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I’ll have to keep it short for today, but I felt like it would have been negligent if I didn’t at least mention the Daniel Alfredsson story that came out yesterday.
Some of the readers had already mentioned this in the comments on my previous article, and I’m sure you have heard by now, but former Ottawa Sun columnist Susan Sherring
had a very interesting article that came out last night. We don’t really have to get into the moral ethics of
how she went about revealing this information, as it appears that Alfredsson didn’t realize he was on the record.
Nevertheless, despite the questionable ethics and
childish responses from Sherring on Twitter, she did provide some valuable information: that Alfredsson wants to be a part of the Senators organization, so long as Eugene Melnyk sells the team. This isn’t necessarily surprising news, but it is nice to hear it confirmed. When talking about the organization, Alfredsson still used “we,” which is notable:
“[Jim Watson and I have] talked a lot, we’ve talked about the future of the Senators and of its ownership and we agree,” he said.
And just what do they agree on?
“We hope we get a new owner,” the former captain said.
After Alfredsson left the organization for the second time last summer, there was rampant speculation that he did it because of Melnyk and that he could possibly come back under new ownership. If these quotes are actually true, then that confirms what most people believed, which is quite exciting.
The Melnyk drama over the past few years (and past six months in particular) has been incredibly draining, and it appears that the fans of the team aren’t the only ones who want the debacle to end at some point. Melnyk will always have some supporters because he saved the team from bankruptcy, but it’s entirely fair to be fed up with how he’s run the team for the past decade.
The list of people on the fed up list continues to grow.
What does this mean moving forward? Right now, not much, as Melnyk has indicated that he has no intention of selling the team. However, I still believe that if he can get a LeBreton deal done that he will sell once the team finally moves downtown, since the value of the franchise should go up. I feel like that’s more of a when rather than if, and when that happens, hopefully Alfredsson can be part of a new ownership group, much like Mario Lemieux is with the Pittsburgh Penguins.
If the heart and soul of the Senators franchise is this vehemently against Melnyk, I’m not quite sure how one could still appeal to his authority.
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