Ottawa's Heatley Trade Was Really About a Coach

The idea for this post started with a post by James Reeve at NHL Trade Talk, who recently looked at some of the Ottawa Senators' most regrettable trades. One of the trades that caught my attention was the Dany Heatley deal with San Jose. I remember Heatley’s seasons with the Senators, and he was a surprise.

I remember Heatley’s seasons with the Senators, and just how good he was still surprises me. I also remember his ridiculous 2003 All-Star Game, when he scored four goals and an assist and then added a shootout goal for good measure.

The Heatley trade was a bit of a head-scratcher.

There are trades in NHL history that make sense when you look back at them. A star is getting older. His contract has become a problem. The team is rebuilding. The player wants out. Then there are trades that leave you scratching your head years later. The Senators' decision to trade Dany Heatley to San Jose falls into that second category.

Heatley wasn't coming off a terrible season. He had scored 39 goals and 72 points in 2008-09. He was still a dangerous NHL scorer, and he had already shown Ottawa exactly what he could do with the right opportunity. A couple of years earlier, he had scored 50 goals in consecutive seasons. The problem wasn't really Heatley's ability. It was that new head coach Cory Clouston didn't seem to see him the same way.

Heatley lost ice time and, more importantly, his place on the top power-play unit. Heatley responded by asking for a trade, and suddenly Ottawa had turned a coaching decision into a roster decision. That's the part that bothers me about the trade all these years later.

Coaches should ask star players for their best efforts.

There is nothing wrong with a coach demanding more from a star player. There is nothing wrong with changing a player's role. But before trading a proven scorer, an organization probably should ask itself a pretty simple question: Are we getting rid of the player because he's no longer good enough, or because we aren't using him properly?

Ottawa chose the former. And then came the return. Jonathan Cheechoo was essentially finished as an NHL player. Milan Michalek became a useful Senator and played 412 games for the club, but he wasn't replacing Heatley's scoring. The draft pick eventually became Kent Simpson.

Heatley, meanwhile, still had 112 goals left in his NHL career. Maybe the Senators wouldn't have won anything if they had kept him. That's impossible to know. But there is an important lesson here for every NHL organization.

NHL general managers need to think logically, not reactively.

The Senators should have known better than to let a coaching disagreement lead them to believe that a productive player had suddenly become a bad player. Coaches come and go. Systems change. Power-play units change. Players, especially 39-goal players, are a little harder to replace.

And perhaps the most ironic part of the whole story is that Clouston was gone just two years later. Heatley wasn't. Ottawa made a permanent roster decision based, at least in part, on a temporary coaching situation. That's probably the part of this trade that deserves to be remembered. It turned out not to be a wise choice.