In case you haven’t heard, that jackass of a commissioner, Gary Bettman, has hinted at the possibility that the NHL will not be sending players to the Olympics after the 2010 games in Vancouver.  Meanwhile, the NHLPA has shown unwavering support for continued participation.

With the 2014 Winter games taking place in Sochi, Russia, there’s no way that I would expect this Russian superstar to refuse to play for his country.  “Nobody can say to me you can’t play for your country in the Olympic Games,” Ovechkin said. “I don’t care.  I’ll go play in the Olympic Games for my country. If somebody says to me you can’t play, see ya.”

Is Bettman hell-bent on destroying this sport?  It just doesn’t make any sense to me that we’ve gotten to the point where a player is forced to choose between playing in the NHL and representing their country in the Olympics.  It’s silly and dumb, actually.

image: TSN

Post from: Hockey Beat

Honestly, with everyone playing the way they have been lately, it’s not only going to be tough to predict a playoff winner, it’s also going to be hard to pick which games I watch.  As much as I hate the admit it, the Canucks have been pretty exciting.

Check out the action from last week!

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I have to admit that I am green-obsessed and was happy to hear that the NHL Players’ Association was getting on board to do their part in helping the environment.  They are getting a little help from David Suzuki, though.  I swear, that man’s voice is in my head all day every day so I think it’s a good partnership.

The players have agreed to become more eco-friendly at home and at work through the NHLPA Carbon Neutral Challenge.  The initiative "involves players purchasing clean-air credits to compensate for the extra carbon produced by their extensive travels — a concept known as carbon offsets.  All the money they raise will help fund three clean-air projects around the world through Montreal-based not-for-profit Planetair."

More after the jump!

"It’s unbelievable how guys pick up on it and know something is important," said Boston Bruins defenceman Andrew Ference. "Hockey is filled with a lot of great character and guys are showing it by stepping up and doing the right thing.

"It’s all about taking initiative and we have a lot of guys who are really good at doing that."

More than 350 players — including everyone on the Florida Panthers and Dallas Stars — have already signed up to contribute $290 annually and hundreds more are expected to join in the coming weeks.

The amount is based on a clean-air credit cost of $29 per ton and research that says each NHL player contributes 10 tons of carbon emissions per season.

It’s a small amount so I hope everyone gets involved.  It’s really not that big of a sacrifice but the attention their efforts will bring to the cause could be priceless.

"Environmentalists would kill to get this type of attention," he joked as he pointed to a line of cameras. "Let’s face it, an old crusty guy like me, an environmentalist, who the hell is going to listen to me? But these guys connect directly with our youth and it’s all about the future."

Ference, who helped spearheaded the initiative, said he was inspired by a meeting last year with Suzuki.

"I remember David saying to me that, if Wayne Gretzky was just starting his minor hockey career today, his father wouldn’t be able to build the outdoor rink like he once did because the climate has changed so much," said Ference, who drives a hybrid car and has switched his house to wind power. "That really stuck with me."

Andrew Ference was formerly on the Calgary Flames and he did a lot in the community here so I’m not at all surprised by his involvement.

via CBC Sports

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Eleven years ago, when the Vancouver Canucks beat the Chicago Blackhawks 2-1 in overtime, Trevor Linden got into Chris Chelios’s face after the winning goal and the pair tussled.

Chelios threw the first punch and, after the players were separated, accused Linden of covering up and refusing to fight. And that was the high point of their relationship. It has devolved the last two years as Chelios leads his crusade for justice within a National Hockey League Players’ Association that Linden, as the union’s former president, led through a labour war that scuttled the 2004-05 season.

Sunday, Linden seemed ready for the fight.

“It’s easy to pile on,” Linden said before facing Chelios and the Detroit Red Wings Sunday night at GM Place. “I will say this: I’m extremely proud of the decisions the

[NHLPA]

executive committee made. I think we made, in very difficult times, good decisions for the players.”

More after the jump!

Chelios would disagree. He has disagreed since a union coup in the summer of 2005 saw Ted Saskin hired as executive director, replacing Bob Goodenow, shortly after the NHLPA accepted a salary cap to end the owners’ lockout.

It quickly became clear that the NHLPA, by not putting the hiring to a secret ballot by player reps, had failed to follow its constitution. That mistake, union leadership felt, was rectified that autumn when a mail-in vote was conducted.

But Chelios has led a group of dissident players since then. He celebrated Saskin’s dismissal last spring as vindication, although the firing offence of spying on players through NHLPA email had nothing to do with the initial allegation that Saskin was hired inappropriately.

Sunday morning, with the conviction of a player half his age, the 45-year-old Chelios said the fight is far from over despite the NHLPA’s introduction last week of Boston lawyer Paul Kelly, whose background is in criminal prosecution rather than contract or labour law, as the union’s new executive director.

“You like to say you want to put it behind you, but there’s still some things,” Chelios said when asked when his crusade will end. “I know a lot more than most of the players in the league because I’ve followed it so closely. Do we need to keep dragging it on? I don’t know, in the same token, you can’t let [things] go unpunished.”

It’s unclear, however, what – if anything – the NHLPA did that is punishable. Chelios’ recent claim that powerful agent Don Meehan, who represents Linden and many others, undermined the NHLPA during the lockout was met with legal action by Meehan.

Counselling clients is what agents are paid to do. Negotiating Collective Bargaining Agreements are about diplomacy and politics. If Meehan, Linden or anyone else worked back channels for a solution, that’s neither exceptional or indictable.

It’s also difficult to argue the injustice of a salary cap tied to league revenues when NHL payrolls for this season were boosted to a maximum of $50.3 million and the average player salary has never been higher.

Apart from Saskin’s unconscionable email surveillance of his own members, the most damning accusation against him is that he seemed chummy with his counterparts at the league office.

Still, his spying was a betrayal of trust, and his dismissal has provided ammunition to Chelios and others to revise history. It also caused many to issue a guilty-by-association verdict against Linden.

“The one thing that was inexcusable. . . was the email situation, which had been going on for several years there, even before Ted was hired,” Linden said. “I had no idea [at the time]. That was why he got fired.

“I still think he was the right guy for the job. Unfortunately, when confidential, leaked information [about union business] started showing up in The Toronto Star and all this stuff was being leaked through the media, in an effort to figure out where and why that was happening, Ted made a mistake in judgement. I’m disappointed that happened.

“It’s easy to pile on and everything else. [But] sometimes when you’re in certain situations, you make poor judgements. Everyone is guilty of making judgements that aren’t right.”

Chelios claims he feels no malice towards Linden, but wondered Sunday morning why the Canuck hadn’t said anything publicly regarding Saskin’s firing or actions that preceded it. That challenge prompted Linden’s remarks to The Vancouver Sun.

“I’m the last guy in the world to say I always played by the rules,” Chelios said. “But in the same token, the young guys don’t know. I’ve learned at my age you got to be careful who you trust and who you listen to. You hope the people you’re supposed to trust can be honest with you.

“Being a veteran player, the oldest player and been what I’ve been through, I have an obligation to the young guys, to my teammates, to do what I feel is right.”

“Right” is open to interpretation. Linden noted that conspiracy theories – Meehan’s influence, Saskin’s relationship with NHL executives – have been floating around for two years but no one has proven any impropriety.

He cited Toronto lawyer Sheila Block’s independent investigation last summer.

“There was nothing in that report we hadn’t already discussed,” Linden said. “I don’t really have any feelings about Chris. Chris wanted an investigation. We did that. Sheila did a full investigation. All the conspiracy theories out there, they’ve been alleging this for years. It’s the same thing. It never stops, never stops.”

Tags: chris chelios, trevor linden, saskin, nhlpa

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Kelly was nominated Oct. 15 to replace Saskin as executive director following an exhaustive search by a five-player committee consisting of Mike Cammalleri, Chris Chelios, Shawn Horcoff, Eric Lindros and Robyn Regehr, with the help of Reilly Partners, a Chicago headhunting firm.

Kelly is a partner at Kelly, Libby and Hoopes, a Boston law firm specializing in complex civil and administrative litigation.

He was the assistant district attorney involved in a grand jury investigation into Alan Eagleson, the NHLPA’s first executive director.

Eagleson was indicted by a Boston grand jury and, in 1998, pleaded guilty to three counts of mail fraud.

He was fined $700,000 US and, later that year, pleaded guilty in a Toronto court to three more counts of fraud and embezzling proceeds from the 1984, 1987 and 1991 Canada Cup tournaments.

Eagleson was sentenced to 18 months in prison and served six months at the Mimico Correctional Centre in Toronto before being released.

Tags: paul kelly, nhlpa, ken kim, ted saskin, hockey, players association

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Player paycheques will be 9.5 per cent smaller during the first quarter of the 2007-08 NHL season, but that money could find its way back later on depending on the league’s bottom line.

The money withheld goes to a fund established under the new collective bargaining agreement to ensure owners don’t give up more in player salaries than their allotted share of revenues.

The NHL and NHL Players’ Association signed off on the 9.5 per cent number for the first quarter of the season on Tuesday, sources told The Canadian Press, and will monitor revenues throughout the season to see if it needs to be adjusted.

Last season players had 10 per cent of their paycheques held back but the final calculations saw players only pay out 2.76 per cent to the league with the rest reimbursed. In the end, once interest was factored in, the players earned 97.51 per cent of their 2006-07 salaries and bonuses.

In 2005-06, the first year of the CBA, the owners were the ones that got dinged – having to pay players back 4.37 per cent.

The final tally for this season will be figured out next fall.

A percentage of player salaries is held back because it’s impossible to predict league revenues and total player compensation in advance.

The salary cap continues to go up, with the players’ going up to 55.6 per cent last season from 54 per cent of revenues in 2005-06.

Tags: NHL, NHLPA, salary cap

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Moving on…

Yesterday, Gary Buttmunch Bettman grinned like the lizard he is when the NHL, NHLPA in Canada and Scotiabank came to a $50 milllion dollar sponsorship deal (isn’t that less than what Daniel Brière got from the Flyers? LOL).

The agreement also allows the bank to put its stamp on the National Hockey League Players’ Association with a full range of banking services and on CBC’s Hockey Night In Canada through its sponsorship of a new pre-game show called Scotiabank Hockey Tonight.

While financial terms were not disclosed by either Scotiabank or the NHL, one sports industry journal reported the deal was worth about $50 million over five years for both the rights fees and related advertising.

Rick Waugh, Scotiabank president and CEO, called the deal a “true hat trick,” noting the bank, the NHL and hockey fans all win with the agreement.

More after the jump!

The deal comes just one day after two of the bank’s bigger rivals spent more than $10 billion (U.S.) on foreign acquisitions. And while Scotiabank prides itself on being Canada’s “most international bank,” yesterday Waugh was selling Canada as a “land of great opportunity” for his bank.

“We are a hockey nation. It’s part of our culture, its part of our heritage,” Waugh said yesterday, flanked by NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and Ian Penny, associate counsel for the NHLPA.

And Waugh is banking on that down-home Canuck patriotism to translate into fatter profits. “It is good business for us,” he said.

Scotiabank already sponsors the Calgary Flames, the Edmonton Oilers and the Ottawa Senators, whose home arena was renamed Scotiabank Place in 2006. But its love affair with hockey predates the NHL and stretches back to the days of the Bankers Hockey League in 1908.

In 1971, it created a hockey-themed banking program for youth called The Scotiabank Hockey College. It also supports minor hockey across the country.

While its international presence is well noted, Scotiabank is a “relatively” smaller banking player in Canada and is eager to enlarge its share of the domestic retail market. Sponsorship deals such as this one, along with last week’s wildly successful Nuit Blanche arts festival, go a long way to broadening its name recognition. Last year, the bank spent more than $42 million in various sponsorships and donations to do just that.

But it is not the only bank playing the sports-sponsorship game. Toronto’s FC soccer team plays on BMO Field, while the NHL’s Boston Bruins and the NBA’s Celtics play in the TD Banknorth Garden and the Orlando Magic’s home stadium is the TD Waterhouse Center.

The RBC Center in Raleigh, N.C., is home to another NHL team, the Carolina Hurricanes, while HSBC Bank Canada is an official partner of the Toronto Blue Jays.

Scotiabank, however, sponsors the three Canadian NHL teams that went to the last three Stanley Cup finals. Said Bettman: “I assure you it was a coincidence, not a term of this deal.”

Tags: NHL, NHLPA, Scotiabank, NHL Scotiabank

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These days, the NHLPA is looking for a fresh start. It needs a new executive director and, arguably, a new mandate to take care of its members other than trying to get them more money. For example, the NHLPA and the NHL need to look at ways to make the game safer. The institution of mandatory visors should be seriously explored. As well, the NHLPA and NHL need to take a serious look at the troubling issue of concussions, which are becoming increasingly common. Maybe the equipment needs to be modified. If you look at elbow and shoulder pads these days, it’s not equipment any more but dangerous armour. Look what Chris Pronger did to Tomas Holstrom during the playoffs.

This week, the NHLPA is hoping to launch itself in a new direction by holding three days of meetings. It has put together an advisory committee consisting Shawn Horcoff, Bryan Muir and Eric Lindros that will come back with a series of recommendations after extensive discussions with the union heads of other sports leagues and Fortune 500 executives. Hopefully, what the committee will suggest is a new beginning that will see the NHLPA and NHL create a real partnership with win-win propositions for both sides.

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1. The scandal-plagued NHLPA plans to meet with a couple of sports union heavyweights in Toronto this week: Major League Baseball Player Association’s Donald Fehr, MLBPA legal counsel Michael Weinberg and National Basketball Players Association director Charles Grantham. The trio is apparently going to help the NHLPA, which has been leadership since executive director Ted Saskin was fired “for cause”, map out its future.

2. The Buffalo Sabres have yet to start contract negotiations with free-agent stars Daniel Briere and Chris Drury. To me, Drury seems like a safer bets given the Montreal Canadiens are expected to aggressively pursue the Quebec-born Briere. The Canadiens did not do well during last year’s free-agent campaign, settling for Sergei Samsonov, who was a huge bust.

3. The Stanley Cup finals are doing well on CBC and French-language Reseau des Sports but ratings on NBC in the U.S are – surprise, surprise, down from last year. The NBC affiliate in Tampa Bay cancelled its coverage of the finals to telecast an annual charity telethon.

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