1/08/2008

Captain Canada for a day

Senators captain Daniel Alfredsson looked a little different during Monday's practice. He made good on a bet with team owner Eugene Melnyk by wearing a Team Canada jersey during one hour of the morning practice. This was the result of a friendly wager on the gold-medal game at the world junior hockey championships between Canada and Sweden.

His Ottawa teammates were very amused and Ray Emery said it looked like his captain was playing with a little more grit all of a sudden. Alfredsson, on the other hand, said he looked a little edgy and not as smooth as usual. Jason Spezza suggested that Alfredsson should switch nationality, becoming able to play for Canada at the 2010 Olympic games in Vancouver.

Ok, let's do it. But if we're going to give you Alfredsson, arguably one of Sweden's best players, we would need something valuable in return. A big name in return to play for Sweden would be logical (not that there is anything logical about trading Alfredsson off to Team Canada).

But logics aside, if we would actually go through with this trade and I could pick the player, I would take Dany Heatley. I know this may come as a surprise to some, but in my opinion Heatley is probably the only kind of player Sweden lacks. Sure, Lecavalier is awesome, but we have Zetterberg and he is just as good. Dany Heatley is hockey, there is no need to list stats here. He lives for it like few people on earth. He breathes the game and is the total package.

I am guessing my choice of player will get the Ottawa players to back off from the trade. They wouldn't give up Heatley, not even for Daniel Alfredsson. "Captain Canada" has left the building.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually, Jason Spezza himself is not too shabby either. He's been ripping it up lately too. I'm pretty sure he's got the highest points-per-game average in the league right now. He's more of a set-up man than Heater and Alfie though, who are both lethal snipers.

BFox

Niklas Olsson said...

Not so shabby at all. Heatley has also recieved heat for being too unselfish at times. But yes they are snipers, which is why these three caballeros have over 150 points together. Ottawa is, to the best of my knowledge, the only team that has three players with more than 50 points each. Impressive.

That Hossa for Heatly trade has worked out pretty good, wouldn't you say?

Anonymous said...

Yep, sure did!

The whole Ottawa organization is as impressive as the Devils. They lost Chara but managed to keep the core of the team intact so they've barely noticed that the towering d-man is with Boston these days. The Senators offence is a three-headed monster and all three attackers, you know who I'm talking about, are locked up long-term. And two of them are still young.

It seems like everyone wants to remain a Senator. Phillips took a home town discount to stay in Ottawa. Spezza, who is from the Toronto area and keeps an apartment in T.O., wasted no time and signing on to an extention. Leaf fans all thought that he'd sign on with the Buds some time in the not too distant future. But, apparently, Spezza knows a great organization when he sees one and balked at the Leaf idea.

BFox