Sure, we're the first to challenge the NHL's failure to understand how much a more balanced schedule -- in which each team hosts at least one visit from each of the other 29 clubs -- would add value for season ticket holders, the heart of the league's gate-driven business. We question the league's unclear global marketing strategy and its reluctance to commit to Sochi 2014.
We're always haranguing the NHL commissioner's office for its handling of the Phoenix Coyotes situation in general and its treatment of former owner Jerry Moyes -- not to mention former managing partner Wayne Gretzky. We are convinced the league's spin on its troubled franchises in the southern U.S. does little to create value for either the game of hockey and the owners in the NHL.
We believe the NHL could do much to strengthen its television platform, particularly in the U.S. where Versus is still as difficult to access as a question-and-answers media conference by Tiger Woods.
Yet the inability of the NHL's commissioner's office to inspire hockey fans on either side of the border is less worrisome than the tumbleweeds posing as leadership, advocacy and communications at the NHLPA during this 2010 regular season.
Still seeking to install its fourth executive director in five years, the NHLPA has been as invisible as Casper since the unfathomable firing of Paul Kelly in September. Interim executive director Ian Penny represented the union at the Kraft Hockeyville pre-season game in Terrace, B.C. but resigned himself only weeks later.
Since then, pretty much nada. Yes, former Major League Baseball Players Association kingpin Donald Fehr appears to have at least stabilized the operations of the dysfunctional NHLPA acting as an adviser for the past few months. That didn't give the NHLPA a public voice during the Alex Burrows-Stephane Auger incident earlier this season. It didn't lend the union any discernable profile at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games. And it certainly hasn't offered any meaningful representation of NHL players during these weeks of consternation over blind side head shots.
All of this as the NHLPA is supposed to be ramping up to revamp escrow and push for other changes to the NHL's salary cap in the coming round of collective bargaining negotiations.
Firing the polished and media savvy Kelly was a mistake for a union desperately seeking stability and long-term vision and leadership. Going dark for much of the 2010 NHL season has been simply embarrassing.
The sooner the NHLPA confirms Fehr or Doug Allen of the NFLPA or NBAPA outside counsel David Feher or another candidate as its new executive director, the better. The lack of a full-time union boss is not only a liability for the NHLPA, it has only exacerbated the leadership vacuum at the top levels of professional hockey in North America.
It's not good for the association. Ironically, it's worse for the business of hockey.
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