The 2005-06 season was the year my training wheels came off as a reporter.
Prior to that, I spent two seasons covering the Senators on television for Sportsnet, but my role was somewhat limited. Whenever the network would broadcast a Senators game, they would bring either Darren Dreger or Christine Simpson in from Toronto to serve as the rink side reporter.
I was stapled to the role of news reporter. I would gather interviews in the morning or after games in large scrums and put together stories for the 6 p.m. newscast. I hosted a fun, magazine style show called Molson Senators Overtime, but that was heavily edited and pre-produced.
Nobody dared to put me on live television.
I never took it as a slap in the face, because deep down I knew my television skills were raw and not quite ready for prime time. I was probably qualified to host Binghamton Senators on community access cable and nothing more.
But late in the summer of 2005, I received a phone call from our producer in Toronto. They were ready to try me in the role of rink side host and reporter for Senators home games on Sportsnet in the upcoming season.
I was thrilled beyond belief – albeit with equal parts nerves and anxiety mixed in.
I wasn’t going to just be broadcasting games for any run-of-the-mill NHL team. I was being parachuted into the home broadcasts for a legitimate Stanley Cup contender.
The Senators had landed Dominik Hasek. They had a brand-new head coach in Bryan Murray. The rules of the NHL had been altered to reward speed and skill, something the Senators had in abundance. And salary cap was implemented to help level the competitive playing field.
Everything was coming up Ottawa.
And then a few days after I got the call from Sportsnet, the Senators engineered a blockbuster trade.
It was Dany Heatley for Marian Hossa and Greg DeVries, the kind of late summer transaction that caused a lot of reporters to stare at their Blackberrys in disbelief.
Hossa had just signed a three-year, $18 million contract but the club never announced the deal via press release. Instead, they issued a different press release on August 23, 2005 announcing the trade with Atlanta – and a new three-year contract extension for Heatley.
The next day, the Senators unveiled Heatley at a splashy press conference alongside general manager John Muckler. The club even put out a separate press release out encouraging fans to come to the main gate of the arena for a chance to meet Heatley in person.
And sure enough Heatley – wearing a red Senators jersey emblazoned with the No. 51 – was there to take pictures with dozens of fans, displaying his signature, gap-toothed smile. (The next day the club issued yet another press release, announcing that Heatley would actually wear No. 15 for the upcoming season and Peter Schaefer would don No. 27).
When the regular season rolled around, the chemistry amongst Heatley, Alfredsson and Spezza was palpable, immediate and magical.
The problem for me, however, is their wizardry was being performed on other television networks.
When they connected for the game-tying goal and shootout heroics in Toronto on opening night, the game was broadcast on TSN.
Jason Spezza’s electrifying overtime winner – in which he deftly undressed Sheldon Souray and Jose Theodore – was shown locally on A-Channel.
Heatley’s four-goal performance to spur an 8-0 shellacking of the Maple Leafs in Toronto was broadcast to a national audience on CBC. A couple of nights later in Buffalo, Alfredsson and Martin Havlat followed up with four-goal performances of their own en route to an 10-4 beatdown of the Sabres.
Naturally, that was a TSN broadcast.
The Senators were scoring at a pace that conjured up memories of the high-flying 1980s Edmonton Oilers. The St. Louis Rams had just concluded a run as the ‘Greatest Show on Turf’ and now we were privy to something similar on the NHL stage.
So I was salivating at the opportunity to be involved with one of these electrifying broadcasts.
When was it going to be my turn?
It finally came on November 15 against Carolina.
But as luck would have it, the Senators explosive offensive attack went quiet for our Sportsnet game. Sure, we got an Alfredsson goal – naturally assisted by Heatley and Spezza – but that was the entirety of Ottawa’s scoring. It was one of those warm-milk, sleepy midweek games in which the Hurricanes snuck out a 2-1 win.
I was crushed.
Two weeks later, I had my next opportunity for sideline reporting. And this time, the home team didn’t disappoint.
Spezza and Alfredsson both scored, while Heatley ran his point streak to a ridiculous 22 games. We showed a graphic on the broadcast that night, illustrating how Heatley’s 22-game point streak was the second longest in NHL history for a player starting with a new team.
The only one longer? Wayne Gretzky’s 23-game point streak when he joined the Los Angeles Kings.
Ottawa crushed Montreal 4-0 that night, continuing their march of dominance against divisional rivals. It also marked the first career shutout for Ray Emery.
Their record was an incomprehensible 19-3-0 after that game. Ottawa fans always talk about how great the start was in 2007-08, which has managed to dilute the brilliance we witnessed from the 2005-06 squad out of the gates. This team felt untouchable, unbeatable every night.
A few weeks later, the Canadiens would come to town again with another shutout for the home squad. The Pizza Line combined for seven points in that game, with multi-point contests for each player. Ottawa dominated Montreal, outshooting them by a laughable 40-12 margin.
Afterwards, Hasek chatted with the media in the hallway, joking that he barely broke a sweat.
I distinctly remember Hasek saying he felt “embarrassed” after the game, calling it the easiest shutout he ever recorded.
“Shutouts like that shouldn’t count,” he said with a laugh. Hasek had a towel draped over his shoulders, but he was as dry as a bone.
The pre-lockout version of the Senators were criticized for being timid and passive, often wilting in the big moments. This new, rebooted version was something different altogether. They were supremely confident – bordering on arrogant – and had the talent to back it up. And the Pizza Line was the catalyst for this newfound confidence.
In that two-year window – let’s call it from October 2005 to November 2007 – the Senators were arguably the most entertaining, dominant team in the NHL. They had a winning percentage of close to .700 in that stretch, scoring a league-best 3.60 goals per game in the process.
They marched to the Stanley Cup Final in 2007, with Alfredsson, Spezza and Heatley naturally finishing 1-2-3 in playoff scoring.
Heatley notched a pair of 50-goal seasons, still the only ones ever recorded by an Ottawa player. Until last season – when both Sam Reinhart and Zach Hyman accomplished the feat – Heatley had been the only player in the salary cap era to reach the Stanley Cup Final in a season in which he scored 50 goals.
He also set a franchise record with 105 points in 2006-07.
Alfredsson garnered a top-five Hart Trophy season in 2005-06, notching a career-best 103 points. Spezza exploded for 90 points in 68 games that season too – a pace that would have translated into 109 points if he stayed healthy the entire season.
They put up video game numbers and seemed to have a cheat code exclusively available to the three of them.
They were must-see-TV on most nights and breaking into the industry calling their games right off the hop was the equivalent of winning the lottery. Sideline reporters dream of covering entertaining and successful teams and I was gifted that opportunity in my mid-twenties.
But alas, the good times came to a screeching halt.
The moment it changed for me – and I swear I could feel it in the air – was the night of January 12, 2008.
It was one of those rare regular season games that took on a distinct playoff atmosphere, almost like a heavyweight tilt. The Senators were hosting the Red Wings, a clash of titans with Stanley Cup aspirations. Each team entered the contest with winning percentages north of .700 – the only two NHL clubs who could boast such a record.
But early in the third period, Heatley went crashing into the end boards – tied up awkwardly with Red Wings forward Dallas Drake. Heatley slowly got up from the ice, but was slouched over and favouring his shoulder as he headed directly to the locker room.
It was the end of Heatley’s ironman streak in Ottawa – he had played in 207 straight games since joining the Senators. But it also felt like the end of something else.
You could almost feel the air coming out of the balloon, even though Ottawa sat comfortably in first place in the Eastern Conference with a 29-10-4 record.
The Senators hung on to win that game against Detroit, but there was a sense of uneasiness. The team lost eight of its next 11 games without Heatley in the lineup, sending their season careening off a cliff. A 2007-08 season that felt like it was an inevitable coronation ended with the feintest of whimpers.
The swagger, the confidence and mojo of the Pizza Line seemed to evaporate into the cold January air that night in 2008. Heatley finished the season with 41 goals, but his quest to be the NHL’s first player since John LeClair to record three straight 50-goal seasons ended.
The following season was underwhelming, with Ottawa’s streak of playoff appearances halted after 11 consecutive seasons. The Senators stopped being an offensive juggernaut. In the first three seasons of the Pizza Line, they finished either first or second in goal scoring in the NHL. But in 2008-09, they plummeted to 23rd in that category.
Heatley still produced 39 goals, but no member of the Pizza Line cracked a point-per-game pace.
Still, there is one lasting memory of the final season of the Pizza Line that will always be seared in my mind. It was a late season game on home ice against the Calgary Flames in March of 2009. Now into my fourth season as a rink side host, Sportsnet had elevated my role to a place where I was now between the benches during the broadcasts.
On this night against Calgary, Dion Phaneuf came across the blue line and delivered a high check to the head of Heatley. Spezza with very little hesitation, dropped the gloves and immediately fought Phaneuf – who was clearly in a different weight class. I had a front row seat to the rare spectacle of Spezza dropping his gloves. I remember being just a few feet away and seeing the anger, passion and determination in Spezza’s face.
Even with their line no longer producing at a prolific rate, there was still an unbreakable bond between Spezza and Heatley.
Later that summer, as the media circus around Heatley’s trade request heightened, Spezza was set to get married. The event was in danger of becoming a media spectacle, with reporters and cameras vowing to show up to demand answers from Heatley at the church or reception.
I wrote a blog for Sportsnet, urging my media colleagues to show some restraint and professionalism in this situation. Yes, the Heatley saga was the story of the summer in 2009, but crashing Spezza’s wedding to uncover some answers felt wrong on every level.
Within days, both Spezza and Heatley reached out to me to say Dany would no longer be attending the wedding because it was too much of a distraction. It was the first time I had ever heard from Heatley and I have to admit I was skeptical his email was authentic because it came from a Hotmail account.
As I pieced together my recollections for this story, I was taken aback by how many dated references I dropped in here.
Hotmail accounts.
Blackberry devices.
Sens games on A-Channel.
It’s a stark reminder of how all of this feels like it happened yesterday, while simultaneously realizing this took place in a different era altogether.
Those Sens teams of the early 2000s were the most dynamic, consistent group in franchise history.
And they peaked during those first two years of Heatley’s arrival in Ottawa and the formation of the Pizza Line. The ending may have been underwhelming for all of us, but that exhilarating, magic carpet ride they took us on for a couple of years was the foundation of core memories for thousands of Ottawa fans.
When Alfredsson, Spezza and Heatley take to centre ice on Thursday night – reunited once again as the Pizza Line – I hope Ottawa fans are filled with the same nostalgia I experienced in putting this piece together.
