When a tearful Alan Eagleson was sentenced recently to 18 months in the penalty box, there went another chapter in Blackhawks history.
He was called “The Eagle,” at least until clients checked their net worth and called for his head instead. He was loud, opinionated and powerful. He wore many hats because he bonded with owners, yet represented labor. Try that sometime.
The peripatetic Canadian lawyer felt welcome everywhere, but especially in Chicago, where Bob Pulford generally managed the Hawks for two decades and Bill Wirtz exercised his considerable clout. Pulford helped Eagleson establish the players union way back when; Wirtz ran the league when John Ziegler, the ex-NHL president, either couldn’t find time or simply couldn’t be found. Dear John loved that Concorde.
Anyway, the Hawks were struggling from post-Bobby Hull depression in 1976 when Bobby Orr, the legend who first made Eagleson famous, became a free agent in Boston. After about 10 minutes of hardball negotiations, Orr signed here.
Other franchises claimed foul play, as in tampering, but complaints subsided because, alas, Orr couldn’t play. He revolutionized the sport, but his knees were gone, and soon, so was he. It got ugly here, and Orr returned to Boston, the home he never should have left.
Orr never should have hurt for money, either, which is why he grew suspicious of Eagleson. Apparently, the Bruins were willing to give Orr a well-deserved piece of the ownership action before he bolted to the Hawks. However, comma, Eagleson curiously never relayed that information to Orr, who basically put Eagleson on the map.
In the end, Orr also helped put Eagleson in the slammer.
Whether you were one of Eagleson’s individual accounts or a member of the players association, he made sure you knew that he knew more about the real world. When a lowly, toothless, uneducated athlete dared to question policy, Eagleson roared indignation. Some of the bravest players turned into lambs, lest they be banished to a coal mine in Flin Flon.
Even Orr, among the smartest and most intuitive skaters in history, naively let Eagleson handle the business of business. But Eagleson, for all the good he did in advancing hockey’s horizons, was not to be trusted. His vision created the 1972 summit for the ages–Canada versus Russia. Yet the greedy Eagleson juggled so many conflicting interests, he just had to skim part of the principal too.
When Eagleson attended a league function, he was introduced, as if royalty, by his supposed adversary, Ziegler. (Can you imagine Bowie Kuhn saluting Marvin Miller at a black-tie dinner?) Yet this odd relationship was ignored by players, at least until they tried to find their pension money.
At Eagleson’s sentencing, grim tales abounded, such as the one about Doug Harvey, the Hall of Fame defenseman. Strapped for money in his senior years, he sought assistance from the union, but Eagleson turned his back. A month later, Harvey was found, frozen to death, in a Montreal streetcar.
By strange coincidence, since Eagleson’s exit as union boss, hockey salaries have finally joined the spiral of other sports. The NHL didn’t strike oil or a rich new TV deal with an American network. So where did all this sudden cash come from? Or was it always there, only in different pockets?
Fans and media are quick to complain about how athletes are overpaid. But hockey players didn’t invent avarice. Eagleson set the standard. He worked both sides of the room, all the while stashing a few bucks in the closet for himself before being elected to the Hall of Fame, would you believe.
Now he’s off to jail. One wonders whether he’ll wear a Hawks hat upon parole. You know. Cold Steal on Ice.
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