Õk, not interested in participating in the whole debate but... how much weight do you put into this? Your boy Condra is the 18th worse player in the whole league?
It's not a personnel problem, it's a team problem. They have been underachieving as a group for several various reasons (lack of leadership, lack of experience, lack of chemistry outside of 1 line, tough schedule to start the year (first 12 games), lack of a #3 D-man, inefficient breakout strategy, etc.)
So if Heatley was such a problem, I guess Murray's truly stupid move was giving him that contract in the first place.
Not unloading him for a broken down 2nd liner and assorted junk.
Got it.
I don't think I need to tell you that your answer is very short-sighted, do I?
Heatley was already making 4.5 on RFA years (Murray didn't sign him to that contract), which had a lot more impact in that time (talking about RFA years)
How was it possible to not give Heatley a raise after he put up 2 back-to-back 50 goals/100 pts seasons (don't see a lot in the new era) and the team just coming out of the SCF? Heatley deserved it by his play
The fact that Heatley turned his back to the franchise by putting himself before the team was not predictable, it's only hindsight on your part. Good job, hindsight is so hard to pull off.
When we got Michalek, he was a very young rising forward (3 consecutive +55 pts seasons, not missing a lot of games) on a friendly cap hit, but I'm repeating myself and anyone that is not too much intellectually dishonest wouldn't need to be told... Again, great job on the hindsight
Still, we did make fine on that trade considering all the objective circumstances but believe what you want, facts won't change a thing for people entitled to their opinion.
I doubt we'll ever agree on this one so lets agree to disagree. At the time Heatley was a proven multi year 50 goal scorer at the top of his game. No one expected him to fall off so fast when he was taken away from Spezza. Heck he even carried the team almost by himself for a while when Spezza was injured. He was supposed to be a sure thing playing with Joe Thornton who many fans said was better than Spezza (not me). Michalek was a probable 20-25 goal scorer with possible upside and his contract was decent but it came with a high risk since he had already had knee surgery once and a second ACL injury requiring a lengthy rehab early on in his career.
Heatley's big contract was 1/2 paid in advance for the 1st year when Melnyk paid out the $4M up front bonus when Heatley nixed the Oilers deal so the Sharks only had to pay him $4M in his 1st year with them. The 2nd pick could be considered part payback for taking Cheechoo's albatross contract of $3.5M per year for 2 seasons. This for a guy who couldn't skate. In real dollars over the 2 seasons the Sharks came out pretty well.
When someone tries to stiff you, you can't say it's ok because the other guy suffered too after the fact. It might look like it worked out ok because Heatley flamed out quickly but at the time there's no doubt Wilson had BM over a barrel since BM didn't want Heatley in training camp and the Sharks knew Heatley wouldn't sign anywhere else. Heatley made it pretty clear after the deal that he wanted to play there and it's hard to imagine that his agent didn't tell them that. IMO there was perhaps technically legal but possibly a bit immoral communication going on in the whole Heatley fiasco. My advise to BM is count your fingers and your rings if you ever shake hands on a deal with a shark.
People are way too generous in proposing trades by devaluing our prospects and players and overly valuing the other team's. While I think Greening will be overpaid starting next year unless he finds some offense, there is no way I would give up Greening or Gryba for Havlat let alone both. The guy is just too injury prone and we'd end up in the same boat looking for a top 6 but $5M poorer plus whoever we gave up.
Okay. see my answer above but Michalek could have become much more... I remember Dan Boyle saying that Michalek was going to be a star.
I'm not saying there was not any downside to that fiasco, Heatley put the Sens ina very tough spot publicly asking for a trade at the worst timing. We kind of did what we could to cut off the losses. Michalek has been the Sens highest goals scorer (more than Spezza and Alfie) from 2009 to 2012
With Heatley, it's semi hindsight because you could see some signs of decline in 2008-09. I'm not saying he had 0 value when we traded him but in the end, we lucked out in a terrible situation. Like totally dodged a bullet, he would have been bought
