2014-15 NHL Season Kickoff Post

IT'S HERE! IT'S FINALLY HERE!

Yes, the NHL season kicks off tonight, as the Habs and Leafs renew their rivalry, Flyers-Bruins go at it, Flames face the Canucks, and the Kings raise their banner and laugh in the face of against the Sharks.

Until then, here are a few things I've been meaning to get to before the season starts.

Saku Koivu Retires

This season will mark the first in which a great Finnish player will not take part in.

Yes, sadly, Saku Koivu has decided to retire.

What’s not to say about Koivu? Represented Finland in the Olympics (4 times), World Cup (2), World Championships (7), and World Junior Championship (2). On top of that, named the first European captain of the Habs and became the face of their franchise for year. Most importantly, he beat non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and set up a foundation which raised enough money to buy a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanner for the Montreal General Hospital.

It does suck seeing one of your favourite players retire. In this case, Koivu was the first Habs captain I've known (I became a Habs fan in 1998). It was bad enough knowing that the organization let him walk in 2009 - and replaced him with Scott "goal a year" Gomez - but now his playing career is done. It would have been nice if he stuck around and had retired as a Hab.

Happy retirement Saku. You'll be missed.

 

 

 

The CHL goes NCAA

In this case it’s not a compliment (as an outsider though I don’t think NCAA is ever used as a compliment). The state of Washington has announced that they are looking into work conditions of the WHL (http://www2.tsn.ca/chl/story/?id=461398). The primary issue surrounding this is compensation for the players. Currently, players get a $50/week stipend plus scholarships packages based on how may years they play in the CHL.

The complaints, originally made by the joke that was CHLPA, now Unifor (Canada’s largest private-sector union, who has taken over this matter), are based on players being “slave labour” and there being an obvious employer/employee relationship.

This is pretty cut-and-dry. $50/week isn’t much and – just like the NHL – players are subjected to a draft and are under team control. Other junior leagues don’t have that kind of system, and rely more on tryouts when putting together a team (no saying CHL teams don’t rely on tryouts, but when you have control of a player they presumably factor in less). On top of that, the travelling CHL players do tend to plus more stress on them, compared to other junior leagues where they’re mostly region-based.

What makes the headline of this section is the response from CHL commissioner Mark Emmert David Branch. Branch defends the CHL by stating that most teams struggle financially and that players are “student athletes”. The first argument is understandable. Most teams in the league are from small cities and have relatively small venues (I looked at QMJHL arenas last year, I think only Halifax, Moncton, and Quebec play in venues that can hold 5000+). As for the second issue, that’s a whole-other can of worms. First off the teams aren’t schools, so unlike the NCAA, the notion of “student athlete” shouldn’t apply in this case (I'm pretty sure I didn't graduate from Halifax Mooseheads High). Even if amateur status is claimed, they are getting awarded through stipends and scholarship - part of the reason why players can't go directly to the NCAA after playing in the CHL.

Eventually, the CHL will have to up it's compensation for player. It's too close to the NHL format that they don't have a good defense as to why not. This investigation will push that process further.