More To Free Agency Than Meets The Eye

The NHL free agent signing period has begun and more than forty players have changed teams. The Boston Bruins signed forward Jeremy Reich, who in ninety-nine NHL games has scored two goals and four assists. At thirty years of age, Reich is most likely going to be used as veteran depth player.  The reaction from fans to this signing ranged from “who’s he?” to “Why didn’t they sign Kovalchuk?” Well, they didn’t sign Kovalchuk or some of the other more prominently known players because of the salary cap. The B’s are, for the most part, up against the cap and to sign a Kovalchuk or a Matthew Lombardi, they would need to clear space from the current roster to make room for another expensive contract. This is when we all learn that the great game of hockey is first and foremost, a business.

We don’t look at our favorite sports as businesses and that’s because when we were kids playing youth/minor hockey and Little League baseball, or Pop Warner football, we always saw those days as they were meant to be, as activities to be enjoyed, to have fun participating in our favorite sport, to dream of making it to “the show.” Most of us have never experienced the other side of sports. That’s left to the elite athletes among us but rest assured they love to play the game. They have the same passion now as they did when they were nine years old. Throughout our formative years, we could not wait to get to the next game or practice. Professional athletes had the same outlook but they received a new view, an added view, the moment their agents presented them with negotiation details that would lead up to their signing that very first contract. This writer has first-hand knowledge of how professional sports are a business and when free agents leave the team they play for and become a member of a new team, they are making a business decision. The teams involved are making business decisions too. The one who let the player leave has made the decision to either increase payroll by bringing a more expensive player to replace that one who left or the team decides to pay a different player less money. This is what we see occuring at the NHL level during this signing period. It is all about the money and it goes on at every level of professional hockey. Almost every minor league hockey player becomes a free agent after every season. The players are signed to one year contracts by the minor league franchise and if they play well enough, the organization will offer another contract. In some cases, it will have a raise in salary but for the most part they do not. The minor league franchises are under strict budgetary guidelines, set by the league those franchises play in. My son played in the minors for five seasons and for five summers he had to sit and wonder where he would be playing. Since minor league teams do not usually offer contracts until August, those were some pretty long summers. Again, the teams had to decide who would return and who would be brought in to replace someone who moved to another team, another league, another country, or retired, and of course, there were always the salary negotiations. The minor leagues, except for the American Hockey League, do not pay very well so players are constantly deciding whether they have what it takes to continue playing and maybe get to the AHL or NHL or is it time to hang them up and get “a real job?” All in all, it comes down to economics. Does the team have the resources to pay the players they are interested and, if so, will their offer be acceptable to the player. As the infamous saying goes from the movie, The Godfather,  “It isn’t personal, it’s strictly business.”

Something to think about as we watch players move to new teams.