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Thursday, November 11, 1999
Gardiner goes to Lightning for Forbes
The Ottawa Senators are sitting at the top of the Northeast Division, but they're not standing pat.
But not all the moves they wanted to make Thursday were by their choice.
The Senators lost veteran defenceman Bobby Dollas, who had made his Senators debut Wednesday in New York, on waivers to the Calgary Flames.
The Senators then went out and traded forward Bruce Gardiner, who had been an unwanted distraction in training camp, to the Tampa Bay Lightning for gritty Colin Forbes.
The 23-year-old Forbes will bring some sandpaper to the Ottawa lineup, a quality the club recognized as a shortcoming and has been adding since its sweep at the hands of the Buffalo Sabres last spring. Forbes, along with Rob Zamuner, Kevin Dineen and Andre Roy, gives the Senators more options when the need for grit arises.
Gardiner, 27, sat out in training camp for a new contract despite having just four goals last season. When he did report, he wound up getting in a tiff with the club over how much his holdout would cost him. Then he was involved in a wrestling match with forward Steve Martins outside a bar in Mont Tremblant, Que. The Senators are a team that abhors negative publicity.
As it turns out, Gardiner can take on Martins for another two out of three falls since Martins was picked up by the Lightning on waivers a couple of weeks ago.
"It didn't catch me altogether off guard. I was waiting for something to happen. Sometimes change is good," said Gardiner. "Things had become a little stagnant for me here. I'm sad to leave, but I'm looking forward to new challenges and new opportunities."
The Senators have to be a little steamed with the Flames for plucking Dollas off their injury-decimated roster.
Dollas, 34, was signed Tuesday by the Senators. Because he was an unrestricted free agent signed after the waiver draft, either Dollas or somebody from the Senators' protected list had to be put on waivers.
Dollas was put on waivers which expired Thursday at noon with the Flames picking him up.
The Senators did all the work scouting and signing Dollas because they are without Sami Salo (broken wrist) and Igor Kravchuk (knee injury) on the blue line for about six weeks. John Gruden, the guy they would normally call up in that circumstance, is just getting back from a broken wrist suffered in training camp.
After losing Dollas, and with Janne Laukkanen bothered by the flu, the Senators called up youngsters Karel Rachunek and Erich Goldmann from their Grand Rapids farm team of the International Hockey League.
Rachunek played four games last week with the Senators, but saw only spot duty in the last two as coach Jacques Martin went with five defencemen.
Calgary's move Thursday leaves the Senators where they started the week. There were rumours then they were looking at signing free agents Marty McSorley or Gerald Diduck, though neither of them would seem to fit the bill near as well as Dollas.
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