Kyle Turris held out and then played in six pointless games for the Coyotes. Now he is off to Ottawa to prove that his claim of being a top-six forward actually is correct and has no regrets about his lengthy contract dispute.
 ANAHEIM, Calif. – The writing had long been on the wall for Kyle Turris and it was literally so days before his trade from the Phoenix Coyotes.
The Anaheim Ducks, like many teams, write the opposing team’s lines on a grease board in the locker room on game day, and last Wednesday the Ducks had Turris centering the fourth line for Phoenix.
It was incorrect.
Turris didn't even play that night but the fact that he was in a fourth-line center role spoke to how far gone a conclusion his exodus from the desert had become.
After a six-game stint with the Coyotes that was pointless both literally and figuratively following a prolonged contract dispute, Turris was traded to Ottawa last Saturday for promising Swedish defenseman David Rundblad and a second-round pick.
The trade ended a holdout that threatened to make Turris ineligible to play this season and was one of the more derided episodes in the NHL.
But Turris said before that Anaheim game that he stood by his decision.
Asked if he would have done anything differently, Turris said, “That is a tough question because I don’t regret a thing I did. There’s obviously things I probably would have been done different, but the point of it wouldn’t have changed.
“You can take what you want out of that but I wouldn’t have changed. I don’t regret what I did. Some things might have changed, but what I was trying to get across wouldn’t have changed.”
That’s going to be a difficult argument for many observers to swallow.
The third pick in the 2007 draft, Turris has 19 goals and 46 points in 137 NHL games. That’s almost laughable considering the impact of some players drafted after him that year, such as Logan Couture of San Jose and David Perron of St. Louis.
Phoenix general manager Don Maloney made it clear that the organization did not share Turris’perception that he should be a top-six forward at this stage of his career and therefore didn't deserve the accorded money, and that rift couldn't be patched.
Turris’ image took a big hit because of his holdout, and the missed time didn't help.
Phoenix coach Dave Tippett acknowledged before the trade that it wasn’t the ideal situation.
“It’s a process to get up and moving,” Tippett said. “We’ll continue to work on that. I knew it was going to be like this kind of coming in. As much as you hope he’d jump in and (start) racking some points, it’s probably not realistic.”
Turris has maintained all along that Phoenix wasn’t the right place for him, and now he has a chance to prove it.
Slotted as the No.2 center for Ottawa, he’ll play significant minutes in a role he thinks he deserves.
"When I heard I was traded to Ottawa, I was extremely excited to be a Senator and to be in a Canadian market, and all the fun that's going to come with that," Turris told reporters in a conference call.
“I talked to coach (Paul) MacLean this morning and he said he's excited to have me, and I told him how excited I was to be a Senator and that I'm looking forward to getting there Monday, joining the team at practice and getting to work."
In return Phoenix gets Rundblad, who led all defensemen in the Swedish Elite League with 50 points in 55 games last season and couples with Brandon Gormley to give the Coyotes two defensemen with bright futures on the organization.
Meanwhile, Turris is still looking for his first goal this season. The bar is set low because he only needs 11 to match his single-season career high.
Said Turris with a smile, “Once one comes, they all come.”
NOTES
The delay in the impending hiring of Darryl Sutter as Los Angeles Kings coach reached a nadir in awkwardness Saturday when L.A. looked chasms apart from Detroit in an 8-2 loss that marked the first time the Kings allowed eight goals since an 8-6 loss to the Bruins on Oct. 12, 2007. “It’s time for everyone in this room to wake up,” captain Dustin Brown told the Los Angeles Times … It wasn't really in question but San Jose coach Todd McLellan told The San Jose Mercury News that he wasn’t concerned about his job given the current instability in his profession (McLellan commented before Montreal’s Jacques Martin was the sixth bench boss fired this season). Part of the uneasiness in San Jose was that the Sharks were 5-6-2 in one-goal games before a pair of wins against Colorado and Edmonton … Dallas Stars prospect Jack Campbell is considered to be the eventual heir to Kari Lehtonen but Richard Bachman is getting his say with a 3-1 record, 2.08 goals-against average and .931 save percentage through his first four NHL starts …. The return of Anaheim defenseman Lubomir Visnovsky from a broken finger should alleviate pressure from Francois Beauchemin and Cam Fowler, who admitted he struggled trying to fill Visnovsky’s role as primary puck mover. Meanwhile, Anaheim entered Monday needing to average 1.48 points per game over its final 50 games to reach the 97 points that eighth-place Chicago had last season.
Photos by Getty Images
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