By Leah Hendry
While the Alexei Yashin saga has hockey fans riled up, it will be short-lived.
If Yashin returns to the team, there might be some boos and jeers when he first takes to the ice, but my bet is as soon as he fires a puck in the net, fans will be up on their feet cheering and raising their beer cups to a great hockey player.
We’re pathetic.
How quickly we forget his greed and bloated salary demands.
Unfortunately, Yashin is just a symptom of a much larger problem in the salary wars between the owners and players. Salaries are skyrocketing at such a pace many Canadian and small market hockey organizations are struggling to keep up. Most can’t.
The NHL Players’ Association was created in 1967 to protect the players but has become so powerful. It has the owners cowering in corners waving white flags of surrender.
These days the players have more power than the owners. Remember when Eric Lindros refused to play for the Quebec Nordiques? How about Pavel Bure’s trade demands last year in Vancouver?
In Yashin’s case, he has refused to honour the last year of his contract worth $3.6 million. His agent, Mark Gandler, proposed the Senators enter into a new contract for three years worth $3.6 million in the first year, followed by $11 million and $12 million for the following years. The Senators refused the offer and suspended Yashin for not showing up for training camp and playing out his last year.
The Senators’ stance was an attempt to make an example out of Yashin but he doesn’t appear too worried about missing a year in the NHL. He’s currently in Switzerland practicing and will remain there until his contract is renegotiated to his liking.
If a suspension has no teeth and renders the owners powerless over their own players, the fans need to step in and give the players a wake-up call.
How should we make them take notice? How about taking a tip from the owners who locked out the players in the 1994-95 season? Why don’t the fans lock out the players?
First, we could boycott the games. Don’t show up and don’t buy season tickets.
Let the seats be empty. Empty seats might leave a dent in the over-inflated egos of players who think they are bigger than the game — players who have forgotten they have consumers who can tire of their product.
Don’t watch Hockey Night in Canada no matter how much your fingers itch to grab the clicker.
Let the viewing rates plummet and let news stations and editors of newspapers know we don’t want to hear about the latest phenom in the NHL who just signed a $7-million contract when most Canadians are just trying to make ends meet.
Perhaps the federal government could bankroll some flights to Detroit. We could all descend on Hockeytown, take to the streets with giant banners and placards that read “We love hockey, but not at this price.” It would be reminiscent of when the “I love Quebecers” descended on Montreal before the 1995 referendum.
Now the owners of Canadian hockey teams are crying for federal, provincial and municipal tax relief.
You want tax relief? Not from our pockets, we aren’t that gullible.
It’s a sad fact that sports in Canada are struggling, but it shouldn’t be the responsibility of the tax-payer to dig a team out of the hole because it can’t run its business efficiently.
If the government helps one sports team all the others will be clamouring to get in line for the next handout. Where was the government when the Ottawa Rough Riders really needed them?
Does all of this sound ridiculous?
So does $26.6 million over three years for flipping a small rubber puck around the ice.