Spector on NHL: Fehr talks concussion issue

The first thing that strikes you about Donald Fehr is how dispassionately he speaks to a topic that the rest of the hockey world has been obsessing over for weeks.

Talk shows, columnists, players, owners, and airline presidents — even Prime Ministers. We all have our shirts in a knot over how the National Hockey League should solve its concussion dilemma.

Not Fehr, who spoke to sportsnet.ca in an exclusive interview on the eve of Crisis on Ice?

Thursday on Sportsnet: Concussions in the NHL have nearly doubled this season, affecting more than 10 per cent of the league’s players. From the NHL to minor hockey, there is public outcry for action. On Thursday, March 24 we respond with “A Rogers Sportsnet Special – Crisis on Ice?” — a national conversation on the issue of serious injuries in hockey. | Premiere: East/Ont 7 p.m. ET, West 9 p.m. MT, Pacific 7 p.m. PT

“Concussion dilemma is an interesting way to put it,” began the new Executive Director of the National Hockey League Players’ Association on Wednesday afternoon, still feeling his way after just a few months on the job.

Fehr is that debater who must frame the discussion before taking part in it. As if he wants to set the ground rules of the conversation, before the negotiations begin.

“I would refer to it as the concussion problem, or the concussion issue,” he said. “There is a defined problem. You have concussions; they have severity. One (problem) is preventing them … and the second is having the very best kind of treatment and care available. Players deserve no less.”

One week after the NHL’s general managers had gathered in Boca Raton, Fla. to brainstorm on stemming the flow of head injuries in the game, we asked Fehr what the tangible solutions the NHLPA — a strangely silent partner thus far in the proceedings — could offer?

“My experience is that the only most effective way by far to get long-term, positive results, is to have the association and the league do it jointly,” said Fehr, who for 26 years headed the Major League Baseball Players’ Association. “To have whatever negotiations and discussions are required; to come up with programs and procedures everyone can agree with. (An agreement) everyone can buy into, everyone can have confidence in.”

If it sounds like the solution won’t be in the rulebook before the playoffs start next month, you’re starting to get the picture.

Fehr didn’t become the most successful sports union leader in history by blinking first. In hockey parlance, he was Bob Goodenow long before Bob Goodenow was Bob Goodenow.

The question people are asking, however, is whether an issue of this import should become a mater of “negotiation” and “discussion.” Isn’t it too vital to be tied up inside of collective bargaining, like pensions and escrow?

Two days earlier, retired player Bill Guerin — who sat on the NHLPA’s executive committee through the lockout of 2004-05 — told sportsnet.ca that, in his view, the concussions issue should not become entwined in collective bargaining. The CBA, by the way, expires in September of 2012.

“I was always a union guy, but some things are bigger than that,” Guerin said. “I understand, when you make a give, you want to get. But you have to be part of the solution as well.

“This isn’t about 56 per cent (of revenues) or anything like that. This is about ensuring that your players are as safe as they possibly can be, and right now they’re not. To me, it would be worth a little bit of a give.”

Talk to Fehr for a while, and you get the feeling that he concurs with Guerin on the importance of the issue, but a little bit less on the “give” and take of it all.

The safety of Fehr’s players is of paramount importance; don’t doubt that for a moment. Yet the union head in him won’t allow Fehr to betray a sense of urgency on the concussion issue.

Equipment changes. Olympic participation. Both became wrapped up in collective bargaining.

Is there a way this crucial element can be separated from CBA negotiations?

“In theory there is,” Fehr allowed. “In theory you could say, ‘We’re going to take this issue and say it is unrelated to economics, so we’re going to treat it differently.’ I would hope we would be able to (come to an agreement) without having to wait for the next round of negotiations.”

What separates this issue is, of course, it is primarily a players’ issue. They’re the ones whose heads and health are at stake.

Surely, the NHLPA would work to expedite change.

“Maybe I wasn’t clear enough in making my point,” Fehr said. “I would like to figure out a way to negotiate this issue out in a fashion in which everyone can come to agreement on, before we get to September, ’12.”

That, folks, is as passionate as Don Fehr gets. It’s what makes him the grand daddy of all sports union leaders.

What about getting all the players together this summer, he is asked, and convincing them that concussing each other at the current rate is bad for business?

“You know, I hear people talk about that, and what I’m learning is that there is a history and culture to the game,” he said of the ‘big meeting’ theory. “There is a way that it has been played, and people are used to that. In my experience, you’re unlikely to effect meaningful change with pronouncements by people in suits who have never played the game. One of those people is me.

“It takes a lot of discussion, and there has been a lot of discussion among players.”

“Discussion.” “Negotiation.” “Agreements.”

Where NHLPA input is concerned, whatever happens here, it will be at the speed and in the direction that the players’ union would have it. Impatience, you get the feeling talking to Fehr, is a sign of weakness.

So you can tell Stephen Harper and the Air Canada guy, we’re on Don Fehr’s timetable now.

You’re in a hurry for a solution?

Good. We want you to be in a hurry.

We’ll get back to you on that.