Saturday, June 27, 2009

But at least I don't have to eat my Heatley jersey

Earlier this week, I made three predictions to occur before the end of June. I said Heatley would be traded, Neil would be re-signed, and Murray would trade up in the draft. Talk about a hat trick. After one day, I am retiring from the guarantee business, although it is more of a dishonourable discharge, eh? My last statement was that if Heaters was traded to the Kings, I'd eat my jersey. Luckily, it was reported that "LA has withdrawn from the Heatley sweeps". This is code for, they were never interested in Murray's demand for Brown et al. But give me credit for one thing - I made a prediction, it didn't happen, and I've owned up to it. Imagine if all bloggers did that?

Moving on, I'm still holding out hope that a strong offer comes together. I'm just not as confident considering the draft was a great place for talks. There are still teams that could really use a player like Heatley. One interesting note from Booboo was that "Murray was disgusted by the Rangers offer of Roszival and Zherdev". If that was the offer, then yeah, Heatley will be around for a bit.

From another angle, perhaps we resolve ourselves to preparing for another season of the pizza line! I'm reading a lot of comments from people suggesting that he can play well and drive up his value at the deadline. My question is, what's to say things haven't changed between Heatley, Clouston, the rest of the team, and the fans by then? Kobe asks for a trade out of LA often, but he changed his attitude and they just won a championship. Last week, I wrote a piece about how we handle another season of Heaters. Long story short, a reconciliation is definitely possible. These guys are professionals and on the ice, they'll take care of business. If Murray can't execute his trade, then it isn't at all out of the question that he actually plays out this contract's remaining five years. Let's just hope that if he stays, then Clouston becomes hockey's Master of Zen.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow. Did you actually just compare kobe to heatley? You must be joking. Why would you want a "reconcilliation" anyway? This is great! I've been wishing they could move him since he did his superhero thing in the finals and became invisible for five games. We will never win a championship with heater. Never. But this is an easy prediction, cause, thankfully he will never put on a sens jersey again. All this proves is that melnyk would rather eat 4 mil than trade away heachoo for nothing. We should all be very happy about this commitment to winning, especially considering the economy. I don't think many owners would have done this.

-pg

duff said...

Hold the phone, pg. I've said from the outset that I want Heaters gone - not just because we don't need that kind of attitude, but also because it provides us with an axcellent chance to straighten out our miserable and lopsided salary cap situation. I personally will never see Heatley in a positive light after this.

My point was that if he isn't traded this summer, which is possible, then tnot only is he our top line LW for the year, he might also be around for longer than we think. If we're in a major playoff race and Heatley is tearing up the league, will we really trade him at the deadline? The Kobe bit was to show that disgruntled players get over themselves from time to time.

I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that he's moved before July 1st so we know what kind of payroll we're going to have heading into UFA time.