Why does ottawa hate dany heatley

As is known, just over a year ago, a public and acrimonious battle ensued between the Senators and their best player, Heatley, who was desperately trying to find a better place to work. Heatley put the Senators in a headlock and demanded a trade to a better team, marking the first time in the history of professional sports, a star athlete had ever, ever done that.

What Ottawa should be doing is erecting a statue to Heatley outside of Scotiabank Place, not sponsoring some mask wearing hate fest.

His statue would be back-lit at night, and native white cedars would ring the memorial, representing each point Heatley gave the Senators in only four seasons. Come to jeer Heatley, versus come to cheer on the Senators. Or, just come to the game period…please? I get it, and that strategy works. But, to blame Heatley and call him a traitor? A guy who gave Ottawa goals over his four seasons there, and led them to the Stanley Cup Finals in ?

The city of Ottawa seems poised to never forget this tragedy, and probably won't forgive even after he retires. The moral of this story: Don't [expletive] with Ottawa.

It's an interesting thesis: That Heatley is a living example of being careful for what one wishes for, as his trade demand led to two seasons with the Sharks that didn't result in a championship, but did result in enough scrutiny to have him then shipping to Minnesota during a small window in his no-trade clause.

Ken Warren of the Ottawa Citizen moves the ball a little further down the field on this idea:. Yet, like Yashin, Heatley has come and gone. The future is now, even if that means many more long nights like Friday's season-opening defeat to the Detroit Red Wings and Saturday's wacky loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs. If it's any consolation, Heatley hasn't received what he wanted. After being traded for Martin Havlat in the summer, there's a certain irony to his situation.

Heatley, who refused to play for the Senators and Oilers because he felt they had little chance to win it all, has joined a franchise desperately searching for a way back to the playoffs, searching for its identity. Does anyone really hate the Wild? Who is the face of the franchise? Mikko Koivu? Cal Clutterbuck? In retrospect, you could even argue that Heatley did the Senators a great favour.

Somewhat lost in the Heatley hate here is that he has lost his status as a front-line National Hockey League scorer. There will be boos Tuesday night. Many of them. There will be protest jerseys and Dany "Hately" shirts, too. But will there be chants of "traitor" like his previous visit with the San Jose Sharks? Will we see more Heatley sweaters hit the ice in disgust? Bruce Brothers of Wild Now wrote that Heatley believes "the rancor among fans has probably dissipated" for his return.

I'm in that ambivalent group of ambivalent people you're ambivalent about, you could say. He will do what he does in Minnesota without any hate or support from me. I know he cares, oh so much. I'm not advocating that we root against him, but I don't get why a San Jose fan should feel any real loyalty to a guy who didn't take full advantage of the situation he was presented when he was acquired by Doug Wilson and a team who had a real shot at a Stanley Cup.

Playoff numbers are hard to judge a guy on. I'm taking issues with the fitness and commitment levels. Also, I'm not trying to judge Heatley for past mistakes. The car crash is a tragedy that neither of us even brought up while he was here for the reasons you mentioned. The trade request issues, and subsequent veto of the trade that would have sent him to Edmonton The imperial credits he's paid has a lot to do with it, I agree with you on that.

He makes so much money that there is really no excuse for him to be out of shape. That's a hard stance to have, and it takes the human element out of it, sure. But for some reason, I just can't defend a guy who gets paid so much and needs additional motivation to get his rear in gear.

He's made his mistakes and he's trying to get better I just don't see why he couldn't do it in San Jose. Jason: Clarifications are needed here so I will sum them up-- I think rooting against Heatley to fail in Minnesota is petty, but I'm not advocating someone should root for him just because he was a member of the Sharks organization.

That's stupider than Jar Jar Binks. Your second paragraph is interesting because I feel it captures the anti-Heatley sentiment quite well. What you're saying is that Heatley burned up the majority of his goodwill with his lack of conditioning last season, leading many to become ambivalent towards his success with another team.

So when said player does take an active interest in improving his conditioning and skating ability, it now "irks you" first paragraph. Maybe I'm missing something here, but that seems like a situation where a player tries to right his wrongs and invites ill-will because he is trying to improve his game.

Whether or not he did it in San Jose almost becomes secondary-- it's because he didn't do it here but is now doing it somewhere else that is an issue. I feel like we both did a lot of Dany Heatley defending last season and now you're dancing around like a Twi'lek.

You look great though. As for monetary compensation playing a role in his criticisms, I understand how that can be a sticking point. For me that's more of on the business side of transactions-- when analyzing how a player is performing on the ice, salary kind of goes out the window for me.

Take Niclas Wallin for example. The offseason was when his contract was criticized and boy did we ever criticize it , but once the season starts it seems logical to let that go and focus on how he's performing in the role assigned to him, and if anything, focus on management for making the decision rather than the player getting the best deal he can. I understand that with money comes expectations, but it's easy to forget Heatley scored 39 goals with the team in his first season and was fourth on the team in points last year.

Maybe it wasn't the success that was expected, but it was still success nonetheless. The harshest stuff that Heatley will likely see comes from Ottawa Sun newspaper.

No, not from their writers Don Brennan or Bruce Garrioch, but from the guys bored enough to do crude work on a Heatley photograph for the front page of the paper.

Senators fans should be more concerned about other things though.