| 16 June 2009
Here are some interesting quips that I purged from TSN's website. As always, my thoughts will be in bold.
"I was shocked and disappointed," Murray told reporters. "Number one, I did have a talk at the end of the year in the exit interview. He indicated that he just wanted to talk and he wanted to talk to Corey (Clouston) and there a couple of other issues as well and they were mainly the finger being pointed at him on a few occasions that he didn't think was always fair so we talked about that and he went away to the world championships. Only the Monday before, game 6 in Pittsburgh, the announcement was made by their people they indicated to me they really wanted to get something going."
While this is not really news, it leads me to believe that it was the Heatley camp who leaked his trade request to the mainstream media. Great work indeed. I bet they expected some kind of media/fan backlash in Ottawa but I sincerely doubt that they believed that Heatley's character would be as assassinated as it has been from coast-to-coast.
"I have had some conversation with several teams. I don't really have a timetable but I have encouraged anybody that is really interested to try to make the contact before the draft and we will get something done by that time I hope."
In addition, Murray admitted that Clouston was devastated by the news.
While this is not really news, it leads me to believe that it was the Heatley camp who leaked his trade request to the mainstream media. Great work indeed. I bet they expected some kind of media/fan backlash in Ottawa but I sincerely doubt that they believed that Heatley's character would be as assassinated as it has been from coast-to-coast.
"The frustrating part for us is we have gone through several coaches here that we couldn't win enough games with," Murray stated. "We brought in a guy the results we were very happy with. The team started to look like a real team again. And then to be kind of blind sided in his way of thinking anyway by one of your players - not wanting to fit in. That's hard for a coach to accept."
It might be hard to accept but it's better for this kind of thing to come to the forefront now than somewhere down the road. Ideally, the timing of Heatley's trade couldn't be better. He's 28, still productive and his knees aren't that bad yet. His trade value, last year notwithstanding, probably isn't that bad. He's still an elite scorer.
"I'm just not going to let him just walk away for nothing as you know. Whether we get the ideal trade or not that is one thing but I have to get something good for this organization coming back."
This is an interesting choice of words by Murray. The use of, I have to get something good for this organization coming back, doesn't really detail whether or not Murray's looking at something for the future or the present.
"If he doesn't want to be in Ottawa and there is team that offers me a deal that I think is a better deal obviously I have to put some pressure on them to accept that or he may end up playing back here."
Ah, leverage, where have you been lately?
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