King Insiderrp, II Has Dany Heatley Going to Tampa Bay Lightning

We weren't willing to do so, nor was anyone else in the world of rational thought.

Join me as I tear this rumor a new one.

The Rumor

Debunking the Rumor

Salary Cap Space

Hell, it is tough to believe the Wild are giving up a guy like Heatley for less than a package of picks, as mentioned just this week by Mr. Russo. (Note: Russo did not say Heatley. He said "contracts" for picks.) In other words, Chuck Fletcher doesn't seem altogether too interested in a deal that brings back a player at all. We'll get to that in a minute.

For now, know that trading Heatley would most likely need to be for picks, something the Bolts simply do not have the room to do.

Cap Space is a Fail.

Roster Space

Roster Space is a Qualified Pass

Available Contracts

Available Contracts is a fail.

No Trade Clauses

NTCs abound on these two teams. Heatley still has one, Carle has one, Vinny has one, St. Louis has one, Carle has one, Malone has one... All of the players that may be involved (and remember, a player has to be involved to make the cap work) have NTCs. None of the players on that list seem overly excited about uprooting their lives.

No Trade Clauses is a fail.

The Sniff Test

This is my favorite part. The Bolts can't offer up a package of picks, because the cap doesn't work. They can't offer up a prospect, because that still doesn't lower their cap. They can't offer a package of players, because the Wild don't have the contracts to do that. The players the Wild would be interested in aren't leaving the Bolts, and Heatley isn't likely waiving his NTC to go to Tampa. They always seem to forget Heatley seems to like it here, and has these two brand new star players to play with.

Finally, Russo reported this:

Here again, King Insiderrp, II would tell you that Fletcher is more comfortable telling Russo a lie to cover the fact he is working on a deal to move Heatley. I would tell you Feltcher is not going to flat out lie to a reporter. It just isn't what GMs do. They might not tell the reporter everything, or anything at all, but unless there are mandated privacy policies, generally GMs don't want to ruin the relationship with a reporter. If Fletcher tells Russo there have been no talks, there have been no talks.

The point here is, it's August. How many block buster trades go down in August?

Once again, this all adds up to a blow hard trying to rile people up (and it worked yet again if you read Twitter feeds) and get people to keep following him. Hell, he bought followers, and then claimed someone did it for him. It's just unreal that people continue to buy this crap.

Side note: the deadline to submit a blog sample to his Holy Moronicness to be his Wild blogger has passed. I can't wait to see which loser he got to do that for him. I really should have submitted something.