Most hockey stars wait a long time for a right that most of us take for granted: the right to live and work wherever we choose. The majority of NHL players do not qualify as unrestricted free agents until they turn 31. A guy might have played a dozen NHL season by then.
But their patience is often well-rewarded. The lucky few who hit the open market in 2001 and 2002 enjoyed the wildest spending spree in NHL history. Stars like Bobby Holik (a five-year, $45-million deal with the Rangers) and Curtis Joseph ($24-million over three years from the Red Wings) scored big, as expected.
More surprising were the generous contracts offered to lesser folk like Donald Audette (Stars, $3-million per year) and Bob Boughner (Flames, $1.7-million per year). And how about Robert Lang, a fair-to-middling centerman who found a five-year, $25-million deal in his mailbox? Such are the benefits of negotiating with the hopelessly deluded Washington Capitals.
Of course, the hockey player is a rather volatile investment, at best. Holik quietly - very quietly - earned his first $9-million in New York. Audette was traded to Montreal and spent much of last winter in the minor leagues. Lang, on the other hand, had his usual solid season. But overpaying him did not make him a better hockey player.
As is often said, by hockey fans and non-fans alike, the money these guys make is crazy, completely out of control. How did such madness come to grip the NHL, and pro sports in general?
For the answer, look to one man: Marvin Miller.
Miller conceived the first free agency system in pro sports when he ran the Major League Baseball Player's Association back in the 1970s. Facing a boardroom full of cranky, hidebound, wealthy team owners, to whom free agency represented the end of civilization, he offered what appeared to be a compromise.
