When Marty Walsh was interviewing for the job of heading up the NHL Players’ Association, he found one topic that came up regularly with his upper-echelon players.
They wanted a return to best-on-best international hockey. The players wanted to be back at the Olympics, where NHLers had not been since 2014.
And Walsh, after being hired for a job that was once held by such troubled autocratic luminaries as Alan Eagleson and Bob Goodenow, wanted to make a quick impression on his new membership.
He wanted to make his players happy.
He called a meeting less than two years ago in the Bay Street office of the Players’ Association, admittingly knowing little about the operation of the PA. He wanted to know who was in charge of international hockey for his group.
What he found out was that out no one was in charge.
He quickly appointed young Rob Zepp, the former goaltender, to that area of responsibility. And in a short period of time it became obvious — the players wanted a return to international hockey, the league wanted a return – and, without a lot of complications, arrangements were made for this 4 Nations Face-Off tournament, which begins Wednesday in Montreal.
More important than that, arrangements were made to return to next year’s Winter Olympics in Italy, 12 years after the Sochi Games.
The 4-Nations tournament is a win-win kind of deal for all NHL players except those whose countries are not included in the event. The 80-plus players who will suit up for Canada, USA, Sweden and Finland get the tournament hockey they have been craving.
The other 600-plus players who aren’t in the tournament get a 10-day vacation to a destination of their choice in the middle of the season.
That’s what’s called making your membership happy in a very short time on the job.
“You take a player like Sidney Crosby and you hope he’s playing in this event and you hope that leads to him playing in the next Olympics,” Walsh said. “You don’t know what’s going to happen. And you take a player like a Connor McDavid and you put him with a Sidney Crosby. You’re matching a certain greatness together.
“You’ll get the opportunity to see Crosby play together on the same team as McDavid. And you look at the other countries and you have the superstars from their country playing with other superstars they don’t usually get to see. This isn’t just young and old. This is the best of hockey against the best of hockey.
“Getting this international work done was a big win (for us). And a big win for (the NHL). It took a lot of collaboration to get here.”
The negotiations might have been complicated, but they were not contentious. Both sides wanted to go in the same direction.
For the first time in years, really, the PA has a leader who is a tough negotiator, but seemingly in tune with the tough negotiator that is NHL commissioner Gary Bettman. Bettman is undefeated over his career in his large labour work with the PA. When you shake hands with him, sometimes, you have to count your fingers.
But there is this early professional relationship between Bettman and Walsh that has the sport in the best business circumstance it has been in for years.
That makes Bettman popular with his owners. That makes Walsh popular with his players. This week — and next February — the international play will make both men semi-popular with the large hockey fan base around the world.
Not everything can always work perfectly well for a mid-season tournament such as this one. A few weeks ago, Alex Pietrangelo — the two-time Stanley Cup winner — chose to remove himself from his place on Team Canada. Realistically, though, he was the only non-injured player to walk out on the event.
Since then, Finland lost its best defenceman when the great Miro Heiskanen was injured. Team USA lost the Norris Trophy favourite, Quinn Hughes, for an event he badly wanted to take part in alongside his brother, Jack. Canada replaced Pietrangelo with the legendary Drew Doughty who, like Crosby, played on the 2010 and 2014 Canadian Olympic gold-medal winners.
And until Monday, it wasn’t known whether Crosby would be available to play after missing some time recently with the Pittsburgh Penguins. He so badly wanted to be part of Team Canada that he was willing to show up even if he’s not close to 100% healthy as the tournament is set to begin.
What Walsh and Bettman negotiated was this tournament, next year’s Olympics, and the beginning of regular World Cups of hockey, starting in 2028 and moving to 2032.
How do you grow the game and the game’s business? Bettman never believed much in international hockey in the past. But he has come around to the players’ view on this.
The players, for the most part, love the interaction. Even if it does get complicated with the inclusion or lack or inclusion of Russian players or a Russian team.
“Part of my job is representing Russian players,” said Walsh, the former mayor of Boston. “I used to work in Washington and the labour secretary. I was there when Russia invaded Ukraine. I wasn’t in the middle of that politically, but I understood when the sanctions came down, sports was involved. Hockey is in a unique position because, unlike other sports, there are many Russian players in the NHL.
“Our Russian players want in. But there’s a lot more to this politically than just hockey. We’ll see what the future brings. This isn’t a hockey issue. This is a world political issue.”
For now, there’s a hockey tournament to be played involving four countries.
This is what the players asked for. This is what crappy leadership like Donald Fehr didn’t care to accomplish.