Free Agent A few words The story of the game-winner is one of the funniest and saddest things I’ve ever seen. I will always remember this moment of sheer confusion and disbelief on the face of a young boy as he realizes his team is about to the Game 7 winner over the Chicago Blackhawks and he still has to wait until he has graduated high school. That kid is 16. I am 35 and his dream to play in the NHL has been crushed by life at the tender age of 8. Somehow in a perfect world these dreams would be realized, but they won’t in our economy. The way the game ends shows us that the NHL has become more about the money than about the game. A league official said, “These young guys are going to be millionaires one day.” No kidding. But are they going to be millionaires in 2023 or 2038? What will they do if they get hurt? There are no guarantees. These athletes need to be told that they will be broke if they don’t have health insurance. We don’t need another “me” generation of players. This entire situation points out that money matters more than the desire to win. This is not the way to build a future where the best players can play for a long time. Where the players can earn guaranteed salaries while the league tries to maximize their value for the salary cap. This is the way to make sure kids will be playing street hockey rather than playing in the NHL. There are some positives in the NHL that it is about hockey and not about the money. For example, the great sport writers who come to NHL arenas and give young kids like Ryan Lambert a chance to interview stars such as Jaromir Jagr and Mario Lemieux and other great stars like Ovechkin and Kessel. They get excited about the NHL because they have a chance to meet their idols. When I was a kid, I thought I would do that someday. You have a chance to meet great people and ask them questions and ask them what it was like to meet Mr. Miyagi in the movie Karate Kid. It’s fun to think that a hockey game is like that but it isn’t. The reality is that you sit in a box with your head down and try to avoid getting hit by players playing the game and then if you do have a chance to ask a question you get screamed at by the officials and the other coach. These days, with the NHL, you can have a great career as a player. Great players like Jagr, Lemieux and others could have careers with 50 goal seasons in a different NHL in the 1970’s, but the game has changed. You can make a ton of money in the NHL today, but with the salary cap, it’s the smart thing to do to go play for the other team. A player will never receive the same amount of money when he decides to stop playing the game. In the current game, it’s hard to make the argument that a career in the NHL is about fun and exciting and all the other positive things that we could say about the NHL. The reality is that the NHL is all about money. The whole thing reminds me of a comment, “You have to sell yourself,” when I moved to Canada. The NHL is about money. If a kid wants to make a career, the same way other kids used to dream about in the 1950’s, he needs to have money so that he can support himself. Unless you are a super star, money should be the first consideration in any career decisions and kids have to accept that. Today it would be harder than it was in the 50’s to be drafted into a major league pro-team. They changed from having the NHL draft your amateur teams into the NHL. It’s now the other way around. The minor teams draft your top players who play in the NHL and if they are deemed not good enough for the professional teams they have to go back to junior leagues or play other sports. The NHL has also taken away the European Hockey Player contracts. It has become a North American only league. Players have it so easy in the NHL now. They don’t have to work jobs to pay for their families. They don’t have to fight in wars to keep the country safe. All they have to do is go to school and then you can play in the NHL. After the game they can go to the club and party until they pass out from exhaustion. They can do whatever they want and then sleep for a few days before they get into the next phase of the game. The NHL has become the video game of America. I don’t think this is the kind of sport that we want to grow up in Canada. I don’t want our kids watching athletes who are all about the money and the game is just the side of business. What would happen if an owner decided to take his team to Canada to play a series? How long would it take for Canada’s government to organize a boycott and tell the owner that he can’t do business here? What will be the real effect on Canadian youth if our kids see these guys as heroes and role models? The NHL has to be controlled by the owners or the politicians. I always enjoyed going to “The Rink” when I was a kid. It was my favorite place in the whole world. Now it is just like everywhere else, we only hear the noise in the background. This is not the time to be talking about the demise of Hockey, which will never die. This is the time for us to enjoy what we had before and be able to enjoy the memories forever. A great man once said, “Do not follow what is past; Go and make your lives over.” We have to make sure that our kids continue to dream about going to the rink and playing in the NHL and that the NHL doesn’t become a fantasy league in which players can buy their way to fame and fortune. The reason I don’t get too upset by this story is because I know we are going to have a long time of waiting to get back our sport of hockey. The NHL may not be a game that the kids will grow up playing. They may be better off playing on ice in the basement or playing Street Hockey in front of the computer or playing any number of games from the video game consoles. However, there are reasons for the NHL to get better. There are opportunities for the good that may come out of it, which is why I believe that Hockey is the game that we need to invest in. Some thoughts on the history of “The Game” The game of hockey began before the Europeans arrived in North America. There is a huge book, available in the libraries, called, “Tales of the First Hockey Game in North America.” This book shows that the Europeans came to North America and settled in Canada after the Europeans had been in North America for nearly 1000 years. The white men had been in contact with the Native Americans, and at the first ice hockey match between the Canadian natives and the Europeans the Europeans proved that they were stronger and faster than the native aborigines. All of this shows that hockey has been a part of North America from its early beginnings. I do not think that this story will have the same impact on the youngsters as the story of the kid who scored the game-winner in the NHL over forty years ago, but it’s a reminder that hockey is about the game and not about the money. By looking back at the history of hockey we can determine that the game of hockey is about men playing a sport and not about making money. Making money is what the business men who run the NHL and the game do, but that does not mean that hockey is going away. The game may not be a sport for kids, but it will always be the Canadian national sport. The original NHL was formed because of the tremendous popularity of a game that was played by the aborigines. That game is a version of hockey that did not have sticks or skates. In this game, two players grabbed hold of each other to hold their ground so the team with the greatest number of players wins the battle. It seems that what people loved about the game, is what they loved about the game