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Calling Fischler’s Bluff—Chelios Won’t Lead Another PA Revolt
by George Malik on 08/28/07 at 07:57 AM ET
Comments (25)
by George James Malik
As Paul noted on Monday, the inestimable Stan Fischler had some choice words for Chris Chelios, who Fischler believes will succeed Ted Saskin as the NHLPA’s chief executive:
One hopes that some good will come of the Sheila Block-Union probe, which is due for a public revelation next Thursday. If the finger is pointed at Ted Saskin it will be old news. Chris Chelios insists that Block’s report will confirm the hiring of Saskin as the head of the Union was not within the guidelines of the NHLPA’s constitution. What really matters is where the Union goes from here. You can bet that if Chelios becomes the new, chief Association power broker there will be another civil war in two years. …
Ol’ Comrade Stan is barking up the wrong tree in looking to unleash his hatred for the PA upon Chris Chelios.
Chelios never intended to run the NHLPA—first, and foremost, he’s very busy both managing two successful restaurants and playing hockey for the Detroit Red Wings, which he plans on doing so for at least a few more years. Moreover, he never wanted to stage another lock-out—Chelios wanted to get Saskin’s butt kicked out of office, and he wants the NHLPA to act and operate as an honest, open, and accountable union. That’s all.
Chelios has his beefs with the collective bargaining agreement, there’s no doubt—Chelios and the dissidents certainly believe that Saskin and Linden looked at Bill Daly when they realized that Goodenow and Bettman really weren’t listening, and that they could craft their own compromise CBA and answer to no one if information was managed and mismanaged correctly (a certain hockey blogger asks for your money because he was an obedient “leak”), and one of the first things Saskin and Linden agreed to was a cap linked to a fixed percentage of revenues—but undoing the salary cap is not a fight Chelios or anyone else can win at this point.
The union wants to put this Saskin mess behind it and keep playing, and, at this point, the best thing that Chelios and the dissidents can accomplish is instilling an understanding that the NHLPA’s individual members may feel that they simply “can’t be bothered” by silly things like both holding the NHL accountable for its revenue projections and growing the game in a business sense—in this case, effectively managing their present and future as business-savvy partners with the league—and that the job of a player includes both the governance of a democratic or at least republican union as well as that of a group of individuals who should have 55% of the say in matters pertaining to hockey operations, whether we’re talking about rules regarding hot-button issues like head-shots, revisions to the NHL’s schedule, or potential expansion to new markets.
Neither the union nor the NHL would benefit from another lockout at this time, and Chelios of all people should know that, having been such a vocal critic of Bettman during the first lockout. The players don’t have the leverage to demand a larger percentage of revenues from the league, and they will never, ever un-do the salary cap because, as the sales of the Nashville Predators and Tampa Bay Lighting indicated, the owners have everything they could ever want in “cost certainty.”
The business of owning and operating professional sports franchises isn’t about simply making money off a strict ticket-and-sponsorship-revenues-which-outstrip-one’s expenses basis anymore. It’s a complex business venture that involves leveraging the tremendous amount of economic “clout” that a pro sports team adds to one’s business portfolio, and the biggest and best reason to own a hockey franchise these days is “cost certainty.”
As far as banks and financial planning institutions are concerned, there is no more sound an investment than one in which costs are capped to a certain percentage of revenues, and regardless of whether a professional sports franchise makes or loses money on a day-to-day basis, it remains an economic venture which will increase in equitable value consistently.
In other words, the lockout was about equity, and in a capped world, regardless of whether you’re the Nashville Predators or Toronto Maple Leafs, your franchise’s bank value increases on a year-to-year basis, and increases by substantial margins. That means more economic clout in leveraging sponsorship agreements, arena deals that may be partially or fully subsidized by governmental agencies, and the opportunity to do what any homeowner can—cash in on some of that equity, whether that’s by getting some fast cash from 1-800-reverse-rink-mortgage or starting a consulting firm that guarantees its financial planning and even loans on the bank value of its franchise…
Or cashing out when you feel that your investment has appreciated to the point that you’d rather hand off the actual day-to-day financial losses to some other schmoe.
The NHL has no real argument with the Forbes reports—other than to privately snicker when their owners look at the sales of the Predators and Bolts and say, “They always under-project our franchise values.”
If the NHLPA wants to try and undo the tie that binds costs and revenues, the NHL will happily lock them out for a decade to retain the cost certainty that was so dearly won by canceling the 2004-2005 season. Chris Chelios and the rest of the NHLPA’s members, whether they wish to be business-savvy partners in a more democratic union of players and owners, or whether they’d rather simply play, cash their paycheques, and wait to find out how much escrow they’ll get back in June as what is probably “bonus money” in the eyes of their own financial planners, all know it.
Chris Chelios is fighting to transform a union that has operated, from its outset, in a private and complicit accordance with the good old boys’ club which now controls those 30 sound financial investments, into a union that actually represents the interests of its players, and actually attempts to not only honestly operate as a labour union, but also demand a seat at the NHL’s table, whether they’re asking the NHL to finally provide an objective, external financial audit of their Hockey Related Revenues, or to ask for a say in the governance of the game and how the game is “sold” to those, “Thank You, Fans!”
Maybe that’s what Fischler’s really afraid of, and maybe that’s the war he’s really referring to—a war against happy, staid convention—and maybe Chelios and the dissidents’ collective cajones to stand up and demand the responsibilities as well as benefits of their “partnership” will be overruled by the guys who want to “just play” and let other people worry how the league works, what the rules are—aside from having a seat or two on the competition committee—and how the game is marketed and sold…
But there is at least the possibility of change, change which, as fans, will allow us to gain leverage in the governance and “selling” of the game by asking the NHLPA, as equal partners, to be more responsive to our needs and concerns than the people who take 100% of our dollars are, and that is a good thing.
Even if things remain the same, at least the players won’t be lied to by both the league they play for and the union that’s supposed to protect them and represent their best interests in their workplace, and as far as this Detroit-born son and grandson of line workers is concerned, that’s also a very, very good thing in itself.
Especially if it scares Stan Fischler.
Filed in: NHLPA, George James Malik | KK Hockey | Permalink
Comments
carrying Bettman’s bathwatre - I type like Stan thinks
Posted by MAVEN from New York on 08/28/07 at 08:27 AM ET
Umm… this is an overly long article bashing Fischer for saying something which more than one hockey reporter has hinted at happening…
Posted by bcrt on 08/28/07 at 09:07 AM ET
I cannot believe, after all that Chelios, KLatt, Roloson et al have done, that Fischler is still taking shots at them. Chelios has fought the good fight, for honesty, openess, and following the rules. And he did it for the benefit of his fellow players, and the overall good of the game. Fischler is obviously biased.
Posted by Wj on 08/28/07 at 10:30 AM ET
bcrt: would some of those hockey reporters be media cheerleaders for the league like Fischler was during the lockout? If so, their opinion regarding the NHLPA is not to be taken seriously since they’re so obviously biased against the PA.
Posted by Spector from Charlottetown, PEI, Canada on 08/28/07 at 11:30 AM ET
Good article, George, by the way.
Posted by Spector from Charlottetown, PEI, Canada on 08/28/07 at 11:31 AM ET
I think the most important thing for the players is if Chelios and others can get them to understand that they all need to grow up a little bit and take some responsibility for their own futures. No one likes (in any job) to worry about how much to deduct from a paycheck for a retirement plan or 401K or IRA, and health insurance is really, really boring—but we all have to deal with it in our jobs because if we don’t attempt to look out for our own interests, no one else will—not an employer or insurance company, or in the case of hockey players, agents, owners, or front office employees. They can’t just brush off the workings of the union as something that doesn’t concern them as long as the paychecks don’t bounce, and at least pay attention and stay informed even if they do not choose to get involved.
Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 08/28/07 at 12:00 PM ET
Good article. I get much more out of it than just Fischler-bashing. Not that I’m saying Fischler-bashing is bad…
BTW, my 1st post at KK, so “hi” everyone. Been lurking about for a year or more and finally decided to get off my keister and sign up. So I picked a really cool username and signed up for a new, really cool matching email address and I’m just feeling all really cool and stuff. Ready to join in the fun. So, how long till I get my secret decoder ring???
Posted by BobTheZee on 08/28/07 at 02:21 PM ET
Welcome BTZ and your decoder ring is in the mail.
Glad to have you aboard and you joined just in time.
With the new KK very, very close, membership will have even more privelages.
Posted by Paul from Motown Area on 08/28/07 at 02:29 PM ET
New priveleges? I guess I’ll have to track down my membership info. I don’t know that I’ve ever logged in, aside from the confirmation process.
Posted by shep from california on 08/28/07 at 03:07 PM ET
Shep, if you email me I can get you the information in case you can’t locate it.
Posted by Paul from Motown Area on 08/28/07 at 03:11 PM ET
I kind of thought that Stan’s errant comment on Chris, was more of a sly commentary on Chelio’s divisive and strong-arm attitude than anything else. I don’t think Stan really thinks Chris would take that job at this moment when he’s still playing. He’s not that daft. But, perhaps, curtailing future inclinations by Chris politically with a thinly veiled potshot.
Interesting article, albeit based on Stan’s few throwaway lines though. Lots of good info and analysis of the business at-large.
Posted by B.D. Gallof from Freeport, NY on 08/28/07 at 03:27 PM ET
Secret decoder ring? Ooooh, sounds cool! 
Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 08/28/07 at 03:48 PM ET
Hmmm, Hockey News says the same thing as Fischler is saying in the current issue. Where will the long-winded defense of Chelios that also slams THN show up?
Posted by Petey on 08/28/07 at 09:21 PM ET
B.D.—that was the point of my commentary. Guys like Fischler and Dupont used pom-pons cheering for Bettman during the lockout, and they still slam the PA at every opportunity, so I don’t see any point in spending more than a paragraph simply bashing Grandpa Simpson Fischler.
Any media alarmist can push the panic button and assert that Chelios’s victory in ousting Saskin equals the return of an NHL-antagonistic PA led by someone of Bob Goodenow’s ilk (like, say, Chelios himself), and, ultimately, a player-led “strike.”
It’s obvious that the NHL-NHLPA unity which the media all but described as a “golden era” of peace, cooperation, and happily skipping through a meadow, hand in hand (the NHL supporters’ rhetoric really did become that mushy-gooey bizzare on more than one occasion), but there’s no way in hell that the PA’s going to instigate a third lockout, regardless of who’s in charge of the union.
The owners have what they want in cost certainty, and they’re not going to give up double-digit increases in franchise equity for any reason. As I already stated, the PA’s best option at this point is to embrace their “partnership” as 55% stakeholders of the game.
Is bashing Fischler the article’s “hook?” Sure. Is it worth talking about any of this “the next lockout is coming” commentary without actually discussing the substance behind the rhetoric, the rality of the situation, or the positive possibilities involved? No way.
Posted by George Malik from South Lyon, MI on 08/28/07 at 11:08 PM ET
Right on , George. I lost all respect for Fischler and Dupont with their rabid cheerleading for the league during the lockout.
Rather than once again trying to single out the players as the bad guys, Fischler and Dupont should perhaps consider the real possibility that the next work stoppage - if it comes - could pit owner against owner, rather than owners against players.
The players for the most part appear resigned to playing under a salary cap, indeed, life under a cap system has been pretty good for them so far. Salaries continue to rise with revenues (which under this CBA will probably continue although I do anticipate a slowing in those increases over the next five years), they qualify for UFA status at a younger age, which is ensuring now that younger players, rather than aging vets, make the most money, they’ve retained their arbitration rights and the minimum salary is higher now than under the previous CBA.
But the worry now isn’t the “greedy players”, but the increasing cap making it tough for small markets to keep up with the cap floor.
That’s not something the owners can pin on the players. The league got its cost certainty, thus ensuring that the players under this CBA will never get more than 57% of league revenues. Currently they’ll receive 55.5 percent for the upcoming season. The owners even got escrow meaning they can claw back a portion of the players salaries should those salaries rise higher than revenue in a given season.
The league could try to force the players to accept a lower percentage of revenues, perhaps try to scale it back to the 54% level of the 2005-06 season, but that’ll come with a price, likely the reduction or outright abolishment of escrow.
Sure, the new BoG leader Jeremy Jacobs will likely try to blame the players next time, but that argument will no longer hold water. This is the owners CBA, the one cheerleaders like Fischler and Dupont smugly crowed was proof of the owners clear-cut victory over the players. They can’t come back in four or five years time and blame the players as they did in the past for any unforeseen problems found within this CBA.
The league also cannot afford another work stoppage, even if it only lasted a few weeks. NHL fans lost an entire season of hockey and came back, but the lockout did perhaps irreparable damage to the league’s visibility in the American sports market. Next time, the league risks damage to its loyal fanbase. The fans bought into the league’s side of the story in the last lockout, but the league cannot count on the fans buying that snake oil again, since the league claimed it needed the cap system of cost certainty to survive.
If the players claim they’re willing to continue under the current system - the owners’ CBA - and overall they’re happy with how its working, the league will find it very difficult to paint the players as the bad guys next time around.
I foresee the struggling small market owners will be clashing with their big market peers for an improved system of revenue sharing. If the Canadian dollar remains as robust in five years time as it is today, I doubt we’ll see the owners of the Edmonton Oilers, Calgary Flames and Ottawa Senators pleading poverty and siding with the struggling small-market American teams.
After all, it’s the stronger “loonie” that is responsible for the Oilers, Flames and Senators ability to spend more now than the salary cap. No, the Oilers, Flames and Sens will want to keep things the way they are, and they won’t be keen to having any of their revenue heading south to support struggling US-based franchises.
For the record, while I found the last lockout a senseless exercise that would do the league more harm than good, I was on the player side. That being said, I didn’t hesitate to point out where they were wrong with their stance and where the league was right. It called being unbiased, something Fischler and Dupont never were in their coverage of the lockout or any labour-related reportage since then.
Posted by Spector from Charlottetown, PEI, Canada on 08/29/07 at 06:11 AM ET
I thought cost certainty was going to cut ticket prices as well and we see where that promise went. Too many people drank the Kool-Aid and sided with the poor billionaires against the big bad millionaires. We tend to forget it was a lockout and NOT a strike. Let’s put the blame for a loss of a Stanley Cup championship where it truly lies.
Posted by hockey1919 from montreal on 08/29/07 at 09:24 AM ET
Lyle, I may as well have been walking around during the lockout with a t-shirt that said “BROOKS WAS RIGHT!” on one side and had an NHLPA logo on the other. On the hockey board I was participating in during the lockout, one of our favourite games was trading ideas as to how one might eliminate Bob Goodenow and/or Gary Bettman from the face of the earth, preferably both, and preferably at the same time.
I shook hands with players at charity games, telling them I was rooting for them, and I still wanted to chop Goodenow’s block off for being so damn brazen in those last few days before the CBA expired, and expecting the players to sit for a full year-and-a-half to “break the owners.” I say this as someone who believes that the vast majority of the current CBA, salary cap and revenue-sharing excluded, was based upon the players’ December 9th proposal, and I say this as someone who would still like to take both Bettman and Goodenow for a nice walk along the Detroit River at night to try on some “new shoes.”
Now? Larry Brooks is back to making up insane rumours—he’s still disturbingly insightful when he talks about the CBA, mind you—but Fischler and Dupont are still finding ways to take digs at Dupont’s “Just Say No Player’s Association” in every other article they write, and anyone who takes issue with the cheer-leading squad’s gloating is told to mind their own business, because we’re all supposed to be trying to move on from the “unfortunate work stoppage.”
I’m fairly certain that the CBA’s woefully inadequate and ridiculously flawed revenue-sharing program, which, bizzarrely enough, was passed without any sort of performance or attendance incentives to, say, expect the heavily-subsidized teams to do anything more than show up and trade day-to-day losses for equity gains, nor any understanding of the fact that using playoff gate receipts to fuel the system actually penalizes successful playoff runs—I think there’s another article in this paragraph—Is less of a concern to the BoG than the fact that the cap floor is above the “carrying capacity” of somewhere just south of a fifth of the NHL’s teams, or the fact that some of the lockout’s hardest-liners in Edmonton and Philadelphia fueled a stunningly inflationary spending spree that’s resulted in the return of the $10 million player salary, if only with bonuses included.
As far as I’m concerned, once the shine of the Preds’ and Bolts’ sale prices and the lure of hundreds of millions of dollars in “free money” from expansion wear off, the league’s biggest markets will indeed find themselves with a smaller-market revolt on their hands, and they’ll bite right back by asking why it should matter when it’s their cash cows—their playoff runs—that are being raided to keep the weaker sisters afloat.
What happens then? Another campaign against the “greedy players,” which several of the more league-friendly media have already tried employing on a few occasions toward the end of the 06-07 season?
It sure makes more sense than talking about contraction, relocating teams to Canadian markets (should ownership groups emerge outside Ontario, a.k.a. Leafs territory), or admitting that, while the smaller markets are more than willing to outbid a larger market for prime talent, they’ll do so complaining all the way about a cap floor that slowly but steadily increases from year to year (I’m with ya there, too, Lyle).
I can already hear Bettman warming up his “Inflationary Spiral” speech, and it’s scary to think that, in this supply-and-demand world, it might just work for a third time.
Posted by George Malik from South Lyon, MI on 08/29/07 at 09:33 AM ET
George, Bettman and the owners can keep citing “inflationary spiral” all they want, the point is, that dog won’t hunt next time around, that is, if they’re stupid enough to have a next time around.
This is the league and the owners CBA, the one they claimed they needed for their survival, to make the games affordable to their fans, and to level the playing surface to ensure all thirty teams could have an equal chance for competitiveness.
Sure, I expect the usual gang of hardline idiots to trot out the “greedy players” banner again, and the usual gang of media sycophants regurgitating that lie, but the bottom line is this current CBA gave the owners everything they wanted. To try to come back again with the greedy players mantra simply won’t wash next time around.
It’s still early in this CBA, we’re only heading into season three, so we’re seeing little foresight from the media, although to be fair many are probably still weary from the lockout coverage and simply aren’t willing yet to report on NHL-NHLPA labour negotiations.
The media isn’t ignoring the present. Last summer and this summer there were plenty of articles questioning the validity of cost certainty; the overpayment of UFA talent, the return of big market teams to the UFA spending frenzy, the steady increase in ticket prices, the league’s lack of visibility in the American sports market, and that small market American-based teams are struggling to keep pace with the cap.
Topping the list this summer was the Nashville Predators, whose owner was one of Bettman’s lockout point men crying for a cost certainty that ultimately couldn’t induce more Nashville business interest and fan support in his team. That’s not a slam against Predators fans, but NHL attendance statistics back this up.
The hockey media, especially in Canada, question the league’s supposed attempts to block Jim Balsillie’s attempt to purchase the club and the fact that the guy who hoped to purchase the team and move it to Kansas City is now a minority owner with the Preds and in perfect position to buy out the rest of his partners should the new ownership decide in a few years they can’t make a go of it.
From what I’ve seen, the media is focusing far more on the present, with only Fischler and Dupont taking their little potshots at the league whilst conveniently overlooking the real issues that their peers are reporting and analyzing.
That’s why I don’t believe the league can count on compliant media support next time around if the owners are stupid enough to trot out the “blame the players” mantra again. That’s a one-trick pony that simply won’t wash next time.
Maybe I’m being naive, but I’m seeing far more critical pieces on the league of late than of the players. Even the coverage of the NHLPA in recent months has been more even-handed than in the past.
Posted by Spector from Charlottetown, PEI, Canada on 08/29/07 at 10:04 AM ET
Sorry, that blurb about Fischler and Dupont in the third-to-last para should read that “Fischer and Dupont taking their little potshots at the PA”, not the league.
Posted by Spector from Charlottetown, PEI, Canada on 08/29/07 at 10:07 AM ET
Well put George. Valid point.
And Lyle….great great analysis.
this is turning into quite a roundtable discussion over the press…especially those who come down on one side over another.
however, I’ll keep with the comedy, since most great points are already stated wonderfully. And that leads to if we will have future deep discussions to Stan’s future blogs like:
“I am a Tuba. Toot! Toot!”
“Where are my pants?”
“Oatmeal. The other white meat”
All in all, Stan is simply shooting from the hip, like it or not. As for his pro-stance as opposed to unbiased or at least introspective stances, like Spector’s well-thought out comment here…it just ain’t happening. Perhaps Stan knows something we don’t. After all, despite him being vilified for comments, by myself and others, he is also very well-placed to GMs and NHL brass. Obviously this also pins him into one corner when commenting on the lockout, however, I would remiss to at least consider that there might be more to certain issues than what leaks from NHLPA, as well as NHL brass for that matter.
We all like to think we know the mechanics from what we glean and sweep from the wreckage of a lockout, or simply the grapevine from either camps. But, do we really? Or might we have to leave some room there for error?
We can rail on ownership, who clearly put themselves in that leaky pre-CBA barge. Or the players. We can take a nice little spinner and spin to choose who to blame for the dysfunction. I’d prefer to blame both simply because the entire system is cockeyed, and both bear that responsibility.
Posted by B.D. Gallof from Freeport, NY on 08/29/07 at 10:27 AM ET
BD: I highly doubt Fischler knows something we don’t, especially when it comes to the PA which he vilifies at every turn and never, ever, has a kind word to say about any player who’s involved with the player executive.
For example, he ran down Dwayne Roloson’s play last season, actually claiming Jussi Markkanen was a better goalie who outplayed Roloson, when the stats clearly showed at the time of his outrageous claim that it simply wasn’t true.
Moreover, I caught Fischler fudging a fact during the lockout. He used comments made by Pierre Dagenais in October 2004 questioning the lockout and reported them in January 2005 that Dagenais made that comment within two weeks of Fischler’s article. When I publicly called him on it on my website, magically that report disappeared from his column.
Posted by Spector from Charlottetown, PEI, Canada on 08/29/07 at 10:39 AM ET
Well, there goes that theory out the door.
Posted by B.D. Gallof from Freeport, NY on 08/29/07 at 10:47 AM ET
Here’s what Stan wrote in his MSG Network column in mid-January 2005.
Stan Fischler, MSG Network:
“The NHLPA figured it had brainwashed-intimidated Pierre Dagenais out of thinking a Salary Cap is good for the NHL. Here’s the latest from gutsy Pierre. “Guys have started to talk in the last three weeks,” says Dagenais. “It could open Bob Goodenow’s eyes. I’d be curious to see if they took a poll of the players on a Cap.” They may be surprised to see how many players in my situation would vote in favor of a Cap.” And that’s precisely why Goodenow wouldn’t dare allow such a secret ballot. He knows he’ll lose.”
And here’s my response in my Soapbox at the time:
“Actually, the “gutsy” Dagenais made that quote last October, about a week prior to the NHLPA player reps meeting with Bob Goodenow. His last public statement regarding a salary cap was on November 2nd, after he attended that meeting. Here’s what he said, “I said what I said last week, but it was nice to come here and learn a lot about the issues,” Dagenais told reporters after the meeting. “Now I know that the union is not trying to negotiate a deal for the high-end guys, but they are doing it for everyone.”
Mr. Fischler implied Dagenais recently made those comments which as the links proof is not true.”
Perhaps other folks also caught this and brought it to MSG Network’s or Fischler’s attention, resulting in that paragraph’s subsequent removal from his column.
Posted by Spector from Charlottetown, PEI, Canada on 08/29/07 at 10:50 AM ET
Is this article what you’re talking about, Petey?
Questions surrounding the NHLPA strategy surfaced recently when agents received a letter from Adam Larry, the NHLPA’s associate counsel, licensing, concerning the union’s Group Licensing Authorization Agreement (GLA). In the letter, Larry states, “In addition to generating revenue for the NHLPA that can be used, among other things, to build a war chest for upcoming CBA negotiations, the GLA demonstrates union solidarity among its members.”
Larry declined comment on the contents of the letter, but sources contacted by THN said the “war chest” reference was likely more a poor choice of words than an indication of the union’s strategy.
But one agent said it’s not unfathomable the NHLPA could be bracing for a fight in two years’ time, given there is a faction of players who don’t like the deal and a number of small market owners who haven’t seen the benefits of a salary cap.
“The (Chris) Chelios group, which is driving the bus, doesn’t like this agreement and on the management side we read all the time about how various people don’t like this agreement,” the agent said. “So where do you think we’re headed? It’s just a matter of time, unfortunately. There will not be a new CBA before this one expires, I think it’s fair to say.”
Yeah, then Chelios says this:
Chelios, also on the committee, said nothing will be done in terms of strategy until a new union head is hired.
“That’s something that’s going to be up to the new executive director,” Chelios said. “We’re a ship without a captain right now and we’ll leave some of that burden up to the next executive director to decide whether we’re ready or not.”
There’s very little clarification as to whether Chelios was talking about a potential “labour dispute,” or whether he was simply talking about the fact that the PA needs a new direction…
Besides, it’s called “due dilligence.” If the NHL hasn’t already started building up a “just in case” war chest, I’d be stunned.
And yes, the Hockey News was staunchly behind the owners during the lockout. Whoop-dee-doo.
Posted by George Malik from South Lyon, MI on 08/30/07 at 05:54 AM ET
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Stan Fischler is a sycophantic NHL toady that has been caring Bettman’s bathwater from day 1. How else could a no talent hack remain in business as long as he has without sucking up to the powers that be?
Posted by MAVEN from New York on 08/28/07 at 08:21 AM ET