Keystone Kops at the NHLPA

It seems unlikely the suits at the NHL Players' Association deliberately sought out a friend of Alan Eagleson's to submit a legal opinion on Paul Kelly.

Even these guys aren't that stupid.

No, it was more likely ineptitude and mean-spiritedness that has landed the union in the soup again. See, it wasn't enough for the coup plotters who have seized control of the hapless organization to fire Kelly. No, they had to try and find a way to smear him as well. But in their zest to pile on, to try and convince a skeptical hockey world that Kelly was guilty of some terrible breach of trust and had to be canned just as Ted Saskin had to be canned, they ended up making fools of themselves.

Bigger fools, that is.

And if Kelly had to be fired, then what of interim executive director Ian Penny who, in his dual role as NHLPA general counsel, had to have approved the plan to hire Roy McMurtry to give a legal opinion on Kelly's firing? McMurtry, paid by the union to give an opinion on whether the union had done the right thing in removing Kelly, concluded that was indeed the case.

What he didn't tell Penny, or what Penny was too asleep at the wheel to figure out, is that in opining on Kelly, McMurtry was in a mild to serious conflict as a friend and political associate of Eagleson.

The same guy Kelly once put in jail. The same guy who is Voldemort to the PA.

It's unclear what the extent is or was of McMurty's relationship with Eagleson, but it was enough that the union quickly disavowed his legal opinion last night.

Now, surely the vigilant Andrew Ference, the Boston Bruins defenceman who has suddenly become a major force in the union and still insists Kelly had to be fired at 4 a.m. in the morning a month ago, will now insist that Penny should be fired for such an egregious error. Otherwise, some might start to wonder aloud if Ference is just carrying water for exiled ombudson Eric Lindros, an avowed enemy of Kelly's.

All along, Kelly and his supporters have insisted he was railroaded and that his enemies within the union - specifically Penny and advisory board members Ron Pink and Ian Troop - were guilty of breaching the union's constitution over and over.

Now this latest episode. If the union needed an outside legal opinion on Kelly's conduct as PA executive director, why wasn't McMurtry or somebody else retained before Kelly was fired, not after? Why has there been no similar review of Penny, who magically landed a new five-year contract last June?

And after Kelly was supposedly found guilty of breach of trust, how will Ference or Penny or Buzz Hargrove handle the apparently deliberate leaking of a confidential union legal opinion?

Clearly, after decapitating Kelly and losing Glenn Healy, Pat Flatley and others, there is apparently no viable leadership at all at the PA these days. Instead of getting on with the business of the union, those left in charge are fighting a political rear action against an imaginary attacker, wasting more of the players' union dues every day.

So many questions. So little competence.

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Comments

[O.Boy]

Jeremy Roenick, like him or not, he sure is sounding more and more correct in his assessment of these team reps - hockey players with absolutely no clue about anything and should stick to lacing on skates and taping up sticks.

Looks now like a bunch of crooked lawyers leading a bunch of know-nothings. As Yogi Berra supposedly said - looks like deja-vue all over again.

More important question - like the Coyotes situation - where do they go from here?

[Linda Hokanson]

No way do I believe that these guys didn't know McMurtry was a friend of Eagleson's. They knew, they just didn't know everyone else knew and remembered. They'll just keep digging a bigger and bigger hole and hopefully they will get swallowed up by it and disappear. What a bunch of incompetent idiots!!

[David Bacque]

Any lawyer who practices in Ontario and is above the age of eighteen and does not know about Mr McMurtry's involvement, in so many ways, with the game of hockeys legal issues is just "that stupid". In my opinion there is no question of that choice being improper and Mr. McMurtry was also, obviously, mistaken in thinking he could write such an opinion and appear to have no conflict of interest. And Damien, I'm going to have to suggest that the little turf wars we all thought were over? They rage on.....to forget that fact (what, a feud in the game of hockey???) is a mistake of huge proportions.

[Players Onion]

No offense to you personally, Mr. Cox, but these details really don't concern those of us who just want to see live hockey and cheer on our teams and see goals, hits, fights, follow the stats and standings.
Thank goodness the games start for real tonight. If these guys want to carry on their ridiculous union dysfunction behind closed doors, let 'em have at it, I say. Just let them all know, Joe Average Fan does not care about that stuff!
Go Leafs!

[Garmo]

bravo Damien...what a bunch of ignorant tools the people at the PA are. Add ignorance+stupidy+vindictivness together and what do you get? We are finding that out more every day.

[James]

Reading about the NHLPA is about as fun as reading about Canadian Politics.

[Skinny Jimmy]

No offense to you personally, Players Onion, but these details will probably lead to another strike and thus no goals, hits etc. With Penney, Hargrove et al leading/misleading the players it's only a matter of time,

[Tabber]

Players Onion: So don't read the articles, if you, like the players, don't care. Some of us do, and we don't appreciate your attempts at censorship. By the way, Ian Penny, there's a spelling mistake in your name. You can't even spell union? Now that's a dumb lawyer!

[Paul v]

little known fact: Andrew Ference's real is name is Lucius Malfoy and is engineering Eagleson's revival. He has also been seen to sport an Eagle tattoo on in left forearm. 'Ware to those born in Bruins fandom!

p.s. it IS great to hear more than just player rankings and team critiques.

[Sandy T.]

What I personally find tiresome is people like Players Onion who wade through the stream of their own limited thoughts and then profess to speak for "Joe Average Fan".

But what I find truly scary in this day and age is people like James who says "Reading about the NHLPA is about as fun as reading about Canadian Politics." If you've ever wondered how the world got the way it is, seek out others who think the way James does and talk to them for a few minutes. I guarantee, a few minutes will be all you'll need.

[earl maloney]

nhlpa what a joke. if you have individual,salaries and bonuses for players how does that make a union.

[Wolfgang Franke]

Congratulations, Brian Burke. You have managed, in just one short year, to give us a Leaf team that is both uninteresting and unappealing.

It’s uninteresting because not a single Leaf player generates excitement by just carrying the puck into the other team’s end. And, please, spare us any references to Phil Kessel. Yes, he had one good year with the Bruins, but his Leaf performance with the Leafs will be diminished by three key factors – no training camp and no exhibition games to get used to his team mates under game conditions; he will be surrounded by mediocre forwards who are a far cry from the all-stars would were his Boston line mates; Ron Wilson, the snarling, narcissistic coach of the Leafs, will, at the first opportunity, berate and demean Kessel in a thin-veiled attempt to deflect attention from his multiple failings as a coach.

The team is unappealing because it is led by a Neanderthal general manager who hasn’t noticed that the league is dominated by teams with young, exciting, high draft choice players who will never throw a punch on or off the ice. Instead, we get not one, but two, knuckle draggers who engage in ugly, meaningless fights with the other team’s knuckle draggers. Worse, the knuckle draggers are constantly praised while the team’s most skilled players – Niklas Hagman and Matt Stajan – are benched. Of course, it is only a coincidence that Hagman and Stajan are the product of previous Leaf regimes while the team’s two knuckle draggers – Colton Orr and Jay Rosehill – are Burke’s boys. Add in Ron “I love me” Wilson and you have the most unappealing team leadership in the history of the Leaf franchise – and that is saying something.

All this bad enough, but the worst is still to come. Burke traded three high draft choices to get the right to sign Kessel. He did this even though he knows that in a salary cap system nothing is more valuable than high draft choices. They are valuable because there is virtually no other way to get young, highly talented and cheap players. Burke lamely replies that Kessel is a young, highly talented player. Maybe so. But he is not cheap.

We need more players like Nazem Kadri, the single move made by Burke that makes any sense. But we won’t get them – not until 2012, and perhaps longer if Burke continues to apply his outdated “blueprint”.

It all adds up to a new low water mark for the Leafs that makes even the lamentable Gord Stellick years look good by comparison.

Wolfgang Franke
Unionville, Ontario