Senators Owner & Chair Eugene Melnyk "poured ice-cold water Friday on the notion" that the team would "ever consider moving to an arena on LeBreton Flats owned by someone else," according to Don Butler of the OTTAWA CITIZEN. Melnyk: "We wouldn’t consider going into a building that we don’t control completely." Butler noted both of the groups "still competing to develop a prime section of LeBreton Flats are planning to build an NHL-calibre arena." Melnyk and the Senators "lead one of those teams, called Rendez Vous LeBreton." The other, called the DCDLS Group, is "led by Devcore, a real estate development company in Gatineau." Melnyk said that he "didn’t know that DCDLS Group’s proposal included an NHL rink until he saw a tweet" last Tuesday, the deadline for submitting development proposals to the NCC. Melnyk: "I’ve never met them, I don’t know them. I’m just not going to do it. I mean, come on. How in God’s name do they want to build an arena? I don’t get it. Because there’s no NHL team available. This team is mine for life. The team’s not for sale. Never will be, in my lifetime for sure." He added no other NHL team could "come into my territory." Melnyk: "Who’s going to play there? I don’t understand why they would put that in." Meanwhile, Melnyk is "looking healthy and fit a year after his life-saving liver transplant" (OTTAWA CITIZEN, 12/19).
NEW LEASE ON LIFE: The CP's Lisa Wallace wrote some seven months after undergoing a liver transplant, Melnyk "says he can’t remember the last time he felt so good." Melnyk: "Honestly, I couldn't be better." Melnyk had "been on the waiting list for a deceased donor organ for several weeks, but having a rare AB blood type meant that finding a living liver donor was his only option." More than 500 people "volunteered to give a portion of their liver, with the candidate who ultimately donated remaining anonymous." Melnyk: "It’s a life-changing kind of thing. I can see it now, it’s for the better and I’m just happy, frankly, to be alive is the best way to put it." Now, Melnyk is "back to talking hockey, and the bidding process for a new downtown arena has him steamed" (CP, 12/18).
STEPPING ASIDE? Melnyk said of the status of Senators Exec VP, GM and President of Hockey Operations Bryan Murray, who is battling cancer, "It’s up to him. I want him to stay, but he has to want to stay as well. It works both ways" (CP, 12/18). ESPN.com's Pierre LeBrun wrote Murray plans to spend the next month or so "doing some soul-searching, talking with his family on whether he feels up to continuing as GM next season" or if it is "more sensible to take on a part-time adviser role starting next season." Murray's choice for his successor "would more than likely be assistant GM Pierre Dorion," but that would be "subject to" whatever Melnyk wants to do (ESPN.com, 12/18).
