Dear Dany Heatley, Thanks so much. Love, your BFF, Winnipeg

My old friend and the captain of my first roller hockey team, Josh Marks, made a strong case this spring for the viability and importance of Atlanta as an NHL City. As the ninth largest market in the US (and one of the fastest growing over the last couple decades), Atlanta is one of the more important places a league trying to build itself up in the US should concentrate its marketing efforts.

Now that a second NHL franchise has left Atlanta for Canada with its ready-made hockey fans and ubiquitous instant ice (just add water), it becomes clear that the NHL is not trying to market itself to the US in any organized fashion.

NHL owners see expansion as a chance to collect expansion fees from new investors. They don't see the potential to increase TV market share and build themselves up to a regular network tv event. A new franchise in the NHL means nothing to the existing teams. In fact, as the move from Quebec to Colorado in the early nineties showed, even an old franchise doesn't mean too much to its fellows.

As such, an NHL stands or falls based on the players it drafts and the teams it builds around them. The Atlanta Thrashers were lucky enough to draft Dany Heatley and Ilya Kovalchuck, to top choices who panned out perfectly as star players capable of elevating the status of their team. Unfortunately, those teams haven't been in Atlanta.

After Heatley killed one of his teammates in a drunk driving accident, he requested a trade to a contender and helped the Ottawa Senators reach the Finals. Kovalchuck hung on for a few years in the South before signing a huge contract with the New Jersey Devils. The Devils haven't won a playoff round with Kovalchuck, either, but at least New Jersey now has the status of the team Kovalchuck chose to sign a $100 million contract with. That's better than Atlanta, where after almost a decade with hardly any solid players around him, Kovalchuck passed up a $101 million contract.

To the average fan in Atlanta, that has to send a bit of a message.

The Capitals, by contrast, have been very lucky with their most recent high draft picks. Alex Ovechkin was drafted by the Capitals, enjoys playing in Washington and signed a long-term, hundred million dollar deal to stay in Washington without really looking at other teams. He's showed flashes of playoff brilliance and has the potential to win it all one day with the team that picked him and built itself carefully and conscientiously around him.

When Ovechkin works well with someone, that person stays on the team. When it looks like people can't quite keep up with all of his brilliant moves, they go somewhere else. So to some extent the strength of the current team in Washington is a matter of good management. But it also has a lot to do with building around a star who is strong enough to hold the team together and lead it.

While Dany Heatley's desire to leave Atlanta and start over somewhere new after killing his friend and totaling a new Ferrari in a drunk driving accident is somewhat understandable, it's a lot nicer to cheer for a top athlete who knows how to pick a designated driver.