The NHL’s ‘dirty window’
CANADIENS didn’t take advantage of league permission to talk to players, winning praise from Josh Gorges
Colour two veteran, locked-out members of the Canadiens wholly unimpressed with the latest tactic of the National Hockey League.
Josh Gorges, the Habs’ newly elected NHL Players’ Association representative, and Erik Cole, the club’s assistant rep, both think little of the league’s decision last week to give the management of 30 clubs a 48-hour window of opportunity to directly contact their players.
And they think even less of the fact the league opened this window to its teams without the NHLPA’s knowledge.
It doesn’t seem that either Canadiens majority owner Geoff Molson or general manager Marc Bergevin took advantage of the NHL’s strictly outlined opportunity to speak with players. Neither Gorges nor Cole had been contacted, nor did they know of any teammates who had received a call.
Newly signed, high-profile free-agent forward Brandon Prust and veteran Tomas Plekanec both said by text message that they had not been contacted.
“Had they phoned me, I’d have declined to take their call,” Cole said. “They could have left a message and maybe I’d have gotten back to them.
“I see this as the league trying to undermine our union” and executive director Don Fehr, said Gorges, elected his team’s NHLPA rep by acclamation on a Canadiens players’ conference call, succeeding unsigned free agent Chris Campoli:
“I’m really not sure what the (NHL’s) goal was. I don’t know if it was to try to get GMs or whomever to call players to sway opinion about the league’s (bargaining) stance, or almost to lean on players. A lot of times, it’s tough for players to stand up to their GM and speak out against him.
“I don’t know if the league’s tactic was to persuade players to move away from the union and try to stop following Don’s lead. Or, maybe they just wanted to have (management) reach out and open the lines of communication.
“I hope it was the second, because if they were trying to use this as a ploy to push their weight on players, then I don’t like the stance they were taking.”
Gorges saw a ray of light in the fact it seems the Canadiens chose not to call players, thus not taking an end run around Fehr and the protocol of negotiation.
“Maybe the Canadiens didn’t believe in it,” Gorges said. “Maybe they didn’t feel it’s necessary or was right, I’m not sure.”
Cole figured a better way for teams to communicate any message they might have wanted to share with players, and still respect the negotiation process, would have been for clubs to hold conference calls or even make individual contact with key media in their cities.
Those news reports would be absorbed by the players, he said, without clandestine calls being made behind the back of the NHLPA to players who are locked out by the NHL and, by extension, the same team managers who are making the calls.
Why the NHL wouldn’t have seen how players would have been angered by this backdoor contact, no matter how innocently it was described, is another baffling part of this lockout. Throughout this clumsy exercise, the league is proving as sure-handed as a rain-soaked peewee football player trying to grip a muddy pigskin.
Cole didn’t believe that the open window was used by even a majority of clubs, suggesting that it’s the hawk owners ferociously loyal to NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, such as Boston Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs, who would take advantage of the opportunity. Indeed, the Bruins brass was specifically discussed by players on their conference call on Monday.
Furthermore, Cole planned to speak up on Tuesday’s NHLPA call about leaks of the fine points of league/ union talks to at least some in the media.
Separate briefings are made by Fehr to the players and to the athletes’ agents, and someone somewhere is sharing the information.
“I don’t think that these things showing up on (TV) or on blogs is necessary,” Cole said.
“If it’s a player, certainly shame on him. I’m sure it would come out at some point.
“But if it’s an agent, it might be a little tougher to figure out who it is. The bottom line, in my opinion, is if we learn it’s an agent, we should just cut him out of the equation and leave him in the dark. Any information he wants can come from his players.”
On Tuesday, Cole heard through his agent that the Canadiens wished to use his image, and those of 2011-12 linemates David Desharnais and Max Pacioretty, on Movember T-shirts, marking the November-long initiative for men’s prostate cancer and health awareness.
Cole declined to give his permission until a new CBA is signed, the winger now a locked-out Canadien whose employment and rights as a member of the club have been fully suspended.