Hockey scouts and player personnel staff love the entry draft.

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With good reason.

For most of the long season, these hockey people toil in the background, blending into the crowd at amateur and professional rinks, thanklessly watching hundreds of hours of games involving known prospects and what they hope could be late-round gems.

No one can accuse them of doing it for the glory -- there is so little of it in their profession.

The draft is the one day for the scouts and their picks to enjoy a day in the sun.

Unusually for the Ottawa Senators, a dominant June story threatens to eclipse the prospect focus heading into this year's 2009 entry draft in Montreal -- the trade demand of the Senators' high-scoring winger, Dany Heatley.

What a difference a year makes.

Last June, Ottawa was bracing for the onslaught as the host city of the 2008 draft. It was all about Steven Stamkos and the picks to follow. While Senators general manager Bryan Murray said he felt no pressure to make a splash just because the event was at Scotiabank Place, he did make some news, trading up to draft Swedish defenceman Erik Karlsson 15th overall. Ottawa's Swedish-born captain, Daniel Alfredsson, stepped to the microphone to announce the pick.

This year, barring another move, the Senators' first pick is ninth, high enough to expect a good future NHLer. When his name is called, the player will have his moment.

On Monday, though, when Murray, assistant GM Tim Murray and hockey operations director Brent Flahr met local media for a draft preview session, the first line of questioning was not about Ottawa's potential first pick, but about the possibility of moving Heatley.

Murray says he has told fellow GMs, "This is going to happen ... tell me what your best offer is."

By Wednesday or Thursday, he wants everyone's best pitch for the two-time 50-goal scorer.

The rumours and expectation of a big deal by Friday make it feel more like the NHL trade deadline than the entry draft but, once the Heatley deal goes down, the draft can take on its own life as usual, with further trades involving picks.

Whether the Heatley trade will involve a pick is unclear. Some teams selecting ahead of Ottawa have shown interest in the big winger. Some teams are offering prospects in a deal, and Murray says he won't ask for a pick if teams are sending a prospect and a player this way.

By the way, congratulations, Ottawa.

Murray has spent 14 NHL seasons as a GM and 17 as a coach, and in that time has had only two players make trade demands -- both of them Senators, defenceman Joe Corvo and now Heatley.

"Joe Corvo, his agent contacted me on a regular basis and asked that I move him out of here, and they denied it afterward. That's why I got Dany to send me a letter (confirming the request)," Murray says.

Corvo was sent to Carolina in February of 2008, along with Patrick Eaves, for Mike Commodore and Cory Stillman -- a deal for the Hurricanes' future and what was supposed to be a playoff run by Ottawa. It turned out to be four games.