JR Ewing

Graham James get my vote as one of the top scum bags of hockey. What the hell is wrong with Canadian justice system granting this monster a pardon?

Yes, guys like James go to the lowest depths that the worst people are able to go. I just don't see how his crimes are pardonable.

JR

Speaking of which: I voted Hall.

JR

I'm fine with how it is now, with people choosing to say who they voted for if they want to.

JR

So, who are the Oilers top 5 players, and what order do they belong in? Let's start with #1...

We'll do this by process of elimination here, even if there's name on the list who are clearly not at the top.

JR

A dishonorable mention should go to Whitey Bulger. His connection is that his girl friend is Chris Nilan's mother-in-law.

Some people might not like Whitey because of a few murders, shakedowns, torture sessions and his ratting.

Well, nobody's perfect.

And, he values his Stanley Cup ring.

Good mentions, and they make me think of two things related (in a way)...

Chris Nilan: was longtime friends with Monsignor Frederick J. Ryan; close enough to perform Nilan’s wedding ceremony as well. In 2002, Ryan told him that he molested three boys during the 1970s and 80s. Nilan did the right thing and testified in legal proceedings against his old friend.

Bulger always reminds me of: Tony Demers, who played parts of 5 season with the Habs during the 1940s. Scumbag. After bouncing around in the minors, including being the MVP of the Quebec Senior League, Demers ran into big legal trouble: was convicted of beating his girlfriend to death in 1949, and served 8 years of a 15-year prison term.

JR

Good one.

Isn't it odd that some of the biggest rats seek the spotlight while engaged in such awful things?

My memory's gone south, but didn't Bobby Clarke stick up for him?

Yeah, Clarke did. Bob Gainey and Marcel Dionne as well.

JR

Eagleson was quite the polarizing figure during his NHL tenure. I hated how he played both sides of the fence. What a weasel this guy was/is.

"After the 1976 season, Eagleson told Bobby Orr that the Bruins viewed him as damaged goods, but he didn't tell Orr the offer the Bruins had made: one of the most lucrative contracts in sports history plus 18.5% ownership in the hockey club. Instead, Orr went to the Blackhawks for far less money, all part of a scheme between Bill Wirtz, John Ziegler and Eagleson, in which they colluded to keep salaries down across the league. Within two years, Orr was out of hockey and found he was destitute."

That is flat out disgusting!!

Yeah, Eagleson is just lousy of a guy. I imagine he's a pretty smart guy, but a terrible human being.

JR

---> Special entry from a non-player <--

This is Alan Eagleson. He was hockey's first player agent, formed the NHLPA, brought NHL players to international competition, and generally made hockey players wealthy, famous, and enjoy a better work environment. He was enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame and awarded the Order of Canada, the country's highest honour... That's what he'd let you know if you gave him a minute of your time, anyway. The truth is that Alan Eagleson is, along with some NHL owners, the dirtiest man in the history of hockey.

Anything I list here is a mere drop in the bucket. To get the real and complete story, I suggest two outstanding books:

Net Worth - David Cruis & Alison Griffith

Game Misconduct - Russ Conway

In point form:

• Used money from the players' pension fund to arranged mortgages and loan money to friends and business associates, all without NHLPA approval.
  
• Simultaneously represented NHL players and management, created a clear conflict of interest.
  
• Had connections with the underwriters of NHL insurance policies, personally benefiting from any payouts that were not paid to his player clients. He would inform that their claims were denied without letting them know he profited from it. Eagleson would also charge his clients fees for "fighting the insurnance companies" for the players benefits when, in fact, the companies had alreay agreed to pay the players.
  
• Using these ties to the insurance companies, Eagleson convinced players to take part in tournaments like the '72 Series and the Canada Cup without real insurance protection, all with the possibility of making money.
  
• Contocted a scam where he pocketed money from board advertising during international competitions.
  
• Secretly lent money from the pension fund to the NHL so the league could prop up struggling franchises.
  
• Had a deal setup with NHL owners, whereby funds from international tournaments were directed to the pension plan, all so the team owners wouldn't have to contribute.
  
• Eagleson had, shall we say, interesting methods when it came to CBA discussions. First, he would spread rumours that the NHL wanted to hire him to be NHL President. Then, minutes before CBA negotiations, he would go to where the players were gathered and tell them "My contract is up. Until I get a new one, I won't represent you. I want you to take a few minutes to look at my list of demands, and you decide if they're ok with you."
  
• During CBA negotiations, Eagleson simply accepted every assertion made by the NHL regarding how poor the franchises were, stating that he did it all to keep the players' union costs lower. This resulted in CBA discussions which were little more than friendly sit-downs and were clear wins for ownership. When asked about the CBA of 1975, Harold Ballard said "Sure, it's great contract. For us. The players got screwed."
  
• Eagleson was a fan of doing his duties as NHLPA Director yet charging clients money for that duty as their agent: if a player wanted to grieve an issue he had with his team, Eagleson would file it but still charge him a fee as the player's agent.
  
• After the 1976 season, Eagleson told Bobby Orr that the Bruins viewed him as damaged goods, but he didn't tell Orr the offer the Bruins had made: one of the most lucrative contracts in sports history plus 18.5% ownership in the hockey club. Instead, Orr went to the Blackhawks for far less money, all part of a scheme between Bill Wirtz, John Ziegler and Eagleson, in which they colluded to keep salaries down across the league. Within two years, Orr was out of hockey and found he was destitute.
  

There is much more... So much more, but these are some the bigger points.

Eagleson was charged with 34 counts of racketeering, obstruction of justice, fraud and embezzlement in the US, and 8 counts of fraud and theft in Canada. In the end, Eagleson pled guilty to 3 counts of mail fraud in the US, and was fined $700,000. In Canada, Eageson served 6 months of an 18 month sentence after guilty pleas for fraud and embezzlement. He was disbarred from the law profession and stripped of his Order of Canada status.

JR

@Eastcoastcane Nice to see you hear, ECC.

JR

@JR Ewing Actually, I posted it because I thought you would read it and appreciate it when I stumbled across it, so it worked out well!

Good looking out. Thanks!

JR

This is Doug Harvey. He's one of the greatest defensemen to ever play, but I have to think that just about every single person here knows that.

But... Did you know that Harvey was a fine all-around athlete? In addition to all of his accomplishments in hockey, he was heavyweight Champion in the Canadian Navy, prior to his NHL days. Harvey also turned down contracts to play both football and baseball professionally.

JR

@JR Ewing An outstanding in depth article about the pros and cons of hiring a "proven winner" GM to run your team. This guy just nails this article, proves his theory about 15 different ways.

http://www.iveybusin...ue#.UgMQmazd4ud

Terrific article. Could ONLY have come from outside the game. The last thing a sports writer would do is say anything which runs counter to the truisms of hockey men.

JR

Just thought of one.

Spacek

Hated playing against him, but loved his work ethic

Nice pick. Spacek was a quality defenseman with an all-around game.

JR

I guess as long as you don't make a habit of it...Homers track record when he actually holds on to his picks is OK by me.

And it also depends on what value a team places on a certain skill set or attribute. I came away from Flight Plan with the sneaking suspicion that the Flyers have a preference for nastiness. heh

Mind you, you would think they'd like Nurse, then, as he's not a fun guy to play against, but they had him well down from everybody else did. And that's fine, too.

JR

That's unbelievable! (yet believable).

Does anyone remember the very first game after this when Edmonton played LA...& what ensued, response of the crowd, etc.?

In his first game back, fans gave him a protracted standing ovation, and still cheered when he was credited with assists for the Kings. Not very many people held the trade against him, with most of the hatred being aimed pretty much directly at Peter Pocklington. Even by the next Autumn, a lot of folks were over the irrational hate-on for Janet Gretzky.

I will always be a Wayne Gretzky fan.

JR

...and ditto! Homer may not follow everyones reasoning, but if he hangs on to his picks I'm good with at least having something going forward. And I love Morins potential. He may never reach it, but if he does...

We'll have to see how it works out. In my experience, being so far away from the consensus either means that you're brilliant or a fool, without much in between.

JR

A taste of old school reporting:

"The league-leading Philadelphia Arrows plastered a 4-0 defeat tonight on the New Haven Eagles in the last Canadian-American hockey contest for the local sextet. After a rough first period, during which nine penalties were imposed, one a major, the game settled down to a quiet affair. In the third frame, Wilf Cude, the Arrows' goaler, left his nets long enough to nail a rat that scampered across the ice. His 'feat' was applauded boisterously by the women spectators"

-Associated Press, March 28, 1933.

JR

Point-form...

-Really interesting stuff, and a big part of what that scouting group did made no sense to me.

-They sat down two weeks AFTER their "final meeting" and damn near tore their board apart? Huh?

-Homer didn't look very impressed, and I don't blame him one little bit.

-Glad for Chris Pronger to have found a role in which he can contribute. Most Oilers fans probably hate the guy, but not me at all. Not a bit.

-The scouts didn't seem to talk about anything other than nastiness and size when it comes to defense prospects. I understand that this is a meeting edited down to a webisode, but that was still more than a little surprising to me.

-The Flyers board looks pretty different than, well... Everybody else's.

JR

I couldn't believe they didn't lock Pocklington up.....for his own good!

He was public enemy #1 in Edmonton in those days and still is, really. He sold Gretzky (that wasn't a hockey trade) so he could cover bad business deals with his meat packing company, Gainers. In just a few short years, he'd gone on to have stripped down the hockey team for parts, close down (perhaps) the largest employer in town and attempt to sell the team to interests in Texas. He ended up declaring bankruptcy and, in true rich guy fashion, ended up living at the Pebble Beach Golf Course, next to the other broke guys.

Later on, he was charged bankruptcy fraud, and settled on a plea deal which saw him receive probation and house arrest and, a few months ago, was ordered to pay out $5M in a securities fraud case. At every step of the way, he's had a laundry list of people to blame; it's never his fault.

But, as my Dad has always said, if the same type of stuff keeps happening to you, and you're the common denominator, you have to ask what's more likey: that it's always somebody else's fault, or your own?

JR

The WHA had its share of characters, one of my all time favorites to read about was Frank 'never' Beaton, who later in his career changed his nickname to 'seldom' and decided to retire when he was forced to change it to 'often.' Fun stories about a gas station attendant spilling drops of gas on his car so Beaton got into a fight and was charged. To avoid arrest he hid in an equipment bag which was tossed on the bus as the team left town. Funny guy who still pops up every now and then telling his stories...

JR

@JR Ewing

They were some violent SOBs back then for sure

That's what I always have to say when people talk about the 70s as being the most violent era of hockey ever. It was definitely violent, and you definitely needed to watch out for getting jumped, but not close to being as bad as it had been in the past.

Hockey sticks were half for playing the game, the other half for carving an opponent like a Christmas turkey.

JR

Billy Coutu was the first, and to date only, player banned from the NHL for life for violence in 1927; he assaulted referee Jerry Laflamme and tackled referee Billy Bell before starting a bench-clearing brawl during a Stanley Cup game between the Boston Bruins and Ottawa Senators, apparently on the orders of Bruins coach Art Ross. The NHL's first president, Frank Calder, expelled Coutu from the NHL for life; the ban was lifted after 2½ years, but Coutu never played in the NHL again.

I've always understood that it was even worse than that: the game was over, the Series won by the Senators, when he attacked LaFlamme. Either way...

JR

Cool JR! Wondered where our sport store branch name came from...never knew that history.

Now you know.

Though the game was sufficiently different that the numbers don't translate without heavy amounts of normalizing, it's clear that he's one of the all-time greats.

JR

This is Joe Hall. He was kind of the Chis Chelios of his day but, given the extreme levels of violence in the game during the 1910s, did things none of us would deem imagineable in a hockey game today... Sticks over the head, face, windpipe. Spearings, beatings, etc.

On February 16, 1917, Hall bit off more than he could chew, and got into it with Renfrew's Frank Patrick, who aside from being a great player, was an outstanding fighter. According to the Montreal Gazette "Patrick had pummeled Hall's face and nose into mallowy pulp." Hall was humiliated, so he turned around and beat the hell out of referee Rod Kennedy (this was not altogether unheard of in those days).

The repercussions? Hall was fined $100, which he refused to pay, nor was he willing to pay the $27.50 required to replace Kennedy's suit, which was tattered beyond repair and heavily soiled with blood.

JR

@goalnut3133

Hey you stole my Cyclone!! lol

No way. Tell the rest; there's way more to his story. I just got a kick out of him demanding a govt job in addition to a hockey paycheque.

JR