Earlier this season Heatley made revealing comments to the Toronto Sun about the ordeal of Maple Leafs center Mark Bell, who will serve six months in a Santa Clara, Calif., jail after this season. Bell pleaded no contest to drunken driving and hit-and-run charges.

“Once you are on the ice, it is not that tough to cope,” says Heatley, whose accident was not connected to drinking. “You learn not to listen to the crowd and concentrate on hockey. It’s more the media that will keep bringing up his past.”

With the passage of time, it has become clear in the way Heatley handles himself that the past is truly becoming the past. In that first game back in Atlanta, the Senators canceled pregame media availability with Heatley. Surrounded by a crush of reporters at the postgame press conference, Heatley gave answers that would have made Bill Belichick sound insightful and imaginative. The session lasted 2 minutes, 10 seconds; he couldn’t get out of town fast enough.

But times change, and on his most recent visit in December, the cocksure attitude that helped vault him to stardom was back on display.

“I said the last time I was here, I see Joey, see some friends,” he said. “I enjoy coming back now, going out for dinner and seeing all those people.”

Regardless of his comfort level with personal issues, Heatley never has let them affect his game. Last season, his 50 goals and 55 assists helped the Senators advance to the Stanley Cup Finals, where they lost to Anaheim.

And this season, the Eastern Conference-leading Senators sputtered when Heatley separated his shoulder against Detroit, losing eight of their next 11 games without him.

The injury cost Heatley the chance to become only the 14^th player to record three straight 50-goal seasons, but nothing Heatley does surprises Kovalchuk.

“He’s got great hockey sense,” Kovalchuk says. “He understands hockey real well: where to go, where to pass, when to pass, when to shoot. It’s real easy to play with him. He makes all the players around him better.”

And hockey success, little by little, helps ease a personal pain that will never go away.

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