From Eichel to Archibald, players controlling their own fates
There is a very small minority of players who aren't willing to do what the NHL thinks is best for them. Given the history, in some ways it's hard to blame them
There’s likely a strong temptation among hockey fans to look at the likes of Tyler Bertuzzi, Josh Archibald, Bode Wilde and Zac Rinaldo and wonder exactly what is going through their minds right about now. All four of them, and reportedly a few more, appear willing to lose an enormous amount of money, or perhaps even jeopardize their careers, over their unwillingness to surrender their freedom and take a COVID-19 vaccine against their will.
Take Wilde, for example. He’s a 21-year-old second-round pick who has played parts of the past two seasons for the New York Islanders’ affiliate in the American Hockey League. He’s in the second year of his entry-level deal and has been told by the Islanders that he is not welcomed at training camp and, as long as he remains unvaccinated, will not play for the Islanders or their AHL affiliate. That means he’ll have absolutely zero chance of making the $750,000 he would have made if he had been on the Islanders’ roster and will instead make $70,000 playing for a team outside the organization. He responded on social media by saying, “Hoping my human rights are enough to let me play…What a world.”
What a world, indeed.
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Archibald is a replaceable fourth-line player who was set to make $1.5 million this season, the highest salary of his career. At the age of 28, he’s in the final year of his contract and will have to scratch and claw for another one, the way most fourth-liners do. And yet he seems willing to basically make it impossible to play in the NHL this season by refusing to be jabbed. Bertuzzi is a 26-year-old who was limited to just nine games last season, then agreed a two-year deal worth $9.5 million, a deal we can only assume he signed knowing that he would not take the vaccination. He stands to lose up to $400,000 in salary this season. Rinaldo is a 31-year-old enforcer who is potentially giving up his last NHL season because of his beliefs. In fact, Rinaldo is so focused on his personal freedoms that he addressed Canada’s most right-wing political party at a rally during the recent election campaign.
“The vaccine has become such a political thing,” Edmonton Oilers superstar Connor McDavid said on the first day of training camp. “It’s become about a lot more than just the vaccine at this point. We want to do our best to protect one another, but ultimately it’s everyone’s choice to take it or not. Everyone is responsible and has a choice to control their own body. If someone feels the need not to get it and doesn’t want to get it, that’s their choice and we move on. We’ll do what we can to keep everybody safe and still put the best team on the ice.”
The players who have refused the vaccine have been labelled as everything from selfish to deluded to downright stupid for refusing a treatment that is overwhelmingly supported by science. Are they getting bad advice? Perhaps. Do they have a right to work in an environment where all their peers have agreed to be vaccinated and to whom they pose potential danger? Well, some teams clearly don’t think so.
For that matter, is Jack Eichel entitled to pursue his own treatment, one that is in conflict with what the Buffalo Sabres believe is best for him and them? Were the Sabres justified in stripping him of his captaincy and, emboldened by the collective bargaining agreement to which Eichel and his peers agreed, digging in on their demand that he follow their plan for treatment? There are those who can’t understand why Eichel simply can’t agree to undergo the neck fusion surgery the Sabres recommend and get on with his career and instead insist on the more complex disc replacement surgery. Because, according to the research he has done, the disc replacement surgery is far superior in his eyes, and he’s willing to become the first NHL player ever to have it to make his point. The situation has become untenable and now both sides are more entrenched than ever. It will almost certainly lead to Eichel being traded out of Buffalo.
People are free to think whatever they want about these players, but one fact is unassailable. These players are empowered, more so than any group of players in the history of the game. The days where players shut up and unconditionally followed the edicts of their employers ended a long time ago. For the most part, NHL players have the financial security to be able to stick to their beliefs, confident that the money they’re leaving on the table is a small amount compared to what they’ve already amassed. Whether or not they’re on the right side of the debate is one thing. But they are doing what they believe, or have been led to believe, is the right thing.
And really, when it comes down to it, can you blame these players for being wary of complying with the NHL’s demands? Think about it, this is a league that for years did not disclose to players the dangers of taking blows to the head and is led by a commissioner who still refuses to acknowledge the link between brain injuries and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). It’s a league that tried to rush the Vancouver Canucks back onto the ice after a serious COVID-19 outbreak last season, all in the name of fulfilling its commitment to its sponsors and broadcast partners. Only after it was shamed into doing so did it relent and give the Canucks the time they needed to recover. But there was a time when the league expected a team that had just come off an outbreak to play its final 19 regular-season games in 31 days.
It’s a league that refused to take action and left it up to the players to pause the playoffs in the bubble amid the protests in other leagues condemning police violence against Black citizens. Ryan Kesler and Kyle Quincey are two former NHLers who have been outspoken about the debilitating effects large quantities of Toradol, administered to them by team personnel to mask the pain they were in so they could continue playing, have had on their day-to-day life. These players are part of a league where one of its teams is alleged to have been told about a video coach who was sexually assaulting two players and refused to take its concerns to police, all the while turning a blind eye to both players allegedly being bullied by teammates.
So you’ll have to excuse them if they don’t always believe their employer has their best interests at heart.
Ken: I hear what you’re saying about the NHL’s track record of not having the players’ best interest at heart, but to conflate that with the decision over whether or not to be vaccinated is quite a stretch.
The NHL’s not exactly on an island here. Even the talking heads on Fox News who sow so much dissent and offer a platform for knuckleheads to espouse their ignorance and conspiracy theories… oh that’s right those hosts have all been jabbed because their employer required them to.
Sure, the players are “in control.” In control of (perhaps badly) damaging themselves. Helluva hill to die on.
Eric in Hockeytown