging in trade discussions.
g) Dany's camp were all over the radio the very next day after the written request had been submitted.
h) Both Heatley and Murray claim they were not the ones who made the request public.

- Murray likely has the foresight to envision getting the best of both worlds: 1) getting the public back on his side, 2) eventually getting the proper return for Heatley.
- Heatley definitely lacks the foresight to see that making the request public likely precludes the possibility of actually getting traded.

Does anyone have a way of getting through all that and deciphering the most likely leak?

BM receives the written trade request that he was expecting because of the previous conversation with DH and his agents. BM talks to other GMs about a potential trade of DH. The trade request gets leaked and then confirmed by Heatley's agents the day after the trade request was sent to BM.

The only one(s) who stand to gain from a "leaked" trade request are the other teams who are hoping to acquire DH. The leak hurts BM's position and DH's position.

My guess is that another team leaked the info than BM was trying to trade DH.

Makes sense. Which begs the question: Why tell rival GMs the real reason for wanting to trade Heatley? I mean, tell them that Heatley wants to pull a Nabokov and will waive for the good of the team if a suitable offer is found?

Either BM screwed up by being too honest (and naive) or Heatley ('s camp) screwed up by not keeping their mouth shut and staying 100% out of negotiations.

So it seems we're right back to who screwed who?



...



I hate Heatley

"Makes sense. Which begs the question: Why tell rival GMs the real reason for wanting to trade Heatley? I mean, tell them that Heatley wants to pull a Nabokov and will waive for the good of the team if a suitable offer is found?

Either BM screwed up by being too honest (and naive) or Heatley ('s camp) screwed up by not keeping their mouth shut and staying 100% out of negotiations.

So it seems we're right back to who screwed who?"

Is it possible that if another team "leaked" the potential trade, that a member of the media could have guessed that DH requested a trade since BM can't trade him without DH's permission(nobody would believe DH waiving for the good of the team). Then if said media person went fishing and called DH's agent McAlpine with the question, "Is it true that DH requested a trade?" , McAlpine would have likely confirmed, especially if it was one of the media with whom he seems to be chummy.
(man, maybe I watch too watch too much tv)

Good question. I guess we'll just have to accept that no one will ever come forward and admit to leaking the trade.

Regardless of who done it, BM (and all of us) still has to live with the reality that it created - which Imo is the return of Dany Heatley to the Ottawa Senators.

cas wrote:Makes sense. Which begs the question: Why tell rival GMs the real reason for wanting to trade Heatley? I mean, tell them that Heatley wants to pull a Nabokov and will waive for the good of the team if a suitable offer is found?

Either BM screwed up by being too honest (and naive) or Heatley ('s camp) screwed up by not keeping their mouth shut and staying 100% out of negotiations.

So it seems we're right back to who screwed who?



...



I hate Heatley

Whoever the actual person was, he could have made some coin on this. So perhaps the reason for the leak is very simple -- greed. Heatley's agent had to draft the letter, Heatley had to sign it, perhaps someone had to witness it. Was it faxed over? Fax machines have an annoying way of keeping sent (as well as received) faxes in memory. If it was sent by courier, how well was it sealed? Yeah, I'm probably getting too deep here. But a secretary or any office worker on either side could be the leak.

cas> all the speculation about who leaked the trade request aside, you have to wonder why The Media, basking in their self-importance, haven't either looked into this; or, if they have, prefer to suppress that information.

BM probably did/does not want Heatley going to an Eastern team, which makes total sense.

A couple of scenarios come to mind...

The Rangers...if they were serious, would be a club with whom he would drive a very hard bargain. Which could be why that transaction didn't get done.

We've seen the supposed back and forth with San Jose. Doug Wilson's not really under pressure, even if the media says he is. With the personnel they have now, they can continue to be one of the top regular season clubs in the West. Heatley is a 'nice to have' for him.

The Minnesota Wild have a new GM, a new coach, and supposedly a new attitude which will put an emphasis on offense. Though Mike Russo of the Minny Star Tribune says there have been no talks for 6 weeks, one imagines The Wild might still have interest. However, if they were to make a trade with Chicago for say, Patrick Sharp, that's a reasonable solution--though not as dynamic as Heatley, Sharp is more versatile and much less expensive.

I have long wondered why the Canucks have not made a pitch for Dany (or maybe they have and we don't know about it). Heatley is exactly the kind of player Mike Gillis can use in Vancouver. If he spent that insane money on Sundin, certainly, he has to see DH as well worth the investment.

Ah, the fun of the off season...can't wait for it to be over.

Two more weeks...just two more weeks cool)

On March 14th, 1996 Ray Ferraro became a member of the Los Angeles
Kings family. Like any family member, you were loved and respected, but
in the end you had to move out of the house.

In 1999 he signed a free agent contract with the expansion Atlanta Thrashers, who won a whopping 14 games that season.

Two seasons later, he would meet a rookie phenom who became the Thrashers best player potting 26 goals and 41 assists. Dany Heatley would become Ferraro's roommate.

Following his question and answer session with Jim Fox and Kelly Hrudey
Saturday at the Kings Hockey Fest, “the little ball of hate” stopped by
and chatted with reporters.

More here:
http://www.hockeybuzz.com/blog/Matthew-Barry/Hockey-Fest-Interview-Ray-Ferraro-on-Dany-Heatley/125/22723