The True Downside Of The Heatley Deal

I don’t disagree, but with such bold claims, I think you should cite some more sources.
 
Namely for the following points:
-“Heatley chose to ignore Waddell and Synder is dead today.” (did Waddell REALLY warn him?)
-“Heatley asked for his outright release, rather than a trade”
-“What the public didn’t know is that the entire thing was written by the Thrashers and Heatley had nothing to do with it outside of letting the Thrashers release the statement to the public.”
-“The first thing Heatley did when he arrived in Ottawa was to slam Atlanta and their fans for not caring about hockey.”
-“Few, if any, of those speeches were ever made”

Lastly, I’ve been mostly against the trade, but when it comes down to it, the Oilers missed the playoffs last year with a relatively healthy team. That team, other than the coaching staff, has not changed much. I feel that people are suddenly and surprisingly a little too attached to our current team.

I have a bit of an issue with the article’s implicit assumption that most superstar hockey players aren’t entitled, petulant adolescent adults. Heatley is probably more of a problem than most NHL players but I doubt that the deviation is as great as most would think without further consideration.

Other than that, some of the allegations described could only possibly be leaked by a very elite group of individuals who are not usually prone to loose lips, so I’m a little dubious. For example Heatley’s request to be released. I would think that the only people aware of that would be Heatley, his agent, Waddell, Simmons, and Wilkinson. Disclosure by Heatley or his agent seems unlikely due to the sensitive and possibly inflammatory nature of the information. I suppose I’m making the assumption that Atlanta’s upper echelon of management aren’t gossips, but it’s one I’m pretty comfortable with.

On the basis of the general hearsay and information available to common fans, I feel that portraying Heatley as some entitled and self-absorbed egomaniac is a little inaccurate.

He strikes me more plainly as an imbecile. An imbecile with too much money and a valuable skill set which endows him with an inflated sense of self-worth.

Just my opinion though.

I don’t care how reputable these confidential sources are, if they can’t speak on this type of subject publicy then they shouldn’t speak on them at all.

By the way, can we ban “sniper” from the hockey lexicon? Like the “power forward”, “the sniper” is another mythical beast and overused term that rarely fits the discussion at hand

If it fits for more than Ovechkin, it fits Heatley.

Nevertheless, he has an absolutely cap-killing contract, a contract that should the Oilers choose to acquire, will put the team in a familiar trading position. The Oilers brass will have to move Souray or Visnovsky to make cap space.

I don’t think that this is true. The deal looked fairly dollar neutral to me.

Waddell was tipped off, by multiple sources, to Heatley’s penchant for speeding around town. He told Dany that if he needed to drive like that, he should go to Speed Atlanta and use the race course to burn off any need to go that fast. Heatley chose to ignore Waddell and Synder is dead today.

Dany Heatly, the only 22 year in the world to ignore what he was told by older, wiser people.

What the public didn’t know is that the entire thing was written by the Thrashers and Heatley had nothing to do with it outside of letting the Thrashers release the statement to the public.

As is virtually every statement by every public figure everywhere. I’ve actually seen this one up close a little bit.

The first thing Heatley did when he arrived in Ottawa was to slam Atlanta and their fans for not caring about hockey.

Did he trash ATL or did he talk about how excited he was to be in a real hockey city like Ottawa? The former is not the same as the latter.

After the trade, Heatley’s representatives worked out a deal so that Heatley could serve his punishment in Ottawa, and give his speeches there, rather than serve his punishment in Atlanta. None of his community service hours were ever spent in Atlanta. The community that he harmed, the community that supported him so strongly never saw his promise of service fulfilled.

So what you’re saying is that he did what the court ordered him to do?

Pretty thin stuff here, I think.

But the facts are correct.

If you guys are going to start writing posts on moral issues with a high degree of absolutism and throwing around words like “true” and “correct”, then the bar should be raised pretty dramatically IMHO.

Using a single anonymous source hardly gets you there.

Frankly I’m surprised at this one, but I’m sure you guys were pretty jazzed to get an honest to goodness “hockey source”.

Anyway, maybe I’m just a cynic but I figure every NHL team has 2-3 Heatleys and it’s mostly circumstances that differentiate them. You have to get a big shovel and put aside a lot of time if you want to dig around in the personal failings and character flaws of professional athletes.

@JW: Also, people with agendas often want to advance those agendas without it being known that they’re doing so.

Ugh.

I’ve got a lot of respect for both coachpb/derek and JW, but that respect has faded a little after reading Derek’s article and JW’s subsequent defense. (Don’t mean to sound hyperbolic. I still love you guys and I know it’s easy to go slightly overboard with this kind of stuff.)

I’ll try to keep this brief.

JW:

There’s a big, big difference between a reporter citing an anonymous source in a newspaper and what Derek did here. Newspapers have a fact checking process. Reporters (I mean the real ones, not sports-gossip columnists) take notes, even when interviewing people who want to remain anonymous. Then editors and fact checkers try to independently verify the details in the notes about what the anonymous source said. From what I understand, newspapers don’t always get it right, and some times there are tough calls, but no newspaper would ever print a 3rd hand (Or is it 4th or 5th hand? We don’t know, it could be a rumor told by an agent to Matheson, then to Brownlee, to Gregor, to Tencer, to JW, finally to Derek) allegation like this without some corroboration. The fact checking process not the “reputation” of the journalist is what makes newspapers reliable sources of information. It’s also what differentiates what they do from spreading baseless rumors.

What you and Derek did here is not citing an anonymous source like a journalist does. You just spread a rumor, even if it’s a rumor that floats around amongst people who have “access” to agents and players. Big difference. Big difference.

Derek and JW:

I get that most of what’s in this piece is factual. But implication here is everything. Why not just write, “AS WE ALL KNOW Healtely demands trades and he once killed his friend while driving recklessly, therefore he’s a bad teammate and a cancer in the dressing room”? (I don’t think this is valid reasoning, as Tyler shows, but it’s an honest, respectable point of view.)

Notice, what you wrote is more like this, at least implicitly: “INSIDE SOURCES TELL US that what happened with Heatley’s car crash and his trade demands is much worse than you all suspect. He wasn’t just a reckless young guy -like lot’s of young guys. He was a monster who wouldn’t listen to reason. He didn’t just demand trades, he treated his team like dirt.”

The problem is, your anonymous un-fact-checked “source” is really just a rumor monger. But then, when confronted with the charge of rumor mongering, you claim “But this is all public knowledge.” If so, why the anonymous source, why not stick to what’s known?

That’s bait and switch and on top of the rumor spreading it’s bad form.

I’m having trouble with a few of the “public facts” too.

- The quotes trashing Atlanta fans. I’ve had a look and haven’t found them yet. There must be a link somewhere.
- This whole asking for a release thing. I can’t find that either.

JW:

Just to irritate you, I’ll assume it’s Brownlee. :)

So what, Brownlee got a call from someone who talked to Waddell and now it’s fact because Brownlee says it?

Do you think the Journal or even the Sun, hahaha would go to print with this kind of anonymous source? Have you tried to fact check it? Phone Waddell? Phone Heatley’s agent? I’m not saying you need to hold yourself to the standard of a paid reporter, but if you just report what you’re hearing 3rd hand, without doing any checking, you’re just spreading rumors.

Obviously it’s not a first hand report because you’re not Heatley or Waddell.

If it’s second hand, that means either you talked to Heatley or Waddell or someone who was in the room during their conversation. (If so, this is a fairly big story.)

I’m assuming from the tenor of JW’s comments that your report comes from a journalist who claims to have talked to Waddell or someone else. That makes it a third hand report at best.

Fair enough JW. I’m sorry to sound snippy, and I never meant to imply you guys would be actively dishonest.

But ‘verified’ can mean a whole lot of things. Unfortunately, until you can tell me how you verified this, I can’t put much stock in what you say. (Though I understand you can’t reveal your source.)

You did say “The well-informed but unnamed source has been a staple of journalism for at least the last century.”

That means you got it third hand you say second hand from a reporter, though not an ON guy. I’m assuming, best case scenario, that this ‘staple of journalism’ got it from someone who heard the Waddell-Heatley conversation. (I find it highly unlikely that a journalist would be physically present at that Waddell-Heatley talk about speeding…)

Now, by ‘verified’ do you mean that you double checked with the ‘staple of journalism’ to see if he would stick by the story? Or do you mean you tried to find out if his story was true independent of the fact that he said it? If it’s the former that’s nothing. If it’s the latter, I’ll believe the story, but if it’s the former, well, I don’t put any stock into what ‘a staple journalist’ says when he’s not being fact checked.

And to quibble. Jack London’s report on the San Francisco Fire/Earthquake was “first hand” because he was actually there. If Waddell wrote an editorial that would be first hand.

Oh, oops. Okay, disregard. I’ll shut up and let someone who can read take over.

Last thing:

You guys should really try to print this in a wider circulation, then, if you really can back it up and you really think Heatley is that bad for the community.

I don’t agree with you, but if you can back this up, I bet papers would run it.