Thursday, the NHLPA held a meeting with about 60-70 members to read the Block Report, which was commissioned by the union to investigate the hiring of Ted Saskin, and, to a lesser degree, the justifications for firing him. From Rick Westhead of the Toronto Star:

Hired to investigate the ouster of NHLPA executive director Bob Goodenow in the summer of 2005 and the hiring of his successor, Ted Saskin, Toronto lawyer Sheila Block’s report, a copy of which was reviewed yesterday by the Star, confirms what Saskin and other union insiders have known for some time: the union’s constitution has been trampled on the past three years.

So, Chris Chelios was right. The NHLPA was sick from the top down, and the Ted Saskin era should have ended before it started. But there are still problems within the NHLPA that are going to keep them from moving forward from this event, or at the very least acting like there should even be a union.

Rick Westhead continues, hitting the biggest problem square on the head:

While several players said yesterday they plan to push the union to release Block’s report to all its members, they really needn’t bother. After all, when the controversy over Saskin’s hiring first surfaced, most players’ view on the debacle was, “let’s just focus on what’s happening on the ice.”

In other words, no one cares. A union is only as strong as it’s members, and the members have never (and by never, I mean never ever) been in control, nor payed any attention to what has been going on around them. So now, according to the members at the meeting, it’s time to go the extreme opposite direction. From TSN:

”The 30 player reps will run the program,” Eric Lindros said Friday as three days of NHLPA meetings wrapped up. ”Below it will be the executive director and the general counsel.”

Great, they just recreated the NHL Board of Governors. Isn’t this exactly what the NHL is, 30 clubs and one whipping boy below them? We all see how effective that is. And when was the last time you saw 30 people in charge of anything come to a positive conclusion? Frankly, if this is the model that the NHLPA moves forward with, you can kiss any advancement goodbye. And if the needs of the NHLPA weren’t painfully obvious before, they will in the next few years if a gelded executive director is what they believe the answer to be.

Let break down what the NHLPA really needs:

1) An executive director who is a labor person. Hockey players are like a lot of people who are deeply embroiled in their chosen profession: they don’t trust people who aren’t like them. Just ask Ken Hitchcock. Bob Goodenow, who was thought to be good for the union (even if he wasn’t), was a hockey guy who may have been better than some other candidates, but who was only a response to the Eagleson years. He was also what the Players Association did not need at the time. Coming out of the Eagleson Reign of Terror, what should have been installed was a person who understood negotiation, labor law, and how to run a union. Someone with a little more experience in the business and labor world. Someone who may not understand hockey players as much, but someone who can help hockey players understand the NHLPA, what it does, and why it matters. Frankly, someone who could have read the market enough to see what was coming.

Of course, not everyone sees it that way. From James Mirtle and the Globe and Mail:

Detroit Red Wings veteran Chris Chelios says the union would do well to find a clone of former executive director Bob Goodenow, or even take Goodenow.

“We lost some good staff members throughout this whole ordeal, whether they resigned, or were fired or were pushed out,” Chelios said Friday at the end of three days of union meetings in Toronto. “I mean, if Bob put his résumé in, I’d certainly consider it. That was a tough thing he went through.

“I was a big Bob Goodenow fan … [but] the times have changed and we’re partners now, and that’s the biggest difference. But I think if we could find another Bob, I think every guy in this union would be pretty happy.”

Hey, wasn’t Goodenow the guy who was instrumental in getting Ted Saskin in the job in the first place? Wasn’t he the guy who stopped going to CBA negotiations? Didn’t Goodenow treat members like mushrooms when they asked for information about the CBA and what was going on at the time? Perhaps Goodenow isn’t the answer right now. Maybe it’s time to look somewhere else, and find someone who can teach the union what it means to be a union. As was shown in the Eagleson era, knowing hockey people can mean knowing how to easily manipulate them, too.

Maybe this is just a case of the devil you know, but there has to be someone out there better suited then Bob Goodenow to run the NHLPA. Bringing back the guy who brought in Ted Saskin would splinter the PA before they even got started rebuilding the interest and caring needed to build a strong union.

2) A history lesson. If there is one thing the members don’t seem to get, it’s that they have never, ever had a solid union. The Eagleson era led into a major rebuilding phase, which ended with a lockout and an illegitimate change in power. Along the way, there was a lost half season, players uninvolved and kept in the dark in contract negotiations, and Goodenow avoiding negotiations in the first place. The Alan Eagleson era was rife with intimidation, threats, and, as was found in court, fraud and embezzlement. Of course, we know what the short lived Ted Saskin era has wrought. Unfortunately, most of the NHLPA don’t seem to realize this. Someone needs to go to every club and inform the membership about the sacrifices that players like Ted Lindsay and Doug Harvey had to go through to get them a union, what player conditions were like before the union was around, and what those efforts turned into, good and bad. They need to understand what power unchecked led to, and how it hurt the players of the past. The saying goes that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. So far, for the NHLPA, that has held true.

3) A membership that cares. You don’t have to sell the truth, but you do need someone to pay attention to it. This is the easiest reality, and probably the hardest to pull off. When the average NHL player career is around four years, who has time to pay attention to the details of the Player’s Union? And if I were a less than honest person in charge, I would be counting on that. Hockey players concern themselves with playing hockey and not getting cut from the team. They need to add a third.

4) No secrets. Apparently, there is still a lot of information that hasn’t come out. Again, from Rick Westhead:

Instead of parsing down Block’s carefully crafted report, a better exercise for players would be pressing for the release of a separate report prepared three months ago by another Toronto lawyer, Chris Paliare. It’s shameful that report, which details the NHLPA’s email surveillance scheme, remains stamped “PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL.”

That 36-page report documents Saskin’s involvement in a plan to monitor the email accounts of staff and players whom he believed were conspiring against him and has been released to scant few of the union’s 700-plus members. It would surely be useful reading for any player attending this week’s NHLPA meeting.

That should be next on the agenda. The membership should be the “privileged.” If every player has access to protected parts of the NHLPA website, these reports should be plastered all over them (of course, we have seen how well that sort of thing works out). Copies should be put in the hands of the membership, and every concern should be addressed. When questions are asked, “don’t worry about it” should be stricken from the lexicon. Information is going to be the strongest tool in cleaning up the NHLPA, no matter what member has it.

This, from TSN, is an interesting start:

”I don’t think there’s any question,” said Los Angeles Kings player rep Mike Cammalleri. ”I think that’s the biggest thing that we walk away from this with, a little bit more involvement and a little more caring can really make us a great union.”

Lets not blow too much smoke up anyone’s backside. I would call “a little” too little right now. The response for the union need to be a lot more involvement, and a lot more caring. If the NHLPA wants to be a “great union,” they are going to have to do a lot of work to get there. I mean, come on,,,

”We need to govern ourselves as the players move forward,” said Lindros, a member of the NHLPA’s constitutional committee who has devoted his entire summer to the cause. ”The constitution used to be two pages. We’re up to somewhere between 15 and 16 pages.”

Seriously, two pages? If you would have shown that to any union leader at any level, they would have laughed themselves silly. The only negotiating client may be the National Hockey League, but that sure leaves a lot to the CBA to decide for the union. There should be bylaws, power structures, and voting rules. Staffing, salaries, oversight, everything that wasn’t in place that got them into this situation in the first place. How could two pages even begin to cover the situation?

But it has to start somewhere, and this is isn’t a bad place.

Anaheim Ducks defenceman Mathieu Schneider, who helped Chelios in the fight against Saskin, left this week’s meetings never feeling better about where things were headed.

”After leaving here today I’ve never been more proud to be a member of the NHL Players’ Association,” he said. ”I think we’re stronger and we’re going to come out of this as united as we’ve ever been.”

I think Shawn Horcoff, the Oilers player rep, puts it well.

”We’re putting a black mark in history behind us now and moving forward,” said Horcoff.

Yes, Shawn, you are. Try not to screw it up again.

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