IN HIS 40 days and nights as general man ager of the Islanders during the summer of 2006, Neil Smith ran the team’s Entry Draft, selecting Minnesota Golden Gopher right winger Kyle Okposo seventh overall, and he signed free agents Mike Sillinger, Brendan Witt, Chris Simon, Andy Hilbert and Tom Poti, the first four of whom remain with the club.
For his trouble, Smith, who unaccountably never signed the three-year, $2.1M contract to which he and owner Charles Wang verbally agreed before reporting for duty, has yet to be paid a nickel by the franchise as he waits for Gary Bettman’s ruling on the grievance he brought against the Islanders more than a year ago . . . and waits . . . and waits . . . and waits.
Perhaps the commissioner, a sharp attorney, can cite case law that would support Wang’s position that his day-laborer of a GM shouldn’t be compensated. Perhaps the owner presented evidence that Smith’s deportment during his short time as a member of the crack committee was somehow contrary to the best interests of the franchise, bizarre as that is to accept.
Regardless of the letter of the law, surely the NHL and the commissioner have an obligation to enforce the spirit of the law and order Wang to pay Smith, who quit his job as an analyst for OLN/Versus with a year remaining on that contract in order to join the Isles, a reasonable financial settlement.
What’s the problem here? What kind of a league is Bettman running when it takes more than a year to decide a claim? What kind of a league is it if the commissioner allows a team owner not to pay an executive member of his hockey department?
It’s a Mickey Mouse League, is what it is, if Smith goes unpaid.
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Scoring is off again around the league, down to 5.7 goals per game from its immediate New-NHL bump to 6.17 the season following the lockout. And while those in authority will cite the return of the trap, the dominance of goaltending, or whatever explanations that can be found by watching the ice, the CBA-enforced hard cap itself is the primary reason why it’s such a struggle to score goals in the NHL.
For no matter how much the league wants to showcase individuals – and understandably so within context in this celebrity-obsessed society – hockey is a team game and goal-scoring is a cooperative effort, which is why the same scoring point is awarded for an assist as for a goal.
Once upon a time, great hockey teams produced great lines that earned nicknames such as the Punch Line in Montreal featuring Rocket Richard, Toe Blake and Elmer Lach; the Production Line in Detroit with Gordie Howe, Ted Lindsay and Sid Abel; the GAG Line on Broadway with Jean Ratelle, Rod Gilbert and Vic Hadfield; the French Connection in Buffalo featuring Gilbert Perreault, Rick Martin and Rene Robert; the Kraut Line in Boston with Milt Schmidt, Woody Dumart and Bobby Bauer.
Now, however, the hard cap has promoted a Lowest Common Denominator League, where teams that sign a handful of high-priced stars are forced to fill in – and as high as on their second-line – with low-wage personnel. In other words, just how many goals will Tampa Bay produce with $7.8M center Brad Richards skating between Jan Hlavac and Jason Ward?
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Hal Holbrook playing Deep Throat told Robert Redford playing Bob Woodward in “All the President’s Men” to, “follow the money,” and that’s exactly what the NHLPA intends to do under Paul Kelly‘s direction.
Article X of the new NHLPA Constitution establishes an audit committee, one of whose primary responsibilities will be to, “Review and evaluate any forensic accounting reports conducted for the application and administration of the [CBA].”
In other words, the union has no intention of taking anybody’s word for it.
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The Blackhawks’ Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews, they’re the league’s version of Kane and Able, right?
The new promotional spots running on television are creative enough, but we still don’t understand the value of producing these commercials so they can run on Versus, the NHL Network, Center Ice, or local game-telecasts. If someone’s already watching, what’s the need to sell him or her on the product?
Finally, we could be wrong, but a Dennis Miller show on Versus doesn’t sound like the career’s quite on an upturn, does it?