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CBA: Goodenow profile

Friday, August 31, 2007

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NHLPA Executive Director Bob Goodenow was once asked about what happened when he replaced Alan Eagleson in the early 1990's as the head of the players' union. Goodenow responded: "The association was riddled with inefficiencies and improprieties. I cleaned it up."

That he did. He installed safeguards to protect against the abuses and scandals of the Eagleson regime. Abuses and scandals that resulted in criminal charges against Eagleson in both the United States and Canada. Charges that sent Eagleson to prison for six months.

Goodenow instituted a policy where agents had to be certified by the NHLPA or NHL teams could not deal with them. Contract negotiations are closely watched by the NHLPA. Full disclosure of player salaries, unheard of in the NHL previously, became policy. That helped, in part, to drive up player salaries from an average of $276,000 in 1990-91 to $1.79 million last season.

Goodenow helped turn the NHLPA into an excellent business, helping increase its revenues through licensing and other methods. He hired experts to run parts of the business.

He turned the NHLPA from a weak union into a formidable adversary to challenge the NHL and team owners.

And he made it clear early on that he was not Eagleson. There would be no cozy relationship with the league or team owners. Goodenow meant business and that business was representing NHL players.

Writing in the just released book "Money Players: How Hockey's Greatest Stars Beat the NHL At It's Own Game," veteran hockey writer Bruce Dowbiggin said this about Goodenow:

"Goodenow conveyed that he was nobody's patsy during his initial encounters with the league. After seeing him at a holiday resort in Massachusetts in the summer of 1990, one NHL insider described the former Harvard captain as 'introverted, sullen and humorless.' Of course, next to the crass, garrulous, noisy Alan Eagleson, even Jerry Lewis might come across as an introvert."

And Goodenow proved he was no patsy early in his tenure, leading the players on a ten-day strike just before the 1992 NHL playoffs. It was the first strike in NHL history. There were several issues, including who should get the money from players appearing on trading cards. In the past, the money went to the teams and league. The NHLPA now wanted the money.

Two years later it was the lockout of 1994-95 as the league and players fought it out over a salary cap and other issues in negotiating a new Collective Bargaining Agreement.

And now Goodenow and the NHLPA are gearing up for another round of negotiations as the current CBA is set to expire on September 15, 2004.

So, who is Bob Goodenow? He's a former college and pro hockey player. Played junior hockey with a couple of Gordie Howe's kids. He's Harvard educated. He's a lawyer who once battled unions for a corporation. He's a smart man who chooses his words carefully.

Someone described him as part egghead and part jock. Goodenow was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1952. As a kid, he was a good enough hockey player to be on a junior team with Mark and Marty Howe.

Then it was on to Harvard, where he captained the hockey team. After graduation in 1974, he took a shot at playing professional hockey. He played two seasons with the Flint Generals of the International Hockey League, where he had 25 goals and 40 assists in 108 games.

After taking a shot at pro hockey he went to law school at the University of Detroit, earning his degree in 1979. He went on to work for the Unisys Corp, representing the company in its dealings with labor unions. He said that experience helped give him insight into management's mindset.

When old hockey friends started hitting him up for legal advice, he changed career gears and eventually he became a player agent. His partner was current Vancouver GM Brian Burke, and his most notable client was Brett Hull. .

That led to his stint with the NHLPA, where he was a deputy to Eagleson. Not that he was Eagleson's choice. That decision belonged to a search committee. Russ Conway, whose articles for the Lawrence (Mass.) Eagle-Tribune helped exposed the fraud under the Eagleson regime, once wrote about a meeting he had with Goodenow in 1991.

Conway was investigating Eagleson and was looking for some help in following the paper trail. Here's an excerpt of Conway's description of his meeting with Goodenow.

"I wanted to get a feel for the place and also try to talk to Bob Goodenow. I knew Eagleson was away.

"Goodenow was Eagleson's deputy and was set to replace Eagleson at the end of the year. But he was not Eagleson's man - he had been chosen by a search committee. A former labor lawyer from Detroit, he was a straight-shooter whose loyalty was to the players.

"I waited more than an hour before Goodenow finally appeared and escorted me to a vacant office. He turned on the light and put his left forefinger up to his lips.

'We've got to talk like this,' he said, his voice a near whisper.

I thought he was joking.

'I don't know who I can trust around here and who I can't,' he said. 'I get mail that ends up missing and then reappears, or it's opened before I even get to see it. Faxes that are read. Al doesn't want me around here but he has to put up with me. You wrote me a letter asking me for some things, remember?'

I nodded.

'Nobody else should have known that, right? But Al did, because he asked me about it. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about,' he said.

I told Goodenow his help was really needed.

'I can't give you anything without the players' approval. You've got to get somebody to ask for what you need, a player or a couple players. Then I can help,' he said, his voice still hushed.

'Don't call me here, don't fax me here. Call me or send me a fax at home.'

Conway got some players to ask for what he needed, Goodenow helped out and about eight months later Goodenow took over as head of the NHLPA and would begin implementing changes and turning the NHLPA into a powerful adversary to the league and team owners.

Players and agents haven't complained about many of the results Goodenow has brought about. The players have never had it better. When the players benefit so do the agents.

But his methods are a different story. They can rub people the wrong way. He's been described as an "objectionable bully," who rules by intimidation and rarely consults with the players he represents.

"He does what he wants," one player agent once told the Toronto Sun. "He doesn't do what the players want. He doesn't listen to them. When you're dealing with Bob Goodenow, no one dares to complain."

There is the occasional complaint. Defenseman Chris Chelios griped about pressure from the NHLPA when he was an unrestricted free agent a few years back. The union wanted him to take the highest offer out there to help drive up salaries. Chelios wanted to take the offer he felt most comfortable with and that meant re-signing with Detroit.

Others describe Goodenow as loyal to the players and not concerned with what others may think.

"His responsibility is to his membership, and if the media or public don't like that, too bad," a former NHLPA employee once said about Goodenow.

And that may be the reason there are so few complaints. Things have been good for NHL players under Goodenow's leadership.

To the league and owners, Goodenow can be militant. He's already showing signs of that militancy as the battle over the next CBA looms The league wants some kind of cost certainty in the next CBA. Goodenow says what they want is a salary cap and adds that it is not going to happen.

"We will never negotiate a salary cap. Never. We've said it before. We've seen what a cap did to the NFL and the NBA. It won't happen to hockey," he has been quoted as saying.

He has been also known to suggest that teams already have a built in salary cap. It's known to people and businesses around the world as a budget.

But that doesn't mean Goodenow can't be flexible. At a recent meeting between players, owners and the league, the NHLPA made a counter offer that reportedly involved a revenue-sharing system that would place a luxury tax on teams going over an agreed limit on salaries. The union also offered to cut the maximum entry level salary to $850,000 from the current $1.25 million. And all current NHL players would have taken an immediate five percent paycut.

It was an offer that the league, which the NHLPA says is seeking a hard $31 million salary cap, declined.

Goodenow went, at least in public, from being flexible back to the militant approach.

"Based on what we saw [at the meeting], there's little cause for optimism," Goodenow said afterwards.

"The players attended the meeting with a view of discussing significant proposals that would provide relief in the areas that the owners had problems with. But that was all within a market-base system. And the owners showed no interest in discussing anything other than an NFL-style hard-cap system."

Then he rallied the troops. He may or may not listen players, but he keeps them informed. There is a private web site where players can get daily information on the negotiations. He also jets around North American to meet with the players every year. This year he is focusing on the CBA and the union's offer.

In a meeting with St. Louis Blues players, he explained what the union propsed at that recent meeting and then showed the players the league's response -- a one page proposal that reportedly outlined a hard salary cap. The players jumped in to help with the PR end of things.

"Why just negotiate with yourself?" Blues forward Keith Tkachuk told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "It's obvious that we want to get a deal done. When you take the time to put together what I think is a very, very good proposal that could work and the other side doesn't even look at it? Obviously you're trying, but they throw it in our face and said not a chance."

It was Goodenow's latest maneuver in his battle with the man on the other side of the negotiating table. A man who, like Goodenow, born in 1952. While Goodenow was at Harvard, this guy was at another Ivy League school. Like Goodenow, he went to law school as well.

That man would be NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman. A look at his background in our next report.

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