Lord Stanley's Legacy

NHL hockey fans are an anxious bunch these days. The lockout of the players by the owners is heading in its fourth week and the two sides have yet to seriously discuss any of the big economic issues dividing them. A single team's season's worth of games have already been laid waste and fans dread a second season of the last eight in which the NHL does not award the Stanley Cup.

As we ponder that, here's a simple question: why do we watch NHL hockey? We can claim it's because of the players' elite skill level or the thrill of watching the fastest game in the world at its top speed. Or maybe we watch because we have an unswerving loyalty to a particular team, honed since childhood. All of these things may be true, but when it comes right down to it, the main reason, and for some of us the sole reason, we watch NHL hockey is for the roller coaster of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Every player who's made the post-season talks about how it's different hockey. It's passion, speed, emotion, desperation and heroism cranked up a notch because the playoffs mean something much bigger than the regular season. The 82 games preceding the post-season are just jockeying for position. The real stakes begin in April and every hockey fan knows it. The prize at the end of that annual two-month war of attrition is that beautiful silver cup. Players say it's the toughest trophy to win, and it symbolizes everything we treasure about the game of hockey. Another year without a Stanley Cup awarded to the top team in the NHL does not bear thinking about.

Well, friends and hockey fans, as it turns out, the NHL can go to hell.

After the last season-ending lockout in 2004-05, a couple of beer-league players in Toronto had had it with the big league's owners. They were particularly bitter about the cancellation of the playoffs, and that got them wondering whether the Cup actually belongs to the NHL at all. After all, Lord Stanley of Preston donated the Cup to the championship team of the Dominion of Canada. He meant it to be a challenge cup for hockey supremacy, and, accordingly, appointed two trustees who would oversee the governance of the trophy. They would set the rules for how the Cup would be decided and mediate any disputes. The beer-leaguers guessed, based on that premise that the Cup, in effect, belongs to the people and is merely under the protection of the trustees. So, they sent a letter to the trustees, requesting the right to challenge for the Cup. The trustees immediately turned them down, claiming they were not allowed to let teams other than those in the NHL play for the trophy. Not buying that, the two rec players decided to take the NHL to court. Tim Gilbert was their lawyer.

"We settled with the National Hockey League," Gilbert explains. "This followed the exchange of some affidavit material. We had a hockey historian weigh in, and we had experts from across Canada in trust law. We agreed with the NHL that the agreement between the trustees of the Cup and the NHL would reflect that, A, it is a trust, and B, that anybody can play for the Cup in a year in which the NHL doesn't frame a competition, subject to what the trustees decide."

It appeared at first as though the small-time challengers had won a big victory over the bureaucrats controlling the NHL. It didn't quite work out that way, however.

"You could say it was a draw, in that the trustees don't have  to award the Cup to a non-NHL team in a year in which there is a lockout," says Gilbert. "But they can't say, 'No we're not allowed to,' because of the agreement. The agreement does not preclude the trustees awarding the Cup to a non-NHL team."

The catch there is that it's up to the trustees to decide whether a challenge bid is acceptable. And, considering the fact that the two trustees, Brian O'Neill and Ian (Scotty) Morrison, are both former NHL vice-presidents with a long history of loyalty to the league, it doesn't seem likely they'd agree to let the Cup out of the NHL's hands.

O'Neill, when asked what he'd do with a challenge request if the current lockout cancels the playoffs replied:

"“It’s just not going to happen. The Stanley Cup should be awarded to the top National Hockey League team, which has been determined to be the top league in the world. Anything less than that would demean the trophy.”

Tim Gilbert isn't impressed with O'Neill's reasoning.

"I think it's unfortunate that they would say something and predetermine an issue before someone puts something before them that might have traction. I think it's an open question," he states. " Other types of leagues, should they be able to put something together, might be able to convince the trustees. The original object of the trust was to promote hockey. A lot of people feel with the lockout, it's all about money. A lot of people have tuned out of that dispute and don't even know what the real issues are, other than it's a dollar sign. It reflects negatively on the sport generally."

There are many who would agree with Gilbert. What, after all, demeans the trophy more: Having a passionate team of amateurs or semi-pros win it, or having two blank places on its side, reading only "season not played?" The Cup is a legend in itself, its history rife with weird, outrageous and entertaining stories. Awarding it to a team outside the NHL because hockey fans demanded it for the good of the sport would only add to that legend. Imagine the level of public interest if the Cup were to be disputed between local teams, rather than those in California or Florida. Picture the unbelievable joy of those who play for the Gander Flyers or the Montreal Stars,  seeing their names engraved on the Cup when they thought they had no chance because they didn't make the NHL, or are women.

Gilbert says there's plenty of legal room to challenge the right of the trustees to withhold the Cup.

"It's their (the trustees') decision, subject to living up to the object of the trust. The next stage is if the NHL can't pull its act together and should they cancel the season, then it's open for someone to argue that the trustees should be awarding that Cup and they're not living up to the original grant of the Cup," he warns. "That goes back to Lord Stanley himself. There's a letter of his, quite brief, that became evidence in our case. It says, paraphrasing, that it should be presented to the best team in the Dominion.  Those are the battle lines.  Last time, we came out in front. We remain interested. We did change the agreement, and we're prepared to help again if it makes sense."

So, there you have it. There's a legal case to be made, and lawyers willing to make it. If the NHL is stupid, greedy and stubborn enough to withhold the Cup for the second time in eight years, the door is open for some enterprising fans to force the trustees to give it back to the people. There wouldn't be a better way to stick it to the league who's been sticking it to them for years.

Take Back the Game

Yesterday, I was flipping through the Sears Christmas wish catalogue. I discovered this year, for a mere $70.83, you can get a plastic replica Habs goalie mask. For $69.99, you can own a statue of a depressed baby in a Habs sweater, wishing for a Stanley Cup. A Canadiens-logo scarf or dog dish will run you forty bucks, and if you want to keep your chilly toes toasty in Habs-themed slippers, it'll cost you fifty. If none of those Habby items rock your boat, the die-hard Canadiens fan can also shell out for sleeping bags, lighters, baby onesies, bikinis, playing cards, coins, t-shirts, long johns, curtains, socks, packages of tissues, toasters, air fresheners, clothespins, bar ware, lawn chairs or lunchboxes, all emblazoned with the proud CH. In short, if you can buy it, a manufacturer can slap a Habs logo on it and charge you double. Of course, all that lovely money runs directly into the NHL coffers, helping hockey-related revenue rise by an average of seven percent every year since the last lockout.

In the run-up to the current lockout, lots of angry fans have been threatening boycotts of everything from hockey itself to companies that sponsor NHL teams. They hope if they switch their internet from Bell to Rogers, it will worry Bell's brass enough to pressure owners for a CBA settlement. Less radical fans are saying they'll shut their wallets and not buy a new Colby Armstrong sweater or Habs-themed watch with Rocket Richard's goal-celebration arms marking the hours, in hope of making owners worry about loss of merchandise revenue. They threatened similar things eight years ago, when the last lockout began. In the end, after an entire year without the NHL, they rushed back to pro rinks in greater numbers than ever, paying higher ticket prices and shelling out 200 bucks a pop for their official replica Alex Kovalev jerseys.

It's a fine idea to say you won't go back to the Bell Centre when the lockout is over. Really, though, as the last work stoppage showed, you and the rest of the hockey-mad world probably won't be able to stick to that threat. We want our hockey, no matter how much we hate Gary Bettman and think the players and owners are all a bunch of greedy bastards. We also can swear to boycott NHL sponsor companies, but are we really going to change our cable provider or forgo our morning fix of Timmy's joe just for the principle of the thing? Probably not. Or at least, not enough of us will commit to a boycott to make a difference. One thing we can do, however, and in great numbers, is refuse to buy all that NHL-sanctioned swag. We can still have hockey; we just don't need to pay for a forty-dollar ball cap to wear while we watch it.

Fans, as we know, are the people who provide the money the NHL's players and owners are fighting over right now. Yet, when the cash leaves our hands and goes to Ticketmaster or the Habs merchandise shop, we lose our power.  The question is, how much influence do we really have if we choose to keep our money? Looking at the numbers, it turns out we could have quite a lot.

In the eight years since the last lockout, the NHL's hockey-related revenue has increased by nearly 50%. Last year, the league made a cool $3.3-billion. There's not a detailed breakdown of where all that cash originated that's publicly available, but with the numbers we can find, some of the picture begins to emerge. We know, for example, that the league takes in $355-million in TV revenue each year. We also know gate revenue last year amounted to $1.3-billion dollars. The league's largest sponsor, Molson-Coors, pays the NHL $53-million a year. Those three things account for $1.9-billion of the league's total revenue, leaving $1.4-billion for other sponsorship, including arena naming rights and dasher board ads, radio and internet rights and merchandise sales.

Last year, sales of all those team-logo-emblazoned goods went up by 15% over the previous season. In fact, they've risen every year since the last lockout. The league doesn't release specific numbers, but if merchandise accounts for even half of that $1.4-billion dollars, fans who buy NHL-approved stuff provide a very significant portion of the league's record revenue. If it accounts for even a third of the $1.4-billion, merchandise sales are worth more than all the TV rights CBC, TSN, NBC and RDS buy each year. That, friends, is big money, and money, as they say, talks.

I've never really considered how much Habs stuff I own, but after I thought about this, I took a look around. It turns out, I have four Habs sweaters, one of them game-worn and two pro replicas with names and numbers. I have four CH t-shirts of various patterns, three Canadiens ball caps, a keychain, gym wrist bands, a bottle opener, a water bottle, a subscription to the Habs team magazine, two fridge magnets, nine different books, videos and a DVD box set, coins, stamps, slippers, gloves, a framed 100th-anniversary print, a McFarlane figure of Patrick Roy, a calendar and a tiny model Escalade that sits on my desk at work, sporting the Habs logo. I don't know how much I or the people who gave me these things as gifts spent on the stuff, but I imagine it's well over a thousand bucks, and a portion of  that went right into the NHL owners' pockets. That's why I'm not going to buy anything else.

I'm angry this labour dispute is holding fans hostage, and I want to make a statement the owners will be forced to hear. I'm not willing to abandon hockey, but I will never buy another NHL-trademarked item again. And you know what? I won't miss it. I rarely wear my Habs gear, except during the playoffs, and the rest of it is just cute junk I've picked up over the years and never notice. I want my Habs hockey, but I'll be damned if I'll contribute to the many millions the NHL makes off merchandise sales and then fights about. Who's with me?



P.S. If all this makes you feel like crying, try this for a laugh.

Greed and Perspective

NHL training camps are scheduled to open next month and players are working hard to get their bodies in shape to withstand the rigors of a jam-packed exhibition season, 82-game regular season and, hopefully, a long playoff run. They're spending hours in the gym sweating, hoping the extra core work they do will prevent a sports hernia, or the agility training help them avoid the headshot that will steal their wits by the time they're 60. Guys in their 20s are fighting for a job and guys in their 30s fighting to keep one for an extra season or two.

Hanging over the normal routine of an NHL player's summer, though, is the looming spectre of another lockout by owners who claim they need a bigger share of hockey-generated revenue to cover the rising costs of doing business. In reality, they need the money to save them from themselves as they hand out monster contracts and then wonder why the salary cap isn't working the way it was supposed to work.

The fans...those who supply the money the owners and players are now fighting over...are stuck in the middle. In their (our) frustration at the possibility of, once again, being denied the pleasure of our vicarious adrenaline fix, they (we) throw accusations of base greed at both sides. Admittedly, there's little redeemable in the stance the owners have taken. Their initial offering to the players was laughable, requiring as it did a salary rollback of nearly a quarter of contract values, restricted free agency rights and an extended period of indentured servitude for the young players who are the lifeblood of the game. Fans are right to be disgusted by the way the owners are colouring the league.

Painting the players with the same shade of greed, however, isn't really fair. While they make amounts of money to which most of us could never aspire (the current average NHL salary is more than $2-million a year), the money doesn't come easy. Consider the path most of the players take to the big time.

From the time they're nine or ten years old, players spend the summers at hockey camps and running through endless games of street hockey. In the winters, they (and their dedicated parents) spend every weekend on the road travelling to tournaments and early mornings and late evenings on the ice for practice. The best players, the ones who make the NHL, play for two or three different teams and therefore double or triple the commitment required.

In their teens, most NHL-bound players leave home two to three years earlier than their peers to attend prep schools or play junior hockey. Their lives become a treadmill of workouts, practice, travel and games. Some of them fit school in there where they can, some of them don't. By the time they're 18 and they're ready to be drafted by an NHL team, they've devoted thousands of hours to the game. Most of them have had at least one concussion, many a hockey-related surgery and only a handful will hear their names called by a big-league general manager. Those are the lucky ones. The others who are unwilling to let the dream die eke out a tough living in minor pro leagues or in Europe.

Once drafted, the majority of the chosen ones must spend two to five years working their butts off on the ice and in the gym, enduring tedious bus rides and learning how to make ends meet in the ECHL or AHL, hoping they can fulfill the promise the big team once saw in them. A handful of those drafted will actually make a career in the NHL. Of those, a smaller handful will make the really big money one imagines when picturing the life of an NHL hockey player.

The average NHL player spends up to 15 years in training for his job. The average NHL career lasts 5-6 seasons. So, for every guy who's one of the 1-in-25 who plays more than 1000 games, there's another who gets to play just one big-league game after all that investment. As we've seen in the last couple of years, the risks inherent in playing a game that's faster than at any time in history, against bigger, stronger opponents who have a league-sanctioned right to punch you in the face can be life-threatening. Players willingly put their health and their future sanity on the line in order to fulfill the dream of playing hockey for a living. One thing they learn from this experience is there are no guarantees.

Now, take a look at the money the players get for their years of training, their physical dedication to the game and the risks they take to play it. If a player is lucky enough to work in the NHL for ten years, according to the league average salary, he could make about $22-million dollars. In actual compensation, however, that ten years includes three at an entry-level pay scale. It also includes a year or two at the end of that time, when the player has lost a step or sustained a serious injury, when his income drops. Enforcers, fourth-line scrubs, spare defencemen and backup goalies make a fraction of the average. If the ten years include a lockout season, that's a year of lost income he doesn't get back.

Out of the money a player makes during his fairly brief earning period, he must pay an agent to negotiate for him and an accountant or investment manager to look after the money. Those guys don't come cheap. Then there are taxes. In Quebec, a player making a nominal $4-million a season at the peak of his earning life takes home only slightly more than half of that. There's the expense of a secure home where the player can't be pursued by fans, and there's the need to save for the future. Most player careers are over by the time they reach their mid-30s. That means they have 40 or 50 years stretching before them, in which hockey no longer pays the bills. Most of them don't have a trade or college degree, and some emerge from junior hockey barely able to read. They make nothing for the hours of community service they provide on behalf of their teams.

For all of those reasons, it's not quite right to say NHL players are just as greedy as the owners who dole out the fans' money in paycheck form. This is not in defence of the amount they make, or of the privileged lifestyle they live during their brief tenure as professional hockey players at the highest level. It's meant to offer perspective of the road players take to be where they are, versus the path owners take, on which there's no physical hardship, performance anxiety or crushing failure.

In the end, owners will still be owners in ten or twenty years. Most of the players attempting to negotiate a new collective agreement will be done and forgotten by then. Players have to live for the moment and make what they can, while they can. That the owners who govern their professional lives want to impose limitations on that ability makes them no better than the crooks who left Maurice Richard selling fishing line after his career ended.

A lockout will be painful for fans, but it will hurt players too. When all's said and done, these guys have been training to play hockey since they were little kids. Taking that away from them for a long time, no matter how much they make to do it, will be painful. Chances are, while the players are training so hard for a season that might not start for months, the owners aren't quite as dedicated. And, when the season is inevitably halted because the two sides are at an impasse, the owners probably won't feel nearly as bad.

The P.K. Puzzle

When you try to build a definitive image of P.K.Subban, it's difficult to bring that image into clear focus. Eventually, you realize that, instead of calling to mind a single emblematic picture of the player, you end up with a slide show.  There's Subban scoring his first-ever playoff goal to put the Habs up 1-0 against Pittsburgh, and accepting the pats on the back from his teammates with an air of surprise. Subban hitting Boston's Brad Marchand so hard with a clean open-ice check that the Bruin wasn't sure what sport he was playing. Subban, late in his rookie season, scoring a vital OT winner against Chicago and coming up with one of his notorious celebrations. Subban at the NHL All-Star breakaway challenge, charming the crowd in Carolina by changing sweaters with hometown hero Jeff Skinner. Subban having fun with Carey Price. Subban in a practice scuffle with Tomas Plekanec as last year's bad season got a little worse. The images don't really give you a single clear picture of Subban, and that's part of the problem newly-minted Habs G.M. Marc Bergevin is having right now.

So far this off-season, Bergevin has been systematically identifying the players he wants to keep and signing them to extensions. He quickly chose the guys he wanted to bring in to fill roster holes and got them signed too. Now, aside from persistent rumours that he's planning to sign one of Shane Doan or Alex Semin to play wing on the second line, the only task left in Bergein's "in" box is Subban.

When two sides are negotiating a contract, they're basing their ideas of fairness on their respective images of each other. So, right now, P.K.Subban sees himself as a young stud who saved the Habs when they had nobody on defence. He's right, to a degree. However, Bergeron sees him as a kid with a lot of developing yet to do, who had a great rookie playoff, a fair-to-middling official rookie season and a somewhat disappointing second year. Still, Subban is developing quickly, as he has through every level of hockey, which is a good thing.

The problem is, he's not an A-List stud like Drew Doughty or Shea Weber. Yet, in Montreal, he's been given those kinds of responsibilities. So Bergevin is looking at a lineup including Andrei Markov as the number-one D, not Subban. At the same time, Subban is expecting to be paid for the role he's played while Markov was hurt for the last two seasons. It's a difficult situation because Subban is still a restricted free agent and hasn't really stepped up, in the stats department at least, as a guy who deserves the money his buddy Carey Price just made.

It comes down to what Subban is asking. Bergevin, certainly, has made an offer based on his perception of Subban's development and what he expects of the next two or three or five years. The difference in negotiations now is in how Subban perceives himself and his role on a D that includes a healthy Markov. Ideally, Subban would be a top-four guy who can step up into the top pairing if there's an injury. And, as he's a homegrown player with tons of potential and a fan favourite, he deserves a legitimate contract to keep him around during his development years. The thing is, Subban may already see himself as a top guy. That would mean the gap between what he expects and what Bergevin is offering may be wider than is comfortable.

It's important to sign Subban soon, because the pickins' are pretty slim on the open market right now, and teams like the Flyers are desperate for young, talented D-men. The Habs, however, can't panic and use that excuse to overpay a guy who should be coming into his money in about four years, after he's proven he's really a stud. Right now, given Subban's resume, it would be wise to sign him for about four years, with a cap hit no higher than about four million. Probably, that's what Bergevin's offering. And, probably, that's what Subban's team is rejecting because they think he should be compensated for the two years in which he's stepped in for Markov.

The two sides need to come to an agreement soon, because the slide show of P.K.Subban we have in our heads right now will get longer, and the images will be more and more impressive. We just have to hope the team can strike a deal that pays fairly early on for his current skill and expands for the development we know is coming.

P.K.Subban is one of the cornerstones of the Canadiens future, especially if they hope to win a Cup in the next 3 to 5 years. However, if the idea is to keep him around for longer than that, the next contract can't be crazy. Hopefully, both sides will eventually realize that and the kid we all love to watch will get signed for 3 or 4 years in the next little while. With any luck, Bergevin won't cave and hand him a ten-year contract with tens of millions involved. That won't help anyone and the Canadiens will be poorer for it.

The image we have of P.K.Subban, the person, not the player, is of an open-hearted guy who grew up cheering for the Habs. He's a hard worker and a smiler. He needs to stay a Hab. We hope it happens that way.

Duct Tape and Spit

When the Canadiens ended their dreadful 2011-12 season in last place in the Eastern Conference, they had a lot of lineup holes to fill if they were to have any hope of improving. They were weak in the bottom six, short a couple of second-line wingers and they needed at least one solid, stay-at-home-style defenceman. Then Marc Bergevin came on board as GM, and the job of filling those holes fell to him.

It was a daunting task, and only one of many facing the Habs' new boss. He was also responsible for revamping the front office, planting the seeds of a new team culture, drafting the best player possible in the highest spot the Habs had chosen since 1980 and re-signing the team's future corner stones. Through all of that, it appears Bergevin does have a plan for the Canadiens. He wants a front office with experience and smarts. He wants players with character and skill.

The front office part seems to be going well. The on-ice part of the plan is harder to achieve. Unfortunately for those who want to see an immediate turnaround in this team, the fix is going to take more than one season. Bergevin certainly acquired character in his free agent signings, but the remaining skill the players have is questionable.


He addressed the need for veteran D by bringing Francis Bouillon back to Montreal. Bouillon has defied the odds by playing tough NHL defence for 12 seasons, despite standing only 5'8" tall. This year, however, he will turn 37 years old and is coming off a series of groin injury and concussion problems. On the plus side, Bouillon's contract is only for a year, as he's obviously a place-holder who'll give the prospects in Hamilton a chance to develop.


On paper, Bergevin has beefed up the bottom six forwards with the signings of Brandon Prust and Colby Armstrong. Both players are tough, in-your-face types, of which there's been a serious shortage in Montreal in recent years. Both also come with questions. Armstrong played only 79 games in his two seasons in Toronto because of a series of injuries. Prust has been traded three times in the last four years, which usually means there's a younger, better player behind him. The four-year contract is the longest of his NHL career, and one wonders whether he'll be surpassed by a Habs prospect before that term is up.

If Bouillon, Armstrong and Prust stay healthy, which, at the moment, is a big "IF," then they will improve some of last season's weaknesses. They'll make the team a fair bit rougher around the edges and bring a no-quit attitude to the room. They will not, however, score many points, and this is the biggest problem the Canadiens will have again in the coming season.

Last year, David Desharnais did an admirable job centering the team's two best wingers in Max Pacioretty and Erik Cole. The trio was the Habs' best in terms of offensive production. Tomas Plekanec, on the other hand, who entered the season as the number-one centreman, ended up with more linemates than Hugh Hefner has bunnies. He also was given the majority of tough defensive assignments up the middle and his stats reflected both of those facts.

Going into this season, we assume Brian Gionta will be ready to take his place back on Plekanec's right side. If he stays healthy (and, again, that's a big IF, considering the injury problems he dealt with last year, his size and his aging body), he will bring some skill and consistency to that line. The problem is the left side, and it seems as though Bergevin and Michel Therrien have decided to play the inconsistent Rene Bourque there.

Having scored 58 and 50 points in the two years prior to last season, with 27 goals each year, there's an argument to be made that Bourque has the goal-scoring ability to play second-line minutes. Last year's 18 goals and 24 points, along with his -19 in the plus/minus category are the other side of that argument. Plekanec plays a vital role defensively, and therefore, so must his linemates. If a guy is going to be non-committal and lazy, it's going to cost that whole line in terms of effectiveness at both ends of the ice. Bergevin's decision to give Bourque another chance and hope Therrien gets more consistency out of him than he showed last year is risky.

On one side, if Bourque turns it around and he and Gionta are able to put up the 25 goals apiece of which they're capable, Bergevin looks like a pretty smart guy. On the other side, if Bourque continues to play the sulky hockey he did last season, it leaves the top six forwards short a man. That, in turn, leaves the team not much farther ahead than it was last year.

Bergevin is taking a fairly conservative approach right now, trying to patch the holes with cheap pieces that all come with some degree of risk. By giving guys like Bourque and, it would appear, Scott Gomez, a second chance under a new regime, he's hoping they'll save him the cost of trading assets or spending money he can't afford to replace them. This is marking time until the new wave of home-grown talent...so much of which had been squandered by previous management regimes in exchange for expensive quick fixes...is ready to take over.

What that means is the team we saw lose its way to worst in the East last season probably won't be markedly better this year. But, you might argue, there's no way the bad luck of injuries will strike again. Andrei Markov will start the year healthy and Gionta will be back. That's true, of course, but injuries happen every year. Maybe a new coach will make a difference. Perhaps Bourque will make a comeback and give the team two real top lines again. All of this is possible, but it's also strictly based on hope. The lineup, as constituted on paper right now, will be a little bit tougher and hopefully better organized on the ice. It won't score many more goals or prevent a whole lot more than it did last year. And it won't suddenly develop a power play or win shootouts when it didn't do so in the last season.

It looks like, unless something dramatic happens and Shane Doan finds his way to Montreal, the Canadiens may still struggle to win enough games to grab a playoff spot. This is the time when all of us who wished for a proper rebuild from the draft are seeing that wish come true, but it's also the time for patience because it's not going to happen in the coming season.

Transparency

When Marc Bergevin took over as Habs' G.M., he breezed in with a smile and a wink and the promise of a new lightness in the organization's hierarchy. After the oppressive secrecy of the Pierre Gauthier era, Bergevin's willingness to speak frankly about his decision-making was a great relief. It turns out, however, that the new boss isn't immune from a little glossing over of the truth when it suits him.

There's been a lot of discussion in the last week about the Canadiens decision to pass over Larry Robinson as a member of the new coaching staff. The Hall-of-Fame defenceman claimed to be interested in Montreal and the rest of us were certainly interested in welcoming an expert of his stature back to the fold. Then to the disappointment of many, the team announced the job would go to J.J.Daigneault instead.

Now, there's nothing on Daigneault's record as a minor-league coach that says he isn't ready for the NHL. He comes with glowing reviews from the Rangers' AHL affiliate in Connecticut, where he spent the last five years instructing many members of New York's impressive young blueline corps. As is the case with any new guy coming to the organization, we can just wish him the best and hope, for the good of the team, he does a great job.

That said, there's something not quite right about the way in which the Bergevin team handled the Daigneault-over-Robinson hiring. Sometime after Robinson's New Jersey Devils lost in the Stanley Cup final on June 11, Bergevin requested permission to approach Robinson, then called to assess the big man's interest in a job with the Canadiens. According to the Montreal Gazette, calls went back and forth between the two sides, but because of storm damage to his property, Robinson wasn't able to jump on a plane and meet Bergevin and coach Michel Therrien for an immediate in-person interview.

In the end, Bergevin called Robinson just before the team announced Daigneault's appointment and told Robinson Therrien really liked his interview with Daigneault and that's why the Canadiens went in that direction. Robinson said he understood and that it was a business decision. Although many fans were disappointed such a great Canadien would not be returning to Montreal, most were willing to give Daigneault a shot.

That should have been the end of the story, but a piece in the Hartford Courant this week makes one wonder whether Robinson was really a consideration at all. The article gives a little insight into the speed-of-light hiring process the team employed in choosing Daigneault:

"When Montreal was searching for an assistant to concentrate on the defense, Daigneault’s name was mentioned in the Canadian media," the story reads.  "But he did not apply for the job because he was still under contract with the Rangers.
"It wasn’t until the Canadiens contacted Sather that the offer came. Daigneault was working at the Rangers’ prospect camp last Friday when Sather told him he would waive the final year of his contract if he wanted to leave.

"By the time Daigneault arrived at his West Hartfford home Friday afternoon, a contract was waiting for him. By 3:30 in the afternoon, he was officially employed by the Canadiens."

From the first contact with Sather until the contract arrived on Daigneault's desk, just three hours passed. It doesn't give one confidence that the great impression Daigneault allegedly made on Therrien was more than a cursory resume check. Played D in the NHL? Check. Promising career working with minor-league defencemen? Check. Unthreatening? Check.

In the Gazette article, Robinson took care to explain it would never be his goal to use his experience and stature to undermine Therrien. Given the rapid hiring of the minor-league Daigneault instead, it appears Therrien wasn't buying that. 

In the end, Daigneault will possibly do a fine job in teaching the new crop of Habs D-men. Fans everywhere hope he does at least as well as we know Robinson would have done. It would have been nice if Bergevin had been more truthful about how Daigneault was chosen to coach in Montreal, though. When a legend like Larry Robinson is involved, the team owes it to him to be as open as possible. Telling him Daigneault beat him out for the job fair and square because of a great interview (obviously by phone, if it even went in-depth at all, which negates the excuse that Robinson lost out when he couldn't make it to Montreal) isn't the classiest move. People talk and this stuff makes the papers.

Perhaps Bergevin found himself in a difficult position. Maybe he and Therrien wanted a younger, more up-and-coming assistant coach, but they were feeling the pressure to at least give Robinson the courtesy of a phone call. However, if they were never intending to hire him, they shouldn't have pretended they might. And they shouldn't have pretended that Daigneault was in the mix for longer than three hours and somehow blew them out of the water in the interview process. The way this was handled may be due to inexperience on Bergevin's part, but it smells a bit Gauthier-ish. Let's hope that's where the similarities end.

The Tax Tilt

The Financial Post published an  article and accompanying graphic today that shows the difference between the take-home salaries of NHL players in every market, at the 2-million, 4-million and 7-million-dollar base salary levels. The story is all about how teams with tax-friendlier climates have an extra tool in the box when it comes to attracting and retaining good players. That, logically, would seem to translate to a better chance for teams in low-tax cities to win. The logic behind the article is slightly flawed, when you consider that Edmonton and Calgary offer players the best tax deal in Canada and neither one has been much of a Cup threat for some years now. Florida, Tampa, Nashville and Dallas have a total of two championships between them in the last 15 years, and they top the list of low-tax cities. What is interesting, however, is the Canadiens' rank on the list.

While it's nothing new to discover that income taxes in Quebec are steep, seeing it there in black and white is pretty stark. The Canadiens sit dead last in the amount players take home in every salary category. The comparison between the after-tax pay of Canadiens versus that of Panthers or Stars prove the Habs have a very significant hurdle to overcome in stocking their lineup. The chart shows a 4-million-dollar player is left with $2,464,189 after taxes in Florida, while in Montreal, he'd make only $2,086,763. The 400-thousand dollar difference there might not seem like a big deal to those of us who can only imagine making that kind of money, but when you consider a player's limited earning time and the significant health risks he takes by playing the game, then giving up nearly a fifth of his take-home pay is a problem. Even though it probably wouldn't impact his current lifestyle that much, it could seriously affect his future.

The Canadiens contribute quite a bit to league coffers. They, and the other six Canadian teams provide more than 30% of the total of NHL earned revenue. They're why the salary cap rises every year. Yet, while they're paying into the league kitty, they're getting punished at home because they're limited to the same base amount for player salaries as the rest of the league, regardless of the chunk that disappears in taxes. This isn't something a smart owner like Geoff Molson should accept.

Recent luxury tax increases in Ontario mean Ottawa's and Toronto's players will also be paying tax at a rate just slightly better than that in Montreal. These are powerful teams, and it isn't right that they should support weaker teams financially, while accepting the handicap of higher taxes. They have a chance to use their power to level the field for themselves and other teams saddled with high tax rates. Now, while negotiations for a new collective agreement are underway, there should be discussion about increasing the salary cap allowance to compensate for taxes.

Here's the idea: using the cities with the lowest tax rates as a base, teams whose players must pay more in income tax should be allowed to spend above the cap by the amount of the difference. So, if a player in Florida gets to keep 2.4-million of his 4-million cap hit, while a player in Montreal gets only 2-million, the Habs should be allowed to cover the extra tax on the player's behalf without being penalized on the cap.

Right now, if the Canadiens want to court a high-end free agent, they need to overpay him by up to a million dollars or so, just to compete on the tax front. That extra money counts against the cap, which reduces the amount left to spend on other players, who also must be overpaid to stay in Montreal. That, over time, can significantly impact the quality of roster the Habs can ice. Take the case of Mike Cammalleri as an example. When Bob Gainey signed him, he was probably worth about $5.5 million on the free agent market. Gainey had to pay him $6-million to convince him to come to Montreal. If, however, Gainey had been allowed to pay some of Cammalleri's tax in a legal tax bonus that didn't count against the cap, he might have been able to get him for the market value and use the extra half-million for another player.

If the NHL wants to have true parity, the biggest hurdle it must knock down is the difference taxes make in real salary under the current cap. A player should be able to choose a city based on location, competitiveness and philosophy rather than how much of his contract he'll be able to keep in one city versus another.

All that said, Molson and the other owners in high-tax jurisdictions probably won't argue the point during the collective agreement negotiations. There are too many low-tax owners who like being able to use take-home pay as a draw in attracting players, for the minority to win that battle. It's a shame, though. The Canadiens have a lot to offer, but they probably lose more players than they attract because of the money difference. It's hard to argue otherwise when you see that difference laid out in black and white.