Bayda still hoping for an NHL job

Here is more on Bayda's bid for an NHL contract. Looks as if Bayda could be heading to Europe to play hockey.

It's late August, with NHL training camps only days away from opening, and Ryan Bayda is starting over. Again.

In May, Bayda was playing for the Carolina Hurricanes in the final game of their Eastern Conference finals sweep at the hands of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Three months later, he is still looking for work.

He came into the league as a third-round pick harboring hopes of being a scoring forward. After a nasty knee injury, he recast himself as a gritty hard-working fourth-liner, playing his way back into the NHL.

Now, he's just looking for a place to play.

"It's not the fun part of hockey, that's for sure," Bayda said from his offseason home in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. "It's pretty nerve-wracking still sitting around at the end of August with people asking you where you are going, and you don't have a good answer for them."

Bayda has seen the good times, the playoff wins and the six-figure contracts. He also has seen the other side of hockey, where no matter how well you played the season before, no one is interested in your services -- at least, not interested enough.

For players such as Bayda, the goal is a one-way contract, which has one salary, an NHL salary. Those are given to players the team expects to spend the entire season in the NHL, as Bayda did last season. Everyone else gets a two-way contract, with one salary for the NHL and one salary for the minors. The NHL minimum is $500,000. The best minor league players are lucky to crack $100,000 on the other side of their contracts. [News & Observer]

More on the Dany Heatley saga.

Here is another interesting article on disgruntled Ottawa Senators forward Dany Heatley. The more this plays out in the media, the more Dany doesn't look very good in this whole mess. If Heatly goes back to the Senators you got to think his team mates aren't going to be all that happy with him either.

That‘s been Dany Heatley‘s response to a few questions as of late. The obvious being Ottawa Senators general manager Bryan Murray asking him to waive his no-trade clause to join the Edmonton Oilers in late June, a deal that would have landed the Senators a package of forwards Dustin Penner and Andrew Cogliano as well as defenceman Ladislav Smid in return.

Heatley, who requested a trade out of the nation‘s capital the previous week, had until midnight on July 1 to accept or refuse the trade, but instead let the deadline pass without comment. Fast forward a few weeks, and Heatley still isn‘t talking.
Not to teammates, at least not captain Daniel Alfredsson, and not to the media.
Not by phone and not in person. Several calls from media to the Senators sniper have gone unanswered, with messages not returned. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and, in this case, a Tuesday afternoon visit to Heatley‘s off-season home on Okanagan Lake in West Kelowna. A long and winding road to get there – not knowing whether he‘d be home or whether he‘d agree to an interview – it was certainly worth a shot.

Upon arriving, the back gate was open and seemingly welcoming. A portable basketball net was visible from the top of a downhill driveway, and a nice ski boat was docked just feet from the front yard. Fittingly, the 28-year-old former 50-goal scorer answered the door of his multi-million-dollar pad adorned in board shorts, a golf shirt and sunglasses. Then came the questions: Dany, I‘m so and so from The Daily Courier, was hoping I could shoot the breeze on some hockey stuff with you?
“Not right now, man. Sorry, I‘m just about to take off, actually,” said Heatley, pleasant but clearly surprised to see a reporter standing there. OK, fair enough, could we set something up for later on, maybe later in the week or next week?
“You know what, I‘ll take your card and I‘ll give you a call or have someone give you a call. We‘ll be in touch.” And so ended a rather anticlimactic encounter.
It didn‘t end with a flat out no, but by no means was it a guaranteed yes. More like a definite maybe, a response Steve Tambellini and the Oilers can relate to.
That proposed deal isn‘t dead, according to various reports, nor is this interview.
Or is it? Stay tuned. [Kelowna Daily Courier]