A Crack in the NHL Ice?
A Crack in the NHL Ice/Photo courtesy of Magnera - Flickr
By Rick Gethin
The Hockey Writers
As most of you know, just after 3a.m. this morning Paul Kelly was fired as Executive Director of the NHL Players Association. How many people do you know get the axe in the wee hours before sunrise? Not too many, if any, I’m sure. Does this move by the Players Association show disarray in the front office? Mark Spector of Sportsnet.ca seems to think so; “…the players who are starring early in this game have highly-suspicious motives, and histories that truly make you shake your head at a players’ union that just can’t cease its imploding ways.”
By all accounts, Paul Kelly tried working with the NHL as opposed to the way that former PA Executive Director Bob Goodenow dealt in a hard-nosed way with the league. Ultimately, the manner in which Goodenow negotiated with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman led directly to the 2004-2005 lockout. With the possibility of the lockout dragging on into a second season, which the players did not want, coupled with the hard-line stance that Goodenow had taken, he resigned as Executive Director five days after the Collective Bargaining Agreement was ratified.
Now with Kelly ousted amid criticism of being too cozy with the NHL, the door is open for another hard-line, aggressive type of union boss to take the reigns of the Players Association. Former Canadian Auto Workers union boss Buzz Hargrove seems to be one of the leading candidates to take over for Kelly, and he certainly fit’s the bill. What would it mean if Hargrove got the top job? Once again, Mark Spector; ““He is known as a highly-political, hard-ass union man. Confrontation will ensue if he is boss, and in the union world, that means work stoppages. If you are an NHL player who has decided the auto workers’ union is a model worth following, here’s an idea: Fly into economically depressed Windsor, grab a rental car and drive across the border and into the Michigan interior. There you will see an economic landscape that has been obliterated by the failure of the Big Three. Giant factories with 3,500-stall parking lots, housing 50 or 60 cars – everyone else has been laid off. Businesses are boarded up.” He doesn’t paint a very enticing picture, does he?
What does this ultimately mean for you, the hockey fan? Greg Wyszynski (Puck Daddy) sums it up best; “Enjoy hockey while you can, folks.” Pictured below is what you might see come 2011…NHL Strike?
Is another lockout looming in the not so distant future?/Photo courtesy of D'Arcy Norman - Flickr
Posted by Rick Gethin
on Aug 31 2009. Filed under Eastern Conference, NHL News/Commentary, Western Conference.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Recent Comments