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Pay Wayne
by Paul on 11/01/09 at 08:36 AM ET
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from Larry Brooks of the NY Post,
...the NHL does seem to be offering words in support of Gretzky, even if action speaks louder. The league at this point appears to be offering talk, which obviously is much cheaper than $8.2 million.
“The decision was made this summer when the League decided to make a bid to purchase that it couldn’t assume Wayne’s contract. That was discussed with Wayne and his people before we filed our bid and they understood the rationale,” deputy commissioner Bill Daly wrote in an e-mail to Slap Shots on Friday night.
“That doesn’t mean he has to go it alone. We committed to him that we would do everything possible to get him paid outside the bankruptcy process,” Daly added. “We have suggested our willingness to pursue claims on his behalf and assist him in pursuing his own claims. And he remains able to seek recovery out of the pot of money that will be paid to the bankrupt estate.”
So the NHL claims it will assist the greatest assist man who ever has laced up a pair of skates but it will not guarantee he will get his money even after all of the untold revenue he produced for the league both directly and indirectly in the form of expansion fees from warm-weather markets made possible by Gretzky’s success in Los Angeles.
Filed in: NHL Teams, Phoenix Coyotes, NHL Talk, NHL Business of Hockey | KK Hockey | Permalink
Tags: Wayne+Gretzky,
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Then arrange some kind of hockey ambassadorship or general goodwill hand-shaking role and pay him for that.
He was a bad coach and his salary was nothing but a drag on the Coyotes. He shouldn’t get paid for doing a lousy job, no matter what a great guy he is and how much he meant to the game in the past.
Incidentally, despite all the talk about how wonderful and talented and influential he was (all of which is true), I wonder how many hockey fans really think of him as anything other than a bad coach, since his playing days were in the past enough that people with short attention spans and no sense of history, or just recent fans of hockey, will have no exposure to his playing career. That would account for why the media (especially the older members who remember him more as a player) are more upset by this perceived slight than many fans seem to be. They remember him as a significant player and deserving of the nickname The Great One, while those with a shorter hockey history just remember him as a retired player with a gambling wife and an undistinguished coaching career that he seems to have gotten purely by trading on the memories of a famous name, and thus see nothing particularly wrong with stiffing him the salary for a job he didn’t do very well.
Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 11/01/09 at 09:05 AM ET