TORONTO — Donald Fehr is the right man at the right time for the NHLPA, a union splintered into disarray that requires a force at the top to educate and lead without constant sniping from the sidelines.
The players need an individual who knows the business of professional sports while able to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Gary Bettman and go to toe-to-toe against the commissioner when necessary.
Donald Fehr, who knows the business of sports as well as any man alive, not only would elevate the NHLPA by becoming its executive director, he would elevate the NHL, for this is a man of importance who understands owners and commissioners as well as he does players.
The NHLPA never had its reckoning after the lockout. Those who committed acts of treason during the winter of 2004-05 went scot-free. The union has been operating with traitors in its midst who have helped plot a course that’s become a dead end.
That is why the union has devolved into chaos — every bit as much as Ted Saskin’s depressingly unaccountable coziness with Bettman and Bill Daly, skullduggery relating to e-mails, and Paul Kelly attending a Board of Governors meeting early in his administration without advisors in which he casually volunteered in good faith to give away part of the store — while so hopelessly looking into the rear-view mirror the past five years.
Fehr is a polarizing figure in the court of public opinion and in many outlying baseball precincts. But then, that’s the fate of essentially all successful and powerful union leaders.
The perception of Fehr from the outside, and most notably from those who have spent the last decade ridiculing the NHLPA for alternately appearing too weak or too strong, is immaterial. The perception of Fehr from those who have sought to back-door their own agendas into the proceedings, is immaterial.
It must be acknowledged that Fehr stands with MLB commissioner Bud Selig as unindicted co-conspirators in baseball’s steroids scandal. There is no doubt that Fehr’s studied indifference to the issue of performance-enhancing drugs contributed to the cloud that hovers over the generation of baseball players he led to unprecedented wealth.
That is history. That is part of Fehr’s history. But it does not disqualify him from leading the NHLPA. What it does, in fact, is position him perfectly to support the most extensive PED testing policy extant for the NHL and NHLPA.
It’s true. Fehr is not borne of hockey. So what? That only means that the NHLPA would need to hire a former player to ride shotgun for Fehr.
Why couldn’t the union, why wouldn’t the union, attempt to reach out into management, say, for someone like Steve Yzerman, who has no team to lead but who always has been able to get players to follow him?
The NHLPA needs to adopt a constitution that empowers its executive director. The NHLPA needs to hire an executive director the membership trusts to use that power honorably in dealing with the NHL, the players and their agents.
The NHLPA needs a leader who will do the job and not simply want to have the job. The NHLPA needs a leader immune to second-guessing from the gallery. The NHLPA needs a leader whose presence and prestige will unify the membership for the next round of CBA negotiations.
It is time.
It is time for Donald Fehr.
And so, as David Booth was concussed again on a legal, straight-on hit from Jaroslav Spacek on Thursday, the question has been raised whether all hits to the head should be declared illegal.
The answer is, no.
There is risk involved in playing the game. And there is a responsibility for a player to keep his head up, much as some would mock the cliché as outdated.
Penalties, by the way, are not the deterrent to head-hunting. Lengthy suspensions would be.
If Matt Cooke, who had done it before, had gotten 10 games for concussing Artem Anisimov in November with the understanding that his next criminal act would yield a 20-game sentence, then Marc Savard almost certainly would be on the ice today.
Instead, Cooke got two games, the same sentence he received for previously concussing Scott Walker, just as Ed Jovanovski got the same two games for concussing Andrew Ebbett a couple of years after getting two games for going upside Marian Gaborik’s head.
So while the blindside rule is a step in the right direction, it will prove meaningless if, say, Chris Pronger gets a one-game suspension for a head shot in the playoffs . . . if his team is in the playoffs, that is.
Pending playoff revenues, final escrow withholding should amount to between 13 and 15 percent of each player’s salary, agents were told at Thursday’s NHLPA meeting in Toronto.
We would propose amending the CBA to eliminate the cap floor as the best means to reduce or eradicate escrow. It is foolish for all concerned to force bad (or young, or both) teams to give inflated contracts simply to reach the floor.
Quick. Don’t look. Which Sedin is leading the league in scoring?