The NHL: Just Another Summer at the Office?

The NHL: Just Another Summer at the Office?
By Carol Schram, Vancouver Correspondent

Every year it seems like the chimes of doom sound just a little louder for the National Hockey League. Small market teams change cities, business and financial squabbles clog front-office operations, and oh - those salary demands!
This year, we've got the new Carolina Hurricanes to contend with, plus Ken Dryden's organizational nightmare in Toronto, franchises looking for fresh starts with new General Managers in Los Angeles, Washington, St. Louis, and Buffalo, and new coaches behind nearly half the NHL benches. Plus, this summer has been one of the biggest ever with respect to player movement - or has it?
Free agency has always been a bit of a strange bird in pro sports. In the NBA, a player can move after just three years. His potential is usually pretty clear by that point, so teams are usually prepared to buck up for a big-money, long-term deal to secure a franchise player for six or seven years. This summer, a seven-foot tree trunk named Bryant "Big Country" Reeves became the highest-paid athlete in Canadian history when he signed a six-year contract extension with the Vancouver Grizzlies for $68.4 million. Sure, he's considered a cornerstone of the franchise, but let's not forget that, through two seasons, this franchise is the losingest in NBA history, and Country's not even considered a sure-thing prospect.
Does this mean the sports minds at parent company Orca Bay Sports and Entertainment have all gone screwy? On the contrary, while people are tempted to oooh and aahh about the dollar value of this contract, the organization is generally congratulated for doing the deal quickly and cleanly, and for recognizing what it takes to compete in the playground that is the NBA.
For the most part, those same minds were also applauded when they worked quickly and quietly for a week in July, opening the vault again to bring 36-year-old unrestricted free agent Mark Messier to their hockey arm, the Canucks. The team has long been searching for a superstar center, and it was considered a major coup to lure Messier away from the bright lights of the Big Apple, especially home to a Canadian team. Everyone knew Canadian franchises weren't supposed to have the wherewithal to compete for those big-name free agents... right??
For a snap of a finger, if you live in Vancouver, everything seemed right with the hockey world. Then, our arch enemies in the centre of Canada squashed our celebration by announcing that they had signed our defected free agent defenseman, Mattias Ohlund, to a five-year, $10 million, front-loaded deal. For a team that traded Doug Gilmour just last spring to cut salaries, the move was definitely unexpected. The Leafs' only justification was that, if the Canucks didn't match the offer, they wouldn't have to surrender any compensation for Ohlund. Toronto was hoping that maybe the coffers were a little emptier than usual, right after the Messier signing.
With nothing to gain by surrendering the rights to Ohlund, $10 million didn't seem like so much to lose, after all. The battle of the free-spending Canadians ended with a thud when the Canucks did what they had continually said they would, and matched the offer. Suddenly, a Canadian team in a mid-sized market was faced with what very well might be the NHL's highest payroll in 1997-98. Who do the Canucks think they are... the St. Louis Blues?
The Blues were the team most likely to try to buy a Stanley Cup through the first part of the 1990s, when free agents for the first time became difficult, but not impossible, to obtain. Under the terms of a new collective bargaining agreement, the Blues created a furor in 1990 by signing promising young defenseman Scott Stevens away from the Washington Capitals. The price for such a player, at the time, was five first-round draft choices, which the Blues gladly surrendered, confident that they were that much closer to a real run at the Stanley Cup dream. It worked, too. In 1990-91, the Blues vaulted from 83 to 105 points on the strength of great seasons from Stevens, Adam Oates, and Brett Hull, who scored a career-high 86 goals.
The following summer, the Blues figured they'd pull the same routine again, this time on a promising young left winger, New Jersey's Brendan Shanahan. Since their draft picks had already been used up in the Stevens deal, the case went to arbitration to determine equitable compensation for the Devils. Surprise - New Jersey is awarded Scott Stevens! The Blues begin their slide back to mediocrity, while in 1995 Stevens helps lead New Jersey to their first-ever Stanley Cup. That same summer, the Blues decide to ship Shanahan and his salary off to Hartford for young defenseman Chris Pronger. Shanahan eventually moves on to Detroit and picks up a Stanley Cup ring of his own, while St. Louis continues to search for answers.
So was Blues GM Ron "The Professor" Caron the man who started the free-agent insanity? Certainly, he was never afraid to buck the system or pull the trigger on a big deal. Or was the true culprit Bruce "The Criminal" McNall - currently serving time in a California minimum security institution after pleading guilty to bank fraud? Did the NHL lose its innocence on August 9, 1988 - the day Peter Pocklington turned his back on all that was pure and innocent and Canadian, and traded Wayne Gretzky to the Los Angeles Kings?
That was nine years ago, but many of us remember Gretzky's press conference like it was yesterday. Hot on the heels of his fairy-tale wedding to actress Janet Jones, Gretzky had truly "gone Hollywood", but appeared none too pleased about it. Over the years, though, Wayne grew into his role as "ambassador of hockey", and the league's profile did change. The NHL was no longer a family - now it was a business just like another other major professional sports league.
The business of entertainment has changed drastically in North America in the past ten to twenty years. When you look at the changes in the fabric of the NHL, look also at the new Tennessee Oilers in the NFL, at the ongoing labor tension in commissioner-free Major League Baseball, at the price of broadcast rights for upcoming Olympic Games, at James Cameron's $200 million feature-film epic "Titanic" which is due this Christmas, at $1 million per episode for the stars of "Seinfeld", or at $400 tickets to see the Three Tenors in concert. Over and over, the public says "these performers aren't worth that much!" Over and over, the market proves them wrong. If a sports team guesses wrong in its spending choices, it changes ownership, management, or home town. If a concert promoter guesses wrong, someone else is ready to take the gamble the next time the Rolling Stones decide they want to tour. Traditional industry appears to have maxed out in North America - manufacturing, and even consumption, are increasing at a much higher rate in other parts of the world. High-tech is booming, but the entertainment industry is great for financial speculation because it is high-risk, with potentially high return, and because it carries a certain level of glamour and prestige that you can't find working in, say, steel or tobacco.
When you look at the big picture, the NHL is business as usual. North American industrial magnates began to lose their power during the Great Depression, with the advent of workers' rights, while in the six-team NHL as late as the 1950s, one family held control of fully three franchises in one form or another. They determined who played where, and for how much money. Any player who didn't like his working conditions would be shipped out, or black-balled from playing at all.
In the late 1950s, Ted Lindsay began to buck the trend with the superstar Detroit Red Wings. He tried to crack the owners' control by developing a Players' Association, and he had his career ruined for his efforts. The NHL Players' Association finally was formed in 1967 when the league expanded to 12 teams, but owners' crony and player agent Alan Eagleson headed up the organization. By the end of the 1980s, the players had finally gathered enough information and strength to reclaim the right to control their career destinies. In 1990, the NHLPA voted to replace Eagleson with current Association head Bob Goodenow. Meanwhile, NHL President John Ziegler resigned in the summer of 1992 after the players staged a 10-day strike following an entire regular-season playing without a contract. Major issues that spring included licensing and endorsements, free agency, salary arbitration, and pension contributions. By waiting until just before the playoffs to take job action, the players were able to make significant strides - so much so that NHL owners made their own attempt at forcing the issues by locking players out at the beginning of the 1994-95 season, basically in an attempt to introduce a salary cap. The players stood their ground until after Christmas and managed to settle by conceding only a cap for rookies, which still allows for negotiation of major bonuses. Whereas NBA rookies are signed virtually automatically based on their draft position, NHL rookies still carry a ton of leverage, as evidenced by recent holdouts like Chris Phillips, Bryan Berard, and Mattias Ohlund.
The owners whine about the free agency terms that they negotiated and that their GMs use to try to ice a competitive squad; they grouse about the lack of a salary cap. Yet the CBA deal that was signed after the 1994 lockout has been quietly extended into the next millennium - a sign that there must be enough money to go around. Ironically, for all their complaining, the owners rarely mention one of the biggest reasons why NHL salaries have spiraled up in the past few years - salary disclosure.
Within his first two years in office, Bob Goodenow had every NHL player's salary published for public record. That was a far cry from the domineering ownership tactics of the early NHL days, when the players themselves sometimes were not allowed to see their own contract.
In 1996-97, the league's average salary was something just under a million dollars. When Wayne Gretzky was traded to Los Angeles in 1988, at the peak of his career, he was making about a million dollars per season. The average NHL salary in 1992-93 was $458,251 US, while the Vancouver Canucks' entire payroll came in under $10 million. Now, that's not even enough to cover the team's top two players.
Granted, there aren't a lot of industries where salaries rise by 250% over a five-year period. But remember - the curve is skewed. A minor-league salary on a two-way contract is still in the $30,000 to $50,000 range, just like it was five years ago. Only by making it to the elite level of the sport's top league can a player capitalize on society's current desire to reward him so handsomely - not just for what he does, but for what he represents.
The explosion is not confined to the NHL. In 1992, Michael Jordan grossed $35.5 million, and over 90% of that money came from endorsements. Last week, Michael Jordan signed a one-year deal with the Chicago Bulls, for a sweet $36 million, just to play ball. His "Space Jam" video percentage is extra. Entertainers provide a means of escape from our everyday lives. Athletes show us, time and again, what humans can do when they fine-tune their bodies into virtually perfect working order. Team sports create a sort of community identity at a time when families and neighborhoods are fragmenting, and social institutions like churches and schools are no longer the cultural centerpieces they once were.
That's why Joe Sakic is making $17 million this season. It may seem strange, but it's the only way things can be. Off-season competition for players has become nearly as heated as the on-ice competition for the Stanley Cup. With the existing Collective Bargaining Agreement in place for several more years, there's no reason to think this summer will turn out to be any more memorable than the ones to follow.