One month to go and roster still pending

It would be interesting to chart the inverse relationship between actual Sens news and online Sens rumours. It seems that the less news we see in the papers about the team, the more things pick up on the web. Case in point is this past week - hardly a headline in the papers yet rumours sites are updated daily with the latest Heatley gossip. We've never gotten into delivering rumours on this site because we don't have the sources! In fact, we've known for a while that Bryan Murray runs that organization so tight that absolutely nothing gets out to the media. Add in the fact that the leak of the Edmonton trade obviously curdled his milk a tad and now that office is on lockdown for news. I'm at the point where if you don't hear it from Murray's mouth himself, then you seriously have question its validity.

One thing we can do is continue to analyze potential suitors for the dominant one. Here's a link back to what we said a couple of days before the draft in June. Looking at each team, we figured that there were only ten legit destinations: Anaheim, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Edmonton, Florida, Minnesota, NY Rangers, San Jose, Vancouver.

After the free agency period, we cut out Boston (at the cap), Chicago (Hossa), and Vancouver (Sedins). Does anyone want to talk about Anaheim? It seems that the Ducks don't really want to line him up with Getzlaf, I suppose. Dallas hasn't really popped up too much either and with the Richards salary, this is a tough pickup (please don't suggest we'd take on Brad Richards as a return). We also know where things stand with Edmonton - they've publicly said the offer is gone but we know deep down that they'd put the offer back in a heartbeat if they thought Heatley would accept the trade.

Florida would love to have the guy for marketing but there is no way Heatley would accept that trade. He might love the lights of Miami but we have to believe that he still wants to win. Minnesota has certainly been geting airtime even after picking up Havlat as a free agent. With Mach 9 already there plus concern about if Heatley would accept THAT trade, I'm not convinced. The Rags now have some backup down the middle with Vinny Prospal signed, so there are some that think Dubinsky is up for grabs. I just can't imagine, though, that Slats would miraculously get out of a terrible contract with Gomez and immediately blow all his remaining cap space with Gaborik AND Heatley. This would give them three forwards over $7M, plus Redden at $6.5M, plus King Hank in nets at $6.875M. Finally, San Jose just doesn't have the cap space. We've already said the three-way trade sounded silly from the beginning.

If it seems that I just ruled out just about all those teams as trading partners, it's because I did. Personally, I'm at a point where I'm grasping to rumours hoping there's some truth to them. I see the Prospal signing as a hint that the Rags could move Dubinsky. I keep hoping that the Sharks can move Cheechoo anywhere but Ottawa so we could get a legit offer from them. And I think that Murray has been remarkebly quiet lately and perhaps it is a whole 'calm before the storm' thing cooking. But when you iron out the facts, the signs are strongly pointing toward a salary dump from Gator and #15 suiting up in Ottawa next month.


While some people think having four legit scoring threats gets us back into contention, I'm on the dark side in thinking we're really not that good of a team right now. Pynch and I will try and get to our Eastern Conference predictions this week and while I don't want to spoil it for anyone, I don't have high hopes for the Northeast Division.