The 2014 NHL Draft in Philadelphia has come and gone with a couple of trades included. One of the deals that didn’t occur was the Ottawa Senators pushing Jason Spezza. According to many reports, a serious deal was in place between the Nashville Predators and Ottawa. However, unfortunately for the Senators, Spezza did not wish to be shipped off to Nashville and his camp denied the trade.
With a chance to potentially cash in on the minimizing value of Jason Spezza, it’s nothing more than a shot to the gut for the Senators. There is only so much a general manager can do with a chaotic situation such as the one occurring in Ottawa with Spezza. To me, Spezza is acting out of complete selfishness.
Asking to be traded is completely appropriate and not a rare occurrence, especially for the Senators, if you date back to the Dany Heatley fiasco in the summer of 2009. At this point though, many fans are beyond agitated. Ottawa has allowed Spezza to make a list of 10 teams in which he didn’t want to be traded amongst, then opt out all Canadian franchises. With his inevitable exit all laid out to head to Nashville, he denies the trade. From Spezza’s viewpoint, I understand there isn’t a whole lot of success, and it is probably something he wants to attain since the Senators are going through somewhat of a rebuild, but if he wants out of Ottawa as much as he says he does, he’s going to have to start widening his list of teams to be traded to. If he doesn’t, this chaos will continue to roll out for the rest of the summer.
What gets to me and Sens fans alike is that Spezza only has one year left on his contract. From that standpoint, he only has to play one more season before he can go to free agency and hopefully choose a team that’s better situated for him in attaining a decent playoff run and possibly a Stanley Cup victory. To let this carry out even further and being finicky is doing nothing more than damaging the team that drafted and captained him in terms of trade value. He is clearly only looking out for himself and also seems to be a bit unrealistic.
I can’t imagine too many playoff-contending teams are interested in acquiring Spezza who is now attaching a bad reputation to himself in addition to having previous health issues and a high cap hit. Trading away assets in order to acquire him and possibly even losing him in the next offseason to free agency may not be a risk many teams want to take. I don’t exactly know what’s in Spezza’s mind, but he clearly has no sympathy or care for the team he’s choosing to desert.
Reading from many other Sens fans agitated posts towards Spezza, it seems like they don’t even care at this point in terms of what comes in return in the eventual trade. More so, it’s about simply removing Spezza once and for all. All the pressure is on Bryan Murray, who is more than willing to get a deal done, but will have to take large consumption of acetaminophen to cope with all the headaches his dramatic franchise player is causing.
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