NHL players will reveal how much they care about Kyle Beach when they decide Donald Fehr’s fate

Opinion

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This article was published 30/10/2021 (1109 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

We’ve been through this dance many times. It’s never pretty.

Since firing Alan Eagleson back in 1991, the National Hockey League Players’ Association has gone through multiple leaders, including Bob Goodenow, Ted Saskin, Paul Kelly, Ian Penny, Mike Ouellet and Don Fehr, who has been on the job since December 2010.

That’s six different executive directors — seven if you want to count Eagleson’s final days — during the period of time when the league moved on from John Ziegler and Gary Bettman’s reign began. Other than Penny and Ouellet, both interim executive directors, all of the departures have been ugly. Some uglier than others.

Eagleson went to jail. Goodenow was ousted by an internal mutiny after the entire 2004-05 season was wiped out by a lockout. Saskin was caught reading emails he wasn’t supposed to be reading. Kelly was also catapulted out of office by a mutiny, with Fehr lurking in the background.

Since 2010, Fehr has managed to keep order for the most part. Now, he may be on the verge of being ousted.

The Kyle Beach case, which has already cost three veteran hockey men their jobs with NHL clubs, could now cost the 73-year-old Fehr his job. It depends on how angry the players are over the fact that Beach was ignored after reporting allegations of sexual abuse by former Blackhawks video coach Brad Aldrich to Fehr’s office.

There have been times over the past 30 years when the NHLPA membership has grown quite militant, but it’s difficult to discern the temperament now. Mostly, it seems asleep, roused only by occasional complaints about escrow. There hasn’t been a big scrap with the league in years. All the NHLPA firebrands have retired.

It’s hard to compare this situation to others in which the NHLPA decided to change leaders. Players are so much wealthier now, in relative terms, than they were during Eagleson’s time that it’s hard to say what might rouse them to action. The Beach case, however, is so sad, and the union’s response so dreadfully inadequate, that it stands alone as a tawdry example of indifference to the plight of a professional hockey player.

From a current player’s point of view, this should be infuriating and frightening. It’s a very basic question of trust, of whether the union leader can be trusted to protect each and every member.

In that way, it’s a little like Saskin’s case. That was back in 2007 when Goodenow’s former lieutenant was found to have been part of a campaign to hack into player email accounts. Chris Chelios, along with Trent Klatt and Dwayne Roloson, spearheaded the movement to get rid of Saskin and the union’s 30 player representatives voted to fire him after he had served only two years of a five-year contract.

“There were things going on that just should not have been going on,” said Kevyn Adams, a member of the union’s executive committee at the time andnow general manager of the Buffalo Sabres.

It came down to an issue of trust. In the wake of the Beach revelations of the past week, union members have to be asking similar questions of Fehr, about whether he can be trusted to remain in charge of the union.

He’ll fight hard. Fehr has as much power as Eagleson or Goodenow ever did, and he understands how to wield it.

That said, unless he has a doozy of an explanation for the inaction on Beach’s behalf, he must resign. A lawyerly “I don’t recall” doesn’t cut it.

In such an extreme situation, NHLPA members should expect their union leader to be on the first plane to the city in which it occurred to demand immediate action.

Whether Beach wasn’t important enough or wasn’t making enough money for Fehr to take notice, or whether Fehr was technically on the job for the NHLPA at the time Beach was assaulted, or whether Beach was or was not technically a dues-paying union member at that moment, or whether the NHLPA boss just had bigger fish to fry back then just doesn’t matter. It’s about accountability, not technical details.

So far, all Fehr has said is “the grave nature of this incident should have resulted in further action on our part. The fact that it did not was a serious failure. I am truly sorry, and I am committed to making changes to ensure it does not happen again.”

Not good enough.

How many union people knew? Why didn’t the union act? Why didn’t Fehr act? Why, why and why?

“I know I reported every single detail to an individual at the NHLPA, who I was put in contact with after I believe two different people talked to Don Fehr,” Beach told TSN. “For (Fehr) to turn his back on the players when his one job is to protect the players at all costs, I don’t know how that can be your leader.”

Fehr spoke to Beach on Saturday. The union’s 32-member executive committee meets on Monday. If that committee wants to go into executive session to discuss Fehr’s future, he can be excluded from the meeting. That would be bad for him, and you can be sure he spent the weekend trying to line up the votes to make sure it doesn’t happen.

The other possibility is that the union leadership could simply require Fehr to organize a timetable for his departure. It’s long past due.

But are the players in the mood to act? Would they prefer that the union continue to doze? Do they really care about what happened to a marginal NHLer more than a decade ago?

We’ll start to find out how much they care, or don’t care, on Monday.

Damien Cox is a former Star sports reporter who is a current freelance contributing columnist based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @DamoSpin