The Union Awakes. . . Maybe

This could have been another Troy Glaus blog. But then he hung 'em up for the season to have surgery.

Just five days after being named in a controversial steroid report.

Must be a weird coincidence or sumthin'. Huh. That SI.com report must have hit him right in the heel.

So, instead, we'll write about the NHL Players' Association. You know, the union you loved to hate until they pretty much either a) decided to get all buddy-buddy with the league or b) lost the will to live.

Well, the union is still around. Still without an executive director, mind you, but still breathing and collecting dues. Evidence of its existence came to light late Wednesday when, in a breathtaking news release, the NHLPA announced it was pretty darn upset about the 15-game suspension handed down to Mark Bell.

For an organization that is desperately in need of an issue that might actually galvanize its membership, this couldn't have come at a better time.

Most NHL players, you see, while upset about the entire Ted Saskin affair, aren't particularly energized enough to actually mobilize. But in this case, the suspension of Bell is a shot across the bow of every NHL player.

There was no precedent for the 15-game ban. Moreover, it piggybacks on top of the indefinite suspension that's part of the NHL-NHLPA substance abuse problem.

Seems to me, and to more than a few union activists, that this is another instance of the NHL simply doing whatever it wants and assuming the union won't raise a fuss.

Well, this time, the NHLPA may actually fight. In the wake of this suspension, it's clear that there are no parameters to the powers Gary Bettman holds in terms of discipline for off-ice transgressions. Moreover, there's potentially a competitive issue if the commish is going to pick and choose which criminal complaint or guilty plea requires league action.

The union would like to know what the rules are going to be. It would also like to know how a rehabilitation program designed not to punish players for admitting to substance issues has now essentially resulted in a lengthy suspension. The trick will be to question the Bell suspension will at the same time being careful not to implicitly condone drinking and driving offences.

Still, the union clearly has an issue here. Now we'll see whether the spirit of Bob Goodenow lives.

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As the Maple Leafs kick off training camp today with medicals in preparation for a new NHL season, Damien Cox can help you get in game shape with his weekly mailbag which returns Thursday, Sept. 20, in this space. Click here to submit a question.

Getting Wobbly Early

Well, it appears the scenario is set.

If John Ferguson's Leafs get off to a weak start, or have a very bad patch anywhere between October and February, it appears the non-winners who run MLSE are going to hand the keys to the kingdom to Scotty Bowman.

The story refuses to die, the suits haven't hired John Muckler or Harry Sinden to a "senior consultant" job and Bowman continues to leave the door open, saying one thing to some people and another thing to others.

Now, in today's Globe and Mail, he says he'd be open to something "big."

That's probably not the Florida Panthers job, so we can assume it's the Leafs and that the negotiating message is "Show Me the Money." And be prepared to let a living hockey legend have all the power.

It sure doesn't sound like "no," does it?

Interestingly, while MLSE board members continue to undermine Ferguson by allowing this silliness to go on - Richard Peddie et al could kill the story in a heartbeat, but won't - they still may be the ones to balk at giving Bowman all the power.

Money they're willing to waste. They've got lots of it, particularly now that the cap world doesn't force them to spend to their ability.

But authority they jealously guard, having traditionally been unwilling to let various hockey people make important decisions without first getting the okay from people who don't know anything about the sport, namely the board members.

Bowman's a super savvy hockey man, and he wouldn't take the job and be beholden to such people. He's 74 years old with a brilliant record as a coach, but not nearly one so glittery as an adminstrator, depending on how you assess how much he had to do with the decision making process in Detroit under GM Ken Holland. He has been slipping slowly into retirement, but then again, perhaps like Marv Levy he's got the bug again.

The Leafs tried something like this once with Punch Imlach, and it turned out to be a total and complete disaster. Then again, the most influential MLSE suits believe Leaf history began with Nikolai Borschevsky's goal on Tim Cheveldae, so the past has limited impact on them.

Thus this peculiar, destructive dance continues, putting the Leaf organization in a wobbly, unsettled state heading into training camp.

Nope, just can't understand why this team can't win a Stanley Cup. . .

More Than Just Baseball

It would have been naive to believe the cloud of steroids would never touch the Blue Jays.

Now it has, but for this club, it's more than just an issue surrounding one ballplayer.

It adds to their credibility woes.

SCOTT AUDETTE/REUTERS

Troy Glaus has been linked to a Florida pharmacy alleged to have illegally distributed performance-enhancing drugs to pro athletes.

Attendance is basically flat at slightly better than 28,000 per game, better than it was in 2004 and 2005, slightly down from '06. As much as the Jays like to complain about having to compete against the BoSox and Yankees, the fact they can't convince their own fans to turn out in consistently greater numbers cuts into their revenue base.

Team performance is similarly stagnant. At 72-70, equalling last year's 87-win record is unlikely, and even tying the 80-win record of two years ago is going to require beating Tampa Bay once in a while.

So much was promised this year, and the injury excuse can only carry J.P. Ricciardi so far as his five-year plan moves into its second five years. Even the embattled Leaf GM John Ferguson always says, "You are what your record says you are."

Ricciardi, meanwhile, looked very, very bad earlier this season with his out-and-out fibbing over the B.J. Ryan story, and Paul Godfrey's insistence on backing up his GMs verbal contortions didn't make him look much better.

Basically, the two men agreed that lying to the fans through the media was okay in their books.

Now comes the Troy Glaus mess.

Sandwiched between ugly revelations involving St. Louis outfielder Rick Ankiel and Baltimore outfielder Jay Gibbons (a former Blue Jay farmhand), with the media apparently still doing all the digging, Glaus may have been outed at the very least as a player who was in possession of steroids from the controversial Signature Pharmacy at a time when baseball had finally got around to making them illegal.

Interestingly, the Glaus allegations are getting a lot of traction in the San Francisco area when Barry Bonds is god but people now want to know if Glaus was on the juice when he won World Series MVP honors in '02 as part of an Angels team that beat the Giants.

So far, Glaus has said nothing. Ricciardi has said nothing. Godfrey, uncharacteristically, has been silent.

A stonewall? Are these guys serious? In a market that is clearly still lukewarm towards them despite all the efforts to remake the ballpark and create a new (if rather phony) team philosophy of being the Oakland A's east, this is no time for these people to go silent.

If Glaus has a case to make for himself, he should make it. The one approach that no athlete has ever really tried is just coming clean. How the fans at the dome react to him when the team returns home will be interesting. These are same folks who have booed Jason Giambi mightily and forced Rafael Palmeiro to wear ear plugs, after all.

Ricciardi, meanwhile, has to try and convince the world that he had no knowledge that he was fooled into buying a possible steroid user when Glaus was acquired. And Godfrey has to somehow spin this favourably to a Jays public that is getting rather fatigued over promises and more promises from a baseball team that used to play with the big clubs.

Go with the Mark McGwire approach if you want, boys. But for the Jays, this isn't just about Troy Glaus, and it isn't just about steroids.

A Sad Story

It's as close to "Say It Ain't So" as you can imagine in modern sport.

Rick Ankiel was getting to be the feel-good story of the Major League Baseball season, the great comeback that makes all those memories of the odious Barry Bonds go away.

The guy who couldn't throw a strike and went to the minors to make himself into a big-league hitter comes back to be a force that puts the St. Louis Cardinals back into post-season contention in Roy Hobbs-like fashion.

Now this. Human growth hormone. Loads of deliveries several years ago, just about the time when Ankiel was trying to morph himself into a slugger.

This one is really going to stink. The New York Daily News broke the story today that Ankiel received a 12-month supply of HGH, and man oh man, is baseball going to take an unhappy hit on this one.

Even Ankiel's boss, GM Walt Jocketty, has already been quoted as saying that it would be "tragic" if the story is true.

What can Ankiel say? Deny it outright? Say he was using it for his cat?

And don't tell me it doesn't matter because it happened several years ago.

First of all, we don't know that. HGH is difficult to detect, and Ankiel has been in the minors for several seasons where, presumably, the testing procedures are even less sophisticated.

Moreover, the entire point of the Ankiel tale is that this was a young man who refused to give up on his dream, not a young man who found a pharmaceutical answer to his athletic problems.

If there's a possible positive conclusion to this, its that Ankiel comes clean, admits what he did and why he did it, and tells the world he doesn't do it anymore.

But what are the chances of that happening? Zero, maybe?

Say it ain't so, Rick.

Things That Really Matter

Truly, it matters not whether Mark Bell skates for the Maple Leafs anytime soon.

At least not to me. It certainly matters to Bell and probably to John Ferguson, who'd like to see this part of the San Jose deal pay some dividends.

What really matters in this case are two things.

First, that the victim - remember, there's a victim here? - gets reasonable restitution for his injuries apparently suffered when Bell rear-ended him a year ago. Imagine what it was like for that fellow watching Bell play all last year. Imagine if it was your brother or your dad.

The second important matter is that Bell really gets help, which hopefully he is doing. But this isn't something that's just going to go away, and it isn't something that is going to be fine just because Bell says it is. Clearly, drinking is a problem Bell has been battling since he was in junior hockey, and that was a long, long time ago.

It's not clear whether he's an alcoholic. But he quite obviously struggles with the bottle.

So if it means he has to sit out all year to become a healthier person, I'm good with that.

Now on to on-ice matters that will actually impact the NHL season.

Like Scott Niedermayer. Like whether he's playing this year for the Ducks.

Niedermayer won't be there when the Ducks open training camp next week, and he and the team are expected to announce his intentions at a press conference today.

Can the Ducks win the Cup without Niedermayer, even after replacing him with the very capable Mathieu Schneider?

I say no.

Can they win if he shows up halfway through the season? Well, first there are some practical cap considerations, and second, there are very few instances in which a player has done this and his team has ended up winning it all.

Now Niedermayer's a special, special player, right behind Bobby Orr and Paul Coffey, probably, as the best-skating rearguard of all-time.

So if anybody can pull it off, it would be him.

But everything had to go right for the Ducks to capture the Cup last season, and being without Niedermayer for part or all of the season probably means a repeat will be out of the question.

Timing is Everything

John Tavares, it's pretty clear, has the talent to be a major NHL star.

But he sure needs to work on his sense of timing.

Here we are, smack dab in the middle of what has turned out to be a rather disappointing Super Series between Canadian juniors and Russian juniors - disappointing because its been so one-sided - and Tavares is being quoted across the land, but not about his team or the games.

Talking about himself. His future. His NHL plans.

PAUL CHAISSON/CP

John Tavares, right, apparently forgot he's competing for Team Canada at the moment.

You can bet Brent Sutter is doing a slow burn over this one.

It's strange, too, because Canadian juniors are pretty well schooled these days in the art of saying nothing of any substance at all to the media in the middle of these major international competitions.

Tavares, however, was quoted extensively in a Canadian Press story about how hard it is for him to have to wait until the 2009 NHL entry draft while so many of his Canadian teammates have already been drafted and are looking forward to attending NHL camps.

Tavares, and his agent, Bryan Deasley, have made it abundantly clear they believe Tavares should be eligible for the 2008 draft, if only because his birthdate - Sept. 20, 1990 - makes him ineligible by only five days for the '08 proceedings.

Now, whether Tavares is right or wrong, or whether he should be looking to be evaluated differently than every other junior player on the planet because of his skill level, isn't really the point at this moment.

It's that he should be talking Team Canada first, second and third.

It might even be different if he was ripping this competition up, but he's not. In fact, he's struggling to find his way.

Being publicly quoted as saying, in effect, that you believe you are so much better than every other junior-aged player that special rules should be invented for you and the NHL and NHLPA should immediately seek to amend their collective bargaining agreement just isn't appropriate at this moment. Deasley, in fact, knows just as well as anyone that the NHLPA is in a state of disarray at the moment and has bigger fish to fry than working on special dispensation for Tavares.

If Tavares thinks the rule Sept. 15 eligibility deadline is unfair, he should consult with Alexander Ovechkin, who missed it by only two days but seems to have adapted just fine to the disappointment.

Sure, it can be tough to continue playing and developing at the junior level. And sure, it would be nice to hit the big money a year earlier.

But this is simply the wrong time to be even talking about this issue. Moreover, Eric Lindros is an example of a player who, even if he was fighting the good fight, made himself a target in many ways because he chose to challenge the rules.

Tavares needs to play and play well - maybe help the Oshawa Generals win a championship? - and wait for his turn. It'll come, just like it did for many, many players equally - or even more talented - before him.