TOM Golisano spent approximately $60 million of his own money to garner 14 per cent of the vote as the Independent Party nominee in the 2002 New York Gubernatorial election, yet the 557th richest man in the world with a net worth of $1.8 billion (according to Forbes) doesn’t have a nickel for one of his Buffalo Sabres’ employees who will undergo heart surgery on Thursday.
Teppo Numminen, the 39-year-old Sabres’ defenseman whose prior history of heart problems made his 2007-08, $2.6-million contract uninsurable, will undergo surgery this week after an exam in conjunction with the team’s pre-camp physical revealed an unidentified cardiac condition in need of immediate attention.
General manager Darcy Regier immediately suspended Numminen without pay for failure to report in adequate physical condition as if the 18-year NHL veteran had spent the summer gorging on french fries. Citing a clause in the collective bargaining agreement that allows the team to take such action – but most certainly does not mandate it – Regier attempted to take cover behind the time-worn, dishonorable cliché about the decision being based on “business,” and having nothing to do with being “personal.”
We know Regier to be a decent man. It is inconceivable the decision to suspend Numminen was made by the hockey front office rather than by the owner who bought the team out of bankruptcy at a cut-rate discount in 2003. There are no team salary-cap considerations at the moment, and Regier knows it. There are no team financial considerations at the moment, either, and Regier knows that, too, as players do not begin to collect their salaries until the regular-season commences.
There were, as well, no considerations of human decency involved here either, and the whole world now knows that. It’s quite the partnership this owner has his with players, this owner who may or not believe that charity begins at home but most assuredly does not believe that charity begins with the home team.
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The long-awaited Sheila Block Report on the controversies surrounding the 2005 CBA settlement as well as the hiring of the since-dismissed Ted Saskin as executive director appears to be little more than a latter-day Warren Commission Report, a whitewashing of the issues that essentially exonerates anyone and everyone of knowingly mendacious behavior.
A reading of the report, available to all members of the NHLPA and obtained by Slap Shots, astonishes only for the absence of accountability contained in its pages. So much for promises that it would contain a “smoking gun,” relevant to the multiple investigations it was charged to conduct. There isn’t even a water pistol to be found in the document’s 78 pages.
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The toughest sheriff in town, that’s Gary Bettman, all right, who decided that he knew more than the Santa Clara, CA judge who accepted Mark Bell‘s plea-bargain on a felony DUI charge and sentenced the Maple Leaf winger to a six-month jail sentence to be served over the summer so that he wouldn’t miss work.
The commissioner, apparently envious of the praise heaped upon NFL boss Roger Goodell for his suspensions to various football miscreants for off-the-field activity, used his power to unilaterally suspend Bell for an additional 15 games even while he is already under suspension for having been placed in Phase II of the NHL/NHLPA Substance Abuse Program.
And could it have been more predictable that the moment the PA announced that it would investigate all its legal options pertaining to the suspension, Sixth Avenue-centric TSN raised the bogeyman specter of Bob Goodenow‘s regime?
Talk about a partnership.