Hockey players have long held the reputation as the most approachable and affable athletes in sports.
That sociable style may have just won them the most important ally they could get in the looming labor showdown with the NHL owners.
The NHL Players' Association on Saturday announced that its executive board has voted to accept the recommendation of its search committee to name Donald Fehr its new executive director. Fehr's appointment will not become official until a vote is held by all members of the NHLPA, which is expected to be held during training camp or the early part of the upcoming season.
Fehr would bring a wealth of union experience to the post, as he was the executive director of the MLBPA for 26 years before stepping down from that post in 2009. He doesn't have a lot of experience with the sport of hockey, but his exposure to its players while working as an advisor to the NHLPA in recent months helped convince him to want to take charge of a hockey union reeling from dissension in recent years.
"I came to have a great deal of respect for what the players were trying to do and also for the efforts they were putting forth," said Fehr in a conference call Saturday afternoon to discuss the executive board's recommendation. "Just as importantly, I found that I liked them very, very much and I think I realized that probably most clearly during the regional meetings that the union held this summer."
Still, Fehr had to decide whether he wanted to jump back into the professional sports labor wars after finally leaving baseball's battles behind him last year.
"When I announced my resignations as executive director of the MLBPA a year ago June, I did not anticipate working with or for another union," said Fehr. "But it's also clear that one does not represent professional athletes for as long and as intensively as I did without getting a lot of joy out of it, without getting a lot of satisfaction out of it, without wanting to do that."
So assuming the players vote to approve his appointment, Fehr will be going back to the bargaining table, this time leading the NHLPA against NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and the league's owners as the sides try to hammer out a new CBA before the current deal expires in 2012.
"The members of the search committee asked if I would be willing to essentially take the helm of the organization," said Fehr. "To right the ship if I can use that metaphor. To rebuild the staff and put the organization on a sure footing going forward up to and through the upcoming negotiations."
Of course, that also doesn't mean that there won't be some rough waters still ahead.
"Collective bargaining, sort of by definition, is a bit of an adversarial process," said Fehr. "Having said that, it's obviously in the interest of both the players and the league to cooperate when they can and to eventually reach an agreement they both can live with and that they can operate under."
With the history of labor strife in baseball under Fehr's watch, including a strike that caused the cancellation of the 1994 World Series, there is some fear that installing a hard-line negotiator like Fehr could lead to another work stoppage in hockey, where an owners' lockout already cost the league the entire 2004-05 season. Fehr addressed those concerns.
"It's pretty basic, from the union standpoint, the only proper way to view it is that a strike is a last resort," said Fehr. "That if you bargain in good faith and you do everything you can to try to reach an agreement, you only come to it if you believe that the issues require it and there are no other viable options available to you. That was always the case in baseball and that's the philosophy I would bring to represent hockey players or representing union members in any other industry. And I would hope and I am prepared to assume until events suggest otherwise that the people we're negotiating with view a lockout or a work stoppage also as a last resort."
Fehr added that fans shouldn't assume a strike could be in the forecast just because there were strikes in baseball while he led the MLBPA.
"You must take into account the specific circumstances of the individual sport that you're working in, and not where you used to work," said Fehr, who successfully fended off the owners' attempts to install a salary cap in baseball.
"All sports are different," added Fehr. "The economics of all sports are different. The makeup of the membership is different. In the end, you have to make judgments based upon those kinds of things. It doesn't necessarily mean that what works in one place works in another. On the other hand, it also isn't necessarily true that just because something didn't work in another place that it won't work here."
Fehr referred to the 2004-05 lockout as "a failed negotiation," and stated that the process that led to it is something that needs to be studied and learned from. He also stressed the need for all the players to become involved and stay informed on labor issues.
"The only way you can be successful over any sustained period of time is to make sure that the players are educated, they understand the process, they understand the issues, they think, they evaluate, they talk to each other, they participate in internal deliberations and they participate in the bargaining process," said Fehr. "The most important thing you can do to get this union ready for bargaining, or to get any union ready for bargaining, is to make sure that process plays itself out."
Other than assuming that he would stay on through the negotiations for a new CBA in 2012 if his appointment is approved, Fehr didn't commit to how long he would remain in charge of the NHLPA.
"I'm 62 years old, so my working life is finite," said Fehr. "But there's no specific timeline. … My notion of an executive director is pretty simple — you serve at the pleasure of the players and we'll see what happens. The expectation certainly is that I will be around through the negotiations if that turns out to be in everyone's best interest and things work out."