by Barry Stagg
December 1994
Daniel Cleary is a fifteen year old from Riverhead, Conception Bay who is playing Major Junior A Hockey with the Belleville Bulls of the Ontario Hockey League, OHL. Young Daniel Cleary had a big write-up in a recent weekend issue of the Toronto Star where his virtues as a hockey player were extolled. With no major league hockey or baseball being played the daily papers are going to junior hockey for good material. These days the daily papers cover sports in the same way they cover labour negotiations. The papers give a daily summary of the latest labour negotiation tactics being used by hockey players and owners and their equally odious fellow travellers in baseball.
From my perspective there seems no doubt that this young fellow will be a fine hockey player. Barring serious injury or a major regression in talent and character, he will make it to the National Hockey League to join the Newfoundlanders who most recently made the big time, those being John Slaney and Dwayne Norris. The bright light that is Cleary's enormous talent and youthful enthusiasm is shadowed somewhat by the presence of the typical seediness that pops up in the picture when the subject of Cleary obtaining a hockey agent is discussed.
The Star article gave considerable coverage to Cleary's wonderment when Wayne Gretzky telephoned him personally on a request from Gretzky's own personal agent, Mike Barnett. This might seem like a very kind, considerate and selfless gesture by Gretzky. Did Barnett feel that a millionaire hockey player such as Gretzky would influence a fifteen year old boy? Was Barnett appointed as Cleary's agent before or after the great telephone call? Gretzky's agent, Barnett stands to make healthy commissions from Cleary if Cleary fulfils his very real promise. The question then becomes should Wayne Gretzky, hockey god, be making telephone calls to a fifteen year old at the request of someone with whom Gretzky already has a very significant and profitable adult business relationship? Why did Barnett not have Gretzky's good friend Bruce McNall (currently under American indictment for fraud) make a friendly telephone call to young Cleary? After all until last year McNall was the owner of the Los Angeles Kings and the Chairman of the National Hockey League Board of Governors.
I have no doubt that these telephone calls from National Hockey League "heroes" to green young junior hockey players happen all the time. I also have no doubt that the intentions of these telephone calls are pure and simple. Agents are attempting to impress minors with their easy contact with star National Hockey League players. A contract with a junior hockey player can pay the agent healthy commissions based almost solely upon the hockey player's skill and development. It is obvious that a top notch hockey player will be well paid when that player is drafted into the National Hockey League. It is equally as obvious that only an incompetent agent would be able to avoid a lucrative contract for that person. Thus it is obvious that the factors that will influence a star junior hockey player in getting lots of money in a professional career do not extend to the choice of an agent made at the age of fifteen or sixteen. Simply put young Cleary will make a healthy profit from his hockey skills based on his own ability and his performance in junior hockey and his income/profit will not be dependent upon whether he uses Wayne Gretzky's agent.
How is it that Gretzky is never critically queried in the media about his business relationship with Bruce McNall? Any inquiries about this relationship are framed in the same way that an old friend is asked about a disgraced boyhood chum?
These days the media has a great time telling stories about the bad times that have befallen former hockey boss Alan Eagleson who is under indictment in the United States for various alleged crimes and who is being investigated by the Law Society in Ontario for similar transgressions. Many of these charges relate to breaches of duties toward clients. The media using the practice of trial by media as opposed to trial by jury are anxious to distribute as many allegations against Eagleson as possible. Strangely though little is said about how Gretzky is a powerful business presence in hockey and how his relationships with people like agent Barnett and disgraced former owner McNall were relationships of mutual profit.
Do the same ethical rules and the principles of fiduciary responsibility apply to these present day hockey titans as they apply to the fallen Alan Eagleson? Is there a code of ethics in hockey relating to recruitment of minors by agents? Is there a universal code of ethics being applied equally in the hockey industry or is there really just the enforcement of the law of the jungle where the powerful rule until gored and then the fallen powerful are trampled to death?
Until next month be proud, be prosperous.