Klatt deserves praise for being an instigator

Veteran has improved union even without suit Not easy to be the one pushing for change

Trent Klatt, who has spent the past 14 years being one of the boys, must feel especially isolated these days. Besides announcing his retirement this week, Klatt has spent the last month doing the unimaginable: Demanding people responsible for the stewardship of his union justify why they haven’t followed their own rules. Consider some of the compelling questions he posed in a Sept. 9 email to union president Trevor Linden, who, without consulting the 37- member executive board, sacked former executive director Bob Goodenow, agreed to an $8 million ( all figures U. S.) severance package for Goodenow and hired Ted Saskin to a $ 2.1 million a year contract as Goodenow’s replacement: “ Can I ask what sort of research you have done to compare what Ted should earn? . . . Would it be wise to get some other opinions?” “ Bob worked his ass off and it took him 15 years or so to get what he got. Along the way he put millions upon millions of dollars into our pockets. Without sounding too harsh here T, how can we compare Ted to Bob when Ted’s been on the job for one month?” “ Having said what I just did, the players are happy to be playing, but why wouldn’t we just wait and see how the CBA plays itself out? Doesn’t Ted have a year or two left on his old deal?” “ I would think that being it is a zero sum game now, we as players would want to see how Ted can grow revenues. Maybe we should find a way to connect his contract to hockey related revenues. Has Ted expressed any specific ideas to you in regards to marketing or growing revenues?” Yet because Klatt has challenged the NHLPA, he’s been scorned by other players, and, according to four NHL veterans, was insulted by Saskin on a Monday night conference call for team player reps. Klatt, 34, has declined to speak publicly so far about the controversy that has ensnared the union and it’s unclear why he retired when he still had a contract for this season with the Los Angeles Kings that was worth $ 900,000. New York Islanders general manager Mike Milbury has an idea of the pressure Klatt must be under. In 1979, Milbury, then a defenceman with the Boston Bruins, was among the union members who flew to the Bahamas to vote on whether to bless the proposed merger between the NHL and rival World Hockey Association. By doing so, players would be surrendering any leverage they had in contract negotiations to bolt to the upstart WHA and the NHL was offering to sweeten player benefits. Milbury thought the terms weren’t good enough. “ It just wasn’t a good offer,” Milbury said yesterday. “ The free agent age at the time was like 110 and I thought they should bring it down.” So in a packed hotel meeting room on Paradise Island — “ It was anything but paradise that weekend” — with players union founder Alan Eagleson and dozens of league stars scrutinizing him, Milbury raised his hand as the lone “ no” vote. “Nobody said anything, they just looked at me,” Milbury said. “ Then, after a few quiet moments, a few guys came over and said, ‘ You can’t do this. You have to make it unanimous.’ I just told them I couldn’t do that in good conscience. The one thing I’ll never forget is overhearing one guy say he couldn’t vote against the deal because he wanted to eventually be a general manager. “ It’s a really tough thing to be out there on your own,” Milbury said. Klatt would seem to know that all too well. And even if his case against Saskin, Linden and others within the NHLPA doesn’t go any further, he’s already won. Thanks to Klatt’s probing questions, the union was forced to hold a formal vote for Saskin, who had simply been anointed as executive director the day Goodenow’s alleged resignation was announced. When that voting was proven to be in violation of the union’s constitution because it was conducted on a conference call instead of by secret ballot, he and other veterans — dismissed by most media as a “ small group of dissidents” — forced Saskin’s hand a second time. Now, some team player reps are telling the union that they plan to take perhaps months to consider whether they’ll return the secret ballots sent out this week. All of the NHL’s 700-plus players, even those who have issued statements supporting Saskin, owe a debt of gratitude to Klatt. Thanks to him, a union that for decades has had the reputation of intimidating members into silence, is more transparent and more answerable to its members.