Not mailing it in
NHLPA remains Walsh’s focus despite USPS gig
THE headline in the Boston paper Friday screamed that the former mayor of Boston had been “tapped” to rejoin the Biden Administration.
This was pretty interesting stuff considering that this former mayor of Boston named Marty Walsh already has a full-time job as executive director of the NHLPA following his election to run the union just over 12 months ago.
Given the chaotic nature of this particular union’s leadership history — scoundrels to the left, jokers to the right — immediate questions were raised within the industry.
Was Walsh taking on another gig in addition to his responsibilities with the PA? Would he split time between assignments? Would he be on the campaign trail this summer?
Turns out the answer is no to all of the above. Walsh has been nominated by the president to serve as a governor for the U.S. Postal Service. If approved by the Senate, Walsh would be one of nine governors on the board that includes the deputy postmaster general and the postmaster general according to the USPS website.
“My first priority — my only priority — is running the NHLPA,” Walsh told Slap Shots Saturday morning. “And I actually feel that this elevates the PA to have this presence representing labor on this committee.
“This is a bipartisan committee that traditionally meets three to five times a year. It’s not uncommon for a union leader or league commissioner to sit on a Board of Directors. It won’t interfere in the slightest with my responsibilities with the PA.
“I was asked to serve,” said Walsh, who was mayor of Boston from 2014 until 2021 when he resigned to accept the post in Biden’s cabinet. “It’s hard to say no.”
Walsh engineered the agreement with the NHL and IIHF to bring the league and its players back into the business of international best-on-best hockey with a calendar designed for competition every other winter. He has been aggressive in calling out the ongoing failures in Arizona.
Walsh told Slap Shots that the union has not yet come to a decision whether to file grievances contesting Chicago’s contract termination of Corey Perry and Arizona’s termination of Adam Ruzicka.
“They both remain under consideration,” Walsh said. “We have meetings scheduled about the topic.”
While Walsh did not seek permission from the PA’s executive board of the 32 player reps to take on the assignment with the USPS, we are told that this was not exactly a secret, either, and that at least a number of folks were aware of the situation. The mission is unchanged.
“When the campaign gets going after Labor Day, that’s the time we’ll be beginning and conducting our fall tour with the teams,” Walsh said. “We got to 30 by the end of December this year with the goal for next year to hit all 32 in that time frame.
“That’s the campaign I’ll be in.”
➤ So when I caught up with Nick Fotiu last week to get his take on Matt Rempe, I told him that my favorite game of his career was the one in which he was matched against Mike Bossy in a game at the Garden in which the Islanders’ No. 22 was trying to set the modern NHL record by scoring a goal in his 11th straight game.
Truth is, it wasn’t a game at the Garden but instead the game at the Garden in which Ulf Nilsson broke his ankle on the check from Denis Potvin in perhaps the most memorable regular-season match of the series.
It was Feb. 25, 1979. Bossy did not score a goal and did not break the record that has indeed been reset in the interim. The Rangers won the game.
Fotiu laughed and reminded me that had not been the first time he’d been matched against Bossy on a potential milestone night. A year earlier, then-GM John Ferguson came up with the concept when Bossy came into the Garden with 49 goals and was aiming to become the first rookie in NHL history to hit the 50 mark. This was March 25, 1978.
“Fergy told me I was going to cover Bossy and first thing I did was go to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, lit a candle and said, ‘Please don’t make me look like a fool out there tonight,’ ” Staten Island’s favorite son told me.
“I lined up next to Bossy and said, ‘If you touch the puck tonight, I’m going to take this stick and shove it up your ass, you can get your 50th goal somewhere else, you’re not scoring tonight.’
“You know what?” asked the People’s Choice who, back in the day, would scale pucks into the Blue Seats at the conclusion of warmups. “I got a goal and an assist and he got nothing.”
You could look it up. The Rangers won, 5-1. On a line with Phil Esposito and Lucien DeBlois, Fotiu scored late in the first period. Bossy would have to wait one more game in which he scored twice en route to 53, and oh, how I wish I could pick up the phone and get Mike’s side of the story.
➤ If Dawson Mercer is part of the trade conversation with Calgary regarding Jacob Markstrom, I’m disconnecting the call if I’m on New Jersey GM Tom Fitzgerald’s side of the table.
➤ So it will be Elias Pettersson — freshly inked to an eight-year, $92.8 million contract extension at an AAV of $11.6M per — and J.T. Miller forming the one-two punch down the middle for the Canucks for the foreseeable future that will attempt to match up with Edmonton’s Connor McDavid-Leon Draisaitl dynamic duo. There are Auston Matthews and John Tavares in Toronto.
Historically, nothing compares to the Oilers’ Wayne Gretzky-Mark Messier tag team match of the mid-’80s. And I’ll take Colorado’s Joe Sakic-Peter Forsberg tandem ahead of Detroit’s Steve Yzerman-Sergei Fedorov combo.
Bryan Trottier-Brent Sutter wasn’t so shabby, either.
➤ Creepier behavior this season from reigning champ Jordan Binnington or No. 1-ranked challenger in the world, Nick Cousins?
Finally, I don’t know why there’s such concern over the fact the Jets have not been able to fill the building in Winnipeg. All they have to do is move to an arena the same size as the Coyotes did and they will pack the barn every night.