NHL ottawa Senators

Dany Heatley put the Senators in a rather difficult position earlier this offseason when he surprisingly requested a trade out of Ottawa. General manager Bryan Murray, naturally, worked to make that request a reality, and after several weeks of rumors and speculation, it appeared as if the two-time 50-goal scorer was finally traded to the Edmonton Oilers late Tuesday night for the somewhat underwhelming return of Andrew Cogliano, Dustin Penner and Ladislav Smid.

Apparently, Edmonton wasn't good enough of a destination for Heatley, as he ultimately rejected the deal by refusing to waive his no-trade clause after hours of waiting (which led to fans losing their collective minds on the Hockey's Future message boads).

To recap: Heatley requests trade, Senators trade him, Heatley rejects trade. Yeah. That seems about right.

It's officially the offseason, meaning the time is right to look into the future. We begin our division-by-division preview of the potential wheeling and dealing with the Northeast Division.

Brian Burke begins his rebuild of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Dany Heatley wants out of Ottawa and just what is Boston going to do with Phil Kessel and a limited amount of salary cap space?

The real NHL awards will be handed out Thursday night in Las Vegas, so FanHouse decided to hand out its own special awards for the 2008-09 season.

It takes a special player to get paid a lot of money. In the salary cap era, you expect guys who are signed to big-money deals to produce. When they disappear into the Witness Protection Program, it's usually a notable occurrence. With that said, we present nominees for the 2008-2009 Witness Protection Award, and boy do we have some options to pick from.

Word surfaced earlier this week that Ottawa Senators forward, and two-time 50-goal scorer, Dany Heatley requested a trade after four seasons in Canada's capital city.

The news has resulted in a firestorm of debate and commentary across the Canadian media, including a rather scathing article by Don Brennan of the Ottawa Sun that goes as far as to compare Heatley to another former Senators forward, Alexei Yashin. Harsh. And it's unfortunate, for Ottawa's sake anyway, that Mike Milbury is no longer in charge of running an NHL team into the ground. Think of the possibilities!

Heading into the offseason, the Philadelphia Flyers have, roughly, $42 million committed to 11 players for the 2009-10 season, and none of those players happen to be a goaltender. That's because the team's two-headed monster from this past season, Martin Biron and Antero Niittymaki, is eligible for unrestricted free agency, and there's really not a long-term solution banging down the door in the pipeline to the NHL.

Put it all together, and it leads to the news we heard on Wednesday that the team is interested in signing free agent goalie Ray Emery this offseason.

A lot of the talk following last night's Game 2 in Detroit centered around Chicago's Brian Campbell and his turnover, which led to Mikael Samuelsson's game-winning goal, giving the Wings a 3-2 win in overtime and a 2-0 series lead. But it wasn't nearly the first time that Campbell has made a mistake that has cost his team a victory in a playoff overtime. This is actually the third time in this past three years that a misplay by Campbell has led to an overtime defeat for his team.

When the Senators acquired Mike Comrie and Chris Campoli before the trade deadline, some of the talk surrounding the trade wasn't about the players themselves. Since the Senators were out of the playoff race at the time some of the discussion revolved around Comrie's significant other, Hillary Duff. Duff could almost always been seen at the Coliseum when Comrie was an Islander and is now a fixture at Scotiabank Place.

Around the same time, music star Carrie Underwood began dating Mike Fisher and started showing up at games. Now, Sports Illustrated is reporting that the Senators have added another famous lady to their All-Star lineup of WAGs.

It's been a disappointing season for the Ottawa Senators as they find themselves out of the NHL playoff picture for the first time in 11 years. As a result, the team is on its fourth head coach -- Cory Clouston -- since a Stanley Cup Final appearance in 2007.

On Wednesday, the team announced that Clouston has signed a two-year contract extension to remain as the Senators head coach.

Newsmakers in the NHL is a weekday morning attempt to clear yesterday's rebounds and look to the day ahead.

Senators 3, Canadiens 2: First, the bad news for the Montreal Canadiens: they dropped a 3-2 decision, at home, to the Ottawa Senators on Monday night. Now, the really bad news for the Canadiens: remember those injuries to Andrei Markov and Mathieu Schneider? Yeah, they're worse than expected.

Jarkko Ruutu is an agitator who always seems to find his way into the news. He's no Sean Avery, but close. In January he was suspended two games for biting Buffalo's Andrew Peters during a scrum and in November it was two for an elbow to the head. So, after Ruutu laid a questionable hit on Tampa Bay's Ryan Craig Sunday, Lightning coach Rick Tocchet called him out.

What ensued was a really entertaining war of words that is giving two cities long out of the playoff picture something to talk about.