They knew there was trouble as soon as the NHLPA announced it would release the results of its investigation into the union’s handling of Kyle Beach on a Friday. It’s surprising that organizations haven’t figured out that everyone sees through a Friday newsdump. This suspicion only grew exponentially when things were delayed by some sort of “outage”. Oh, they were going to break the news around 5pm? don’t you say
As my colleague Grace McDermott so ably reported, the The NHLPA was able to exonerate itselfMiraculously, she points out coincidences and misunderstandings that the writers of the second season would have identified arrested development Twist eyes. Anyway, if there’s a system in place that allows things like this to slip through the cracks just because nobody knows who to talk to about what, that’s negligence.
But it begs the question of what the NHLPA and Donald Fehr are actually doing.
The beach affair is sometimes the loudest most disturbing. If a union cannot protect or help a player and prevent future players from being wronged in this way, then it has failed in its original purpose. Where Else Should Beach Go? How will the next player feel when they see this report? Does anyone really think they can get the help they need from the union, whose sole purpose is to help its members?
Fehr was drafted into the NHLPA in 2012 as CBA negotiations heated up ahead of the 2012-13 season. Players wanted a attack dog as they felt they had been completely overwhelmed in 2005, which not only gave them a salary cap they said they would never accept but lost an entire season.
The players ended negotiations in 2005 with a cap tied to 54 percent of league earnings, and owners came in for an even split seven years later. The players made Fehr a much better strategist and fighter than Bob Goodenow was in the previous negotiations. And the players got a 50/50 split for the salary cap. Even with their first proposal in the fall of 2012, which stipulated that the players should only receive 46 percent of the income from ice hockey, it was clear what the owners wanted. But that was just four percentage points below 50, while players got four points above back then. The agreement that saved the 2013 season landed them right in the middle. The PA had a rented gun that … gave the owners everything they were looking for.
The only significant concession the PA won was that teams could add an eighth year to their own free agents, but other teams could not. Fehr hasn’t been given NBA-style exceptions to give more money to mid-level players, those who are really being squeezed by the cap. Exceptions for birds? Pffft, never discussed. He even let in that ridiculous cap-recapture clause that penalizes teams for contracts signed under a different system. It prevented both GMs and players from getting out of situations that were no longer practical and gave us hilarious scenarios like Marian Hossa the Coyote. Beneath the surface, there were other changes to revenue share and other things, but nothing monumental.
The last CBA was signed under the pressure of the pandemic, but what have Donald Fehr and the union gained for their players? The division is still the same. There are no exceptions for experienced players. Players are given a free hand when they already have. And the cap has been frozen for years, which the owners demanded from the players without much resistance. And both CBAs signed under Fehr’s leadership are in escrow, something players bitched about four minutes after each deal was ratified. All they got for it was a guarantee to go to the Olympics… which they didn’t go to anyway. And that affects what percentage of the membership?
Beyond the CBA negotiations, the union has fought to protect players on the ice. The Tom Wilsons of the world can fly around trying to fill his duffel bag with severed heads and yet there is no pressure from the PA for major rule changes to protect the majority. Watch the utter chaos the playoffs can descend into and wonder who’s watching who. The player safety department is still headed by a former slugger. Headshots are still common, and suspensions and fines remain ridiculous. It seems that the NHLPA cannot or will not protect its players in any arena.
So Donald Fehr didn’t really “win” any negotiations. He failed Kyle Beach when he absolutely couldn’t. Players still don’t have the protection they need on or off the ice. What are you doing here, would you say, Donald?
