Lockout hurts Leaf farmhand
Veteran pro Aucoin victim of ‘trickle-down’ effect
Members of the NHL Players’ Association, those who are thoughtful or those who tweet while getting drunk beside a campfire or those who bolt for Europe and leave the negotiating to others, really want you to believe they are the individuals most affected by the NHL lockout.
In a direct sense they are. Starting Oct. 15, they won’t be getting the first of their regularly scheduled paycheques, and all the defiant rhetoric aside, many aren’t prepared for the financial impact they face.
But the truth is that the lockout also affects not only a lot of other people connected to the NHL, but a lot of other players as well.
There’s a trickle-down effect here, one of opportunity, There’s the obvious cases, those who thought they had an opportunity with a European club only to find Jason Spezza or Alex Ovechkin or Tyler Seguin were on the way.
But there’s the less obvious. Take, as an example, the case of Keith Aucoin, a 33-year-old veteran pro by way of Waltham, Mass., who this summer signed a two-way contract as a free agent with the Maple Leaf organization.
To many, that meant Aucoin would be skating for the AHL Marlies for the salary of $350,000, top-notch minorleague compensation for a centre who has been an excellent, productive AHLer for years after being undrafted out of Norwich University.
To Aucoin, however, this was his best shot at regular NHL work yet, and a big-league paycheque of $650,000. He had played, you see, much of the second half of the 2011-12 regular season with the Washington Capitals, having found fourth-line favour with head coach Dale Hunter and his grinding style.
“I was able to show I could play on the bottom two lines and change my game,” said Aucoin, a 100-point man in the minors.
When the playoffs came, Aucoin dressed for all of the Caps’ 14 postseason matches, the first NHL playoff exposure of his 11-year pro career. Hunter likes the same kind of grinding style as Leafs coach Randy Carlyle, and with the parent club looking for quality veteran leadership, there might be a fit.
“For a guy my age, especially after last year with Washington and doing so well, you think you’re going to have a chance to be in the NHL full-time,” he said. “I don’t know if I would have made the (Leafs) out of camp, but with no camp you don’t have a chance to make the team.”
So he’s in camp with the Marlies, a superstar by AHL standards, but not so apart from the rest that rookie Sam Carrick didn’t ride him into the boards hard in a scrimmage this week. Aucoin got to his feet wearily and felt under his visor to see if he was cut, absorbing the indignity and playing on.
The money’s not bad, not bad at all, but he was hoping for more. Instead of NHL work he’ll be with the Marlies, and a player who might have made the Marlies will head down to the Leafs’ ECHL affiliate, and somebody there will get bumped to the Central Hockey League, and a player hoping to play there won’t have work at all.
Aucoin knows the drill. He went through it during the 2004-05 lockout when he ended up with Memphis of the CHL for a spell.
“It’s a hard situation and a lot of guys are in it,” said Aucoin. “Guys who play in the East Coast Hockey League, the Central Hockey League, guys can’t get jobs here and they trickle down. It affects everybody in some type of way.”
The last lockout, Aucoin was just trying to get known. This time, with 102 NHL games on his resumé along with two Calder Cup championship rings, he knows he’s running out of runway.
“It’s different, especially for a guy at my age,” he said. “I had the year I had last year, and you don’t have many years left to play in the NHL. You’ve just got to hope that something gets done because I’m running out of time here.”
The Marlies did well in free agency, landing Aucoin, luring ex-Lightning defenceman Paul Ranger out of semi-retirement and attracting Mike Kostka away from the Calder Cup champion Norfolk Admirals.
For all, being in arguably the AHL’s highest-profile city might mean someone connects the dots to a need with an NHL club. If the Marlies have cards to play to ice a strong roster, that’s one of them, along with the fact they run an NHL-calibre operation.
For a hockey pro, it’s not a bad place to be. Just not where Aucoin dreamed he would be.
That doesn’t make him a victim of the NHL lockout. He’s still got work at very good wages.
But it could take away his last good shot at the bigs. That would be heartbreaking.