If you are seeking other means to satisfy your “hockey jones,” Predators Voice Pete Weber will be periodically reviewing various forms of hockey media.
In this installment, he reviews “The Instigator: How Gary Bettman Remade the NHL and Changed the Game Forever.” (Published by Triumph Books)
Jonathon Gatehouse, a senior correspondent for Canada’s MacLean’s magazine, wrote this biography of the NHL Commissioner. Gatehouse is not regularly assigned to the hockey beat, so his perspective on his subject is fresh – and thorough.
While this is not an “authorized” biography, Bettman did cooperate with Gatehouse, providing him with access to himself and others within the NHL family.
Gatehouse takes you into Bettman’s upbringing, his time in college at Cornell, law school days at NYU, breaking into the law, landing at the Proskauer Rose law firm, then the NBA office (where he earned his reputation with a salary cap system), all the way to his NHL office in a corner suite at 47th and the Avenue of the Americas in New York.
We find out that then NHL Board of Governors Chairman Bruce McNall had initially attempted to hire NBA Commissioner David Stern to lead the NHL at a lunch meeting in the fall of 1992. McNall quickly found out that Stern was not interested. McNall then inquired as to the availability of Stern’s second-in-command, Russ Granik, but was rebuffed again. However, Stern heartily endorsed 40-year old Gary Bettman, calling to McNall’s attention the fact that Bettman was entrenched in all of the NBA’s labor negotiation.
That was precisely the sort of endorsement the NHL was seeking as the league made a clean break from the John Zeigler – Gil Stein regime, which many owners thought had failed them in CBA negotiations with the players.
It still left the NHL with some additional restructuring. All previous heads of the National Hockey League had been titled “President.” Bettman was going to come in as “Commissioner,” with enhanced powers over his predecessors.
So, on December 11,1992, at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, Commissioner Gary Bettman was introduced to the hockey world.
As he entered the NHL, the league was undergoing massive changes. The day before his introduction, the move of the “North” Stars to Dallas was approved for the fall of 1993. Then, the league expanded to 26 teams with the additions of South Florida and Anaheim. Four years later, was the next wave of new teams, Nashville announced along with Atlanta (now Winnipeg), Columbus, and Minnesota. It seems like the changes have never stopped since that point in time.
Gatehouse provides a behind-the-scenes look at all of those, along with the franchise moves from Quebec City to Denver and Winnipeg to Phoenix. Consider those moves with the ownership changes, and the thought is pounded into your brain – the biggest component of the major league games we follow is business!
What also has occurred during Bettman’s near-20 years as Commissioner are three work stoppages, and how Bettman has tried to hold the league together while the naturally adversarial negotiations take place. After all, that’s why he was hired!
The insights provided here are very important now for fans attempting to understand what the situation is like for Bettman on his side of the table.
Gatehouse gives his interpretation from the outside of the Bettman – Bob Goodenow negotiations of 1994-95 and 2004-05. He also includes a chapter on current NHLPA Executive Director Donald Fehr, former head of the Major League [Baseball] Players Association and student of Marvin Miller.
Those portrayals are important if you are to have any chance of comprehending what hockey faces now. I think such understanding is important to hockey fans today.
If you are seeking other means to satisfy your “hockey jones,” Predators’ Voice Pete Weber will be periodically reviewing various forms of hockey media.
In this installment, Pete reviews “Breakway: From Behind the Iron Curtain to the NHL the Untold Story of Hockey’s Great Escapes” written by Tal Pinchevsky.
We take for granted that players from around the world populate today’s National Hockey League. That wasn’t the case as recently as 1979. Virtually every athlete in the league was from Canada (the greatest majority) or the United States. True, there were a smattering of Swedish players then in the NHL and WHA.
Until the great “Summit Series” between Team Canada and the Soviet Union in 1972, that was not considered remarkable. That was when the eyes of North American hockey were opened. The talents displayed by the Soviet’s “Big Red Machine” were immense.
When the Canada Cup was staged in 1976, further exposure to European hockey showed, what had developed in Czechoslovakia and Finland.
All teams are looking for an edge in talent. But how could the NHL gain access to those from the Soviet Bloc?
Tal Pinchevsy, a staff writer and producer for NHL.com, answers this very thoroughly in his case-by-case study. He brings to life the risks that had to be taken by players in the former Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia while trying to win their freedom to ply their trade in the NHL.
The risks were very real – the cost could have meant their lives or the hardships that would be put upon friends and family members they would leave behind. Those risks were also borne, at least in part, by the NHL representatives assigned to “spring them.”
The point can be argued that the first true defection was that of Vaclav Nedomansky (“Big Ned”) from Czechoslovakia to the WHA’s Toronto Toros as a 30-year old in 1974. He later was part of the first WHA-NHL trade and moved to the Detroit Red Wings.
Where Pinchevsky’s narrative gets to be nerve-wracking is the story of Gilles Leger of the Quebec Nordiques pursuing the Stastny brothers (Peter, Anton and eventually, Marian) is fraught with palpable danger.
The Nordiques began work on bringing them over in 1979, hoping they could do it easily at the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympic Games. Suspecting as much, the Czech team security was so tight, Leger could not communicate with them.
Finally, in Austria for a tournament in August of 1980, Nordiques President Marcel Aubut and General Manager Leger made contact with Peter and Anton, and they (along with Peter’s pregnant wife, Darina) drove like Formula One drivers to ultimately escape Czech team officials and ultimately fly to Montreal.
Pinchevsky has similar stories to tell about Petr Klima in 1985, and the battle for the likes of the incredible KLM Line (Vladimir Krutov, Igor Larionov and Sergei Makarov) to escape the Soviet Union.
Escaping the Soviet Union proved to be the most difficult. Goaltending great Vladislav Tretiak simply retired rather than continue playing at his high level when it was made clear to him that he would not be permitted to join the Montreal Canadiens.
While the KLM Line ultimately got to the NHL, that was made possible in part by the development of a top junior line: Alexander Mogilny, Sergei Federov and Pavel Bure. Yet as the Iron Curtain was falling, each of them was able to defect. The Mogilny case was particularly precarious.
However, when these players found their way to North America, the story was actually only beginning. Predators’ fans in particular will be interested in the story of Michal Pivonka and his fiancé. They had left Prague in 1986, supposedly on a vacation to Yugoslavia, only to end up at the U.S. Embassy in Rome to, ready to accept a contract that had been offered him by the Washington Capitals, where David Poile was General Manager. The Pivonkas lived with the Poile family for several months!
After the players arrived, most were faced with a huge language barrier. Some were faced with bigger challenges than others. Consider the Stastny family, leaving Czechoslovakia for French-speaking Quebec, and the English spoken in all the other league cities outside the province.
That is only part of the cultural adjustments that had to be made. For some of the players, it was difficult to take care of their own nutrition since their hockey clubs had attended to that for them.
All in all, a fascinating story of how the trails were first blazed from the Soviet bloc, and told well by Pinchevsky. I think you will enjoy it!
Link to amazon.com book site
Link to author interview
If you are seeking other means to satisfy your “hockey jones,” Predators’ Voice Pete Weber will be periodically reviewing various forms of hockey media.
In this installment, Pete reviews “Team Canada 1972 – The Official 40th Anniversary Celebration of the Summit Series – as Told by the Players” With Andrew Podnieks
More hockey history for you with this entry: the “Summit Series” between Team Canada and the Soviet Union is remembered by Canadians as well as Americans over 55 remember where they were when President Kennedy was assassinated in November of 1963.
Andrew Podnieks has put together a coffee table book that allows the players involved in the first-ever series involving the top NHL players against the best of the Soviet Union. Previously, the Soviets had always maintained that they would not play their “amateurs” against the Canadian professionals. The fact that the only thing the Soviet players did was play hockey never entered into it.
This provided a great awakening in North America. Team Canada was supposed to take the 8-game set (4 in Canada, 4 in Moscow) easily, perhaps even sweep it.
The scouting reports on the Soviets added to that presumption of Canadian superiority. The Soviets didn’t shoot enough, their goaltender – Vladislav Tretiak seemed to be an absolute sieve when the Canadians saw him play. They didn’t know that when they saw him, he was just coming off his nuptials. Weeks later, things would be different.
An All-Star team (minus Bobby Hull, who had jumped to the WHA’s Winnipeg Jets from the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks, was not allowed to play. Defenseman Bobby Orr was not healthy enough to participate fully) was assembled – and came to camp to get into shape. One problem – the Soviets trained 11 months a year and were in great shape!
Team Canada got out to an early and easy lead in Game One in Montreal…only to receive the ultimate wake-up call, getting thrashed, 7-3.
The response was a victory in Toronto, a tie in Winnipeg and a disheartening loss in Vancouver, after which Phil Esposito emerged in a post-game TV interview, stating that all the booing of Team Canada at the Pacific Coliseum that night was unfair, that the players were there because “we love Canada!”
After the series switched to Moscow, the Soviets took Game Five, taking a 3-1-1 series lead. Team Canada was one loss away from dropping the series.
Calling on every aspect of their character and talents, Team Canada managed to sweep the final three games, with Paul Henderson emerging as the hero. Ask virtually any Canadian what they were doing on September 28, 1972, and most will respond that they were in front of their television sets listening to Foster Hewitt intone: “Henderson has scored for Canada!”
As a keepsake, it’s an outstanding addition to any hockey library. There are the official portrait photographs of all the players and coaches, some you know, some you won’t, along with tables of statistics from the event.
Link to amazon.com book site
