As Dany Heatley returns to Ottawa, remember the highs and lows of his tenure

Ottawa Senators fans can be forgiven for their nostalgia when they see all three members of the Pizza Line reunite at the Canadian Tire Centre on Thursday night.

Daniel Alfredsson, Jason Spezza and Dany Heatley will participate in a ceremonial faceoff before Ottawa’s game against Detroit. As much as the night is to honour and celebrate the exploits of all three players, there’s a deeper purpose to the occasion.

“The whole reason behind it was to welcome Dany Heatley back to the organization,” Senators president Cyril Leeder said. “It’s no official capacity. Just saying, ‘you’re welcome here anytime.’”

“I think that’s where the focus should be,” said Alfredsson, who is now a Senators assistant coach. “We loved him when he was here. There’s no question. He was not just a tremendous player, but he’s a great person as well. So, I’m very happy he’s going to be coming back and be part of the alumni here in Ottawa as well.”

Heatley last played for the Senators over 15 years ago and left under turbulent terms. As his statistics regressed and the Senators wanted him to be more defensively responsible, he sought a trade at the end of the 2008-09 season. A deal was in place to send him to the Edmonton Oilers in the summer of 2009, but he nixed it. It has been suggested that coaching or a more defensive-minded structure could have led to Heatley wanting out. Heatley himself told the media that he felt his role had been “diminished” in his final two seasons in Ottawa.

“I didn’t understand it,” Leeder said. “Why he wanted to leave. He had a good thing going, was playing on the best line in hockey. I remember him saying ‘Look, I got my reasons, they’ll come out over time,’ which either (told) me he had a problem with the coaching staff or he had a problem with one of the other players. And we never really got the reason and over time, it didn’t really matter to me what the reason was.”

“Time has gone by. Did we wish him to go? No. But that’s life,” Alfredsson said.

With the Senators welcoming Heatley back, let’s re-examine the highs and lows of his time in Ottawa.

The trade

The Senators needed an impact forward in the summer of 2005 to replace Marian Hossa after GM John Muckler deemed him too expensive in contract negotiations. Ottawa found a replacement in Heatley, who needed a change in scenery.

Heatley, the No. 2 pick in the 2000 draft, scored 26 goals and 67 points in 82 games in his rookie season with the Atlanta Thrashers, earning him the Calder Trophy. The winger became an All-Star in his second season, scoring 41 goals and 89 points in 77 games, and emerged as a star alongside Ilya Kovalchuk.

“We thought we hit the home run with getting Dany,” then-Thrashers GM Don Waddell said. “And there’s no doubt his career was certainly going in the right direction and projected to be a star for many years in the NHL.”

In September 2003, Heatley crashed his Ferrari into a brick-walled column supporting a wrought-iron fence while speeding in an Atlanta residential neighbourhood. Upon impact, the car split in half. Heatley suffered a broken jaw, bruised his lungs and kidneys, and had a minor concussion. He walked away from the crash but eventually collapsed on the ground. Heatley’s teammate and passenger, Dan Snyder, was ejected from the vehicle and fractured his skull. He then fell into a coma and died six days after the accident occurred.

Heatley pled guilty to four charges, but the Snyder family didn’t want him in jail. Instead, he was sentenced to three years probation in February 2005. When the verdict was reached, the mothers of Heatley and Snyder embraced each other in a Georgia courtroom. But Heatley still wanted a fresh start elsewhere before the NHL resumed play later that fall. Heatley and his representatives called Waddell and asked to be traded.

“You’re hoping that time heals (with) some of the things that took place,” Waddell said. “But in the back of my mind, I always knew that it was probably going to come to that point.”

Waddell found a trading partner in the Sens. Hossa signed a three-year, $18 million deal and, along with defenceman Greg de Vries, was shipped to Atlanta for Heatley in August 2005.

“It was a bit of a shock to everyone,” former teammate Wade Redden said. “We were giving up a really big part of the team with Marian going the other way. But it was exciting. Dany had some really good years in Atlanta to that point. I had a chance to play with him a few times as well in different national team tournaments, so I knew him pretty good. He had a certain confidence and an ability in himself that I think transpired and helped our team.”

Heatley’s first regular season with the Senators was a road game against the Toronto Maple Leafs. His linemates to start the game? Spezza and rookie Brandon Bochenski, who scored 70 points in the AHL the year prior. But with the Senators down in the third period, line changes were necessary.

“They put me up with (Heatley) late in the third,” Alfredsson said. “And we were able to score one or two to tie it up.”

Heatley was on the ice when Alfredsson scored his first of the period with under six minutes to go. The Leafs then responded with a goal from their own newcomer, Eric Lindros, with 91 seconds to play. Seconds later, Heatley chased a puck up ice, beating out what might have been an icing call, and tried to hold possession in a corner of the ice. When he emerged, he slipped the puck to Spezza who then found Alfredsson at the net and tied the game.

When overtime solved nothing, the teams participated in the first-ever NHL shootout. Alfredsson scored the first goal while the Leafs failed to score on their first two attempts. With the game on his stick, Heatley beat Maple Leafs goalie Ed Belfour and the Senators became the first team to win a shootout.

The goals and points came in bunches for Heatley after that. As did the pizza, for fans.

The Pizza Line

In a luxury suite high above ice level in Toronto during the Leafs and Senators’ third encounter that season, Pizza Pizza vice president of marketing Pat Finelli rubbed shoulders with high-ranking Senators executives and team owner Eugene Melnyk. Finelli was riding high after helping establish a fun promotion for Senators fans: If the Senators scored five goals in a home game, fans would be entitled to a free slice of pizza from one of their local restaurants.

But Finelli was getting nervous. The Senators were scoring too many goals. When the Senators reached that late October game, they had already scored five goals or more in three of their first four home games. Fans were chanting “We want pizza!” when the team got close to the magic number. Heatley, Alfredsson and Spezza were a big reason why.

“(Pat’s) given out 55,000 slices of pizza in the first two weeks,” Leeder said. “Pat’s on the phone with us. You’ve got to slow this thing down. You’ve got to slow this thing down.”

In Toronto, the Senators were up 2-0 when Heatley scored his first goal of the night, jamming the puck past Belfour on a power play. Heatley completed his hat trick in the second period, bringing the score to 5-0. For good measure, Heatley added a fourth goal in the third period. The Sens destroyed the Maple Leafs 8-0.

As the goals piled up, Finelli looked at Leeder and demanded the Pizza Pizza parameters be changed.

“Since Heatley’s been here, these guys are scoring seven, eight goals every game,” Finelli said. “We’ve got to bump it up to score six and everybody gets a free slice. And they still were on fire.”

Their propensity to score those goals earned Heatley, Spezza and Alfredsson the ‘Pizza Line’ nickname. Heatley, specifically, began the 2005-06 season on a 22-game point streak. He ended the season with the first 50-goal campaign and 100-point season of his career. The Senators also ended the year as the highest-scoring offence in the league, giving fans many opportunities to collect their pizza. And then came the 50 in ’07 year, where Heatley’s statistics were nearly identical to the year prior and the line continued its consistent production.

“I think we just complemented each other with the way we could move,” Alfredsson said. “We knew Jason would be the distributor most of the time. Me and Heatley, we found openings. I think we worked selflessly, too. We knew that it wasn’t always (Heatley) shooting. Sometimes, he’d be in front of the net. If he was getting open, I would be in front of the net. I don’t know if Spezza was in front of the net a lot, but we complemented. We did a lot of good things. Everybody had good offensive instincts.”

The Stanley Cup Final run

Senators fans may treasure the 2007 season more because of the team’s playoff run that spring. Ottawa ran through its first three playoff opponents, winning each of the series in five games.

The high point of the postseason came in Game 5 when the Senators went to overtime with a chance to eliminate the Buffalo Sabres, who had defeated them in the second round the year before. The Sens were down 1-0 in the first period until Heatley tied the game. Almost four minutes later, Spezza gave the Senators a 2-1 lead. The Sabres tied the game partway through the third period, setting the stage for Ottawa’s overtime heroics. Nearly halfway through the first OT period, Heatley fired a quick pass to Alfredsson as he made his way through the neutral zone. The Senators captain took it from there, entering the offensive zone while surrounded by three opposing players.

“I really don’t have anything,” Alfredsson said. “So, I just throw a shot. Probably surprised (Sabres goalie Ryan) Miller, too.”

Alfredsson beat Miller and the Senators advanced to the Stanley Cup Final. The first two men to hug and wrap themselves around Alfredsson along the boards in celebration were his linemates.

The Senators only experienced one more playoff win with the trio after Game 5. It came in Game 3 of the Final against the Anaheim Ducks. The win appeared to give them some life in the series, but the Senators ran out of gas and lost the next two games. Though Heatley had only one goal through the five-game series, the Pizza Line had a dominant 2007 postseason, recording 22 points in 20 games.

The eventual exit

Heatley remained an offensive presence through his final two seasons in Ottawa, but his point totals slipped from a career-best 105 in 2007 to 72 in 82 games in 2009. The Senators were also swept in the first round in Heatley’s third year and then missed the playoffs in his final year, where Craig Hartsburg began the season as coach but lasted only 48 games before Cory Clouston replaced him. There appeared to be friction between Heatley and Clouston, who controversially put Heatley on the team’s second power-play unit. By season’s end, Heatley asked out.

The Senators negotiated a trade with the Oilers that would’ve netted them forwards Andrew Cogliano and Dustin Penner and defenceman Ladislav Smid. But Heatley refused to waive his no-trade clause and the move never happened. With Heatley still on the roster in July 2009, the Senators were on the hook for a $4 million bonus. That irked Melnyk, leading him to file a grievance in November 2009, according to the Ottawa Sun. Both sides later settled after a four-year battle.

The summer pressed on without a deal. The longer Heatley stayed, the more awkward and untenable his situation was.

Ahead of training camp, Heatley met with Alfredsson and Chris Phillips at the downtown Brookstreet Hotel for breakfast. The team leaders wanted to know what was on Heatley’s mind. Why didn’t he want to say? How does the team resolve its situation? How could they keep him in Ottawa? But the winger had already made up his mind.

“It was really strange,” Phillips said. “The way it was all going down was kind of secretive, for the lack of better words.”

“I think ice time and the role on the team played a part,” Alfredsson said. “If that’s the whole reason? I don’t know.”

Before the regular season began, Heatley was shipped to San Jose along with a fifth-round draft pick for Jonathan Cheechoo, Milan Michalek and a second-round pick. Heatley played the Sens in San Jose later that year, but he’d have to wait until the 2010-11 campaign to return to Ottawa.

The fallout and a new chapter

Fans weren’t kind to Heatley when he and the Sharks came through town in December 2010. The constant booing was expected. But some fans took it further.

If jerseys with Heatley’s name weren’t blacked out on the nameplate, they were thrown onto the ice for referees to pick up. One fan in the stands held a sign saying “Even Alexei Yashin Thinks You’re a Jerk,” referencing another former Senators star who asked out of Ottawa.

Another fan held a white sheet with the TSN logo drawn in red and black marker.

“Traitor. Suffer. Now!”

A photo of the ‘Traitor. Suffer. Now!’ banner during a Sharks-Senators game in December 2010. (Phillip MacCallum / Getty Images)

Heatley still had some juice in the back half of his career, nearly hitting the 40-goal plateau in his first season in San Jose and scoring 26 goals in his second year. Three seasons in Minnesota followed before a six-game, point-less cameo with the Anaheim Ducks in 2015 spelled the end of his NHL days.

Now, Heatley is a pro scout for the Philadelphia Flyers, joining the organization in September 2023. And as he enters a new stage of his post-hockey-playing career, it’s no coincidence that his return to Ottawa comes in the Senators’ post-Melnyk era.

The Senators are anticipating that enough time will have passed for fans to welcome Heatley with a warm reception Thursday night.

“I would be extremely disappointed if it’s not a standing ovation,” Phillips said.

The Pizza Line is also expected to address the media ahead of the game, which will provide ample opportunity for them to relive the good and bad of their time together.

(Top photo of Dany Heatley: Andre Ringuette / NHLI via Getty Images)