Understand: there are always far more players than there are jobs. In any other field or profession on the planet, supply reflects demand. This is not true in professional sports, where the positions are a fixed amount, and every year there is a new graduating class of hopefuls looking to fill them. The competition is so fierce and cutthroat, that some men dedicate their entire lives working towards the singular goal of becoming a professional athlete, and still aren’t good enough.

In 1992, I caught site of a touring hockey team from Kharkov, Ukraine. This team of Bantam boys was called Druzhba ’78 (Druzhba being the Ukrainian word for "friendship", and ’78 being their year of birth). They were, as the story goes, handpicked at the age of five under the old Soviet system as potentials with incredible athletic ability, and sent to a special hockey school to train exclusively. For four years they developed their skills at hockey and soccer, and then just at hockey, full time. The product of the centralized athletics program of the 80s, they quickly improved beyond their contemporaries in skill, speed, and talent. When the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine obtained its independence, these gifted hockey lads suddenly found the program cancelled and their funding ceased. So, like any neo-capitalist country, they went on tour showcasing their hockey skills to earn money for training and equipment to keep the program going.

They came through my town to play a couple friendly exhibition games against the local Midget AAA team (one notch below Junior). Druzhba, at age 14 and many of them not quite yet developed physically, were not daunted by the bigger, more menacing 17-year old Midgets, and proceeded to use their inhuman speed to dance circles around them. The final score: 20-1. It wasn’t even close. The Midget defence just could not keep up with the superior speed and playmaking of the eastern Europeans.

This Druzhba team played some 70 games a year, throughout all North America, participating in high-ranking Bantam and Midget tournaments. Over a period of five years they played some 340 games, winning all but five. They were clearly a super team, much better, faster, and stronger on their skates and with the puck than any group of teenage phenoms I had ever seen, and I watched with anticipation over the years to see what the world would make of them when they became men.

Of this team of super players—each one a Gretzky—only one was actually good enough to make it to the NHL: Dainius Zubrus. The others scattered when they turned pro. Some fell out with Junior clubs. Others played in Euro leagues, or in semi-pro leagues. Maybe others gave it up altogether, and tried to do something else. The point is for a group of boys selected purely for their raw athletic ability and programmed from an early age to eat, sleep, and breathe hockey, they still weren’t good enough to become NHL players at all, let alone NHL superstars.

The level of competitiveness in the world of pro sports is insane. Nothing is a sure thing. Hockey players live with this kind of mounting pressure and overwhelming odds every day of their lives. Professional sports are the only discipline where you can train your whole life and still aren’t guaranteed a job.

The comparison to other professionals is often made. Teachers, doctors, lawyers. Fans love to call the hockey player’s 7-figure salary obscene, and the teachers and doctors’ salaries—people who fill a much more dedicated and useful function to society—a travesty in comparison. But those arguments are dishonest. NHL athletes represent the top 0.01 percentile in the world at what they do. At most: 600 dedicated roster spots. There are millions of teachers in the world, so if you want to compare them to hockey players, compare aptitude with aptitude: take the 600 best teachers (they would probably go by the name "professor"). Or the 600 best lawyers or 600 best doctors. You’ll likely find that they’re all making 7-figure salaries. When you’re the best in the world at what you do, you command the kind of paycheck that reflects it. A better comparison to the local public school teacher is the local public recreational hockey player—and he isn’t making any money at all.

Furthermore, the longevity of an athlete in any professional sport from a peak earning period is four years. Every player is constantly reminded that they are replaceable at a moment’s notice. It is the only profession in the world where the training and skill acquisition take longer than actually employing them for profit. That is the reality that professional athletes face: signing over their livelihood for a brief opportunity at a payoff. On most occasions, this never comes to fruition. The high-profile players get all the press, but when salaries are cut down it is the fringe players, who outnumber the high-profile players 100 to 1, who undoubtedly suffer.

In Hollywood, actors make obscene amounts of money. Arnold Schwarzenegger gets paid $30 million a movie. But that’s because his movies make $300 million dollars. Why, then, do we resent the players for demanding similar compensation when the owners clear similar profits?

And this demand is relatively new. Player’s salaries really only started skyrocketing when Gretzky was traded to Los Angeles in 1988. That trade changed everything insofar as the worth and value of a marquee player was concerned. Gretzky had a Gordie Howe-like mindset when it came to salary, and like Howe his "don’t rock the boat" position inadvertently held back salaries for the better part of a decade. His contract was equally as simple: "pay me what you feel you have to." So LA doubled his salary. Bruce McNall was the first owner who wanted it announced to the whole world just what exactly the fledgling Kings franchise had received: the greatest player of all time. The greatest player deserved the greatest contract. The owners, not understanding the idea behind marketing a star player that had since become standard fare in basketball, football and baseball, complained that rising salaries would ruin hockey. As a matter of fact, the exact opposite happened. The hoopla surrounding big signings catapulted fan interest, gate receipts, and overall league revenues. Gretzky’s salary escalated from $1.25 million to $2.5 million, but the King’s revenues went from $4 million to $13 million. The Gretzky signing prompted other star players to renegotiate their contracts. Mario Lemieux obtained a new $2 million deal. Brett Hull went from $125,000 to $7.3 million after his legendary 73-goal season. Scott Stevens signed for $5.1 million over four years. It was a period of unprecedented prosperity for both the League and the Players. So what was the problem?

The problem was power. The owners suddenly realized that they could no longer keep the players underneath their thumb, as they had for decades. Eric Lindros—branded "The Next One" by hockey writers—was the first player who knew exactly what he was worth, and refused to come into the game on one knee selling his future for the pride and privilege of playing hockey. At age 18 he understood, perhaps better than anyone, exactly how his team and the League would profit from him. Of course, the League painted a different slant, and it made for more sensationalism in the media to call him spoiled, immature, greedy and having no respect nor love for the NHL and hockey. Death threats were made to him and his family. In Juniors, he often slept with a knife underneath his pillow. His brother Brett was forced to flee to the US collegiate system to play hockey. His parents lived in fear of being castrated; his sister lived with the feeling she would be beaten or raped. Public sentiment towards Lindros and his family looked not unlike the public sentiment towards people of Arabic descent after the terrorist attacks. And all because a young boy did not want to do what a bunch of rich men told him to do.

It’s a time-honoured technique for the owners to continuously berate the players and warn them that their "unreasonable" demands will kill the game. Only professional athletes live with the gripping fear that organizing a strike will destroy their sports. No other industry worries about these things. Steelworkers don’t fret that the steel industry will come to a crashing halt if they picket. Teachers don’t contemplate the possibility of no one ever learning anything ever again if they walk out of their classrooms. Engineers aren’t afraid that bridges will collapse and dams will break if they refuse to take on projects. Only athletes straddle that dangerous line between getting their due, and destroying their reason for living. The owners know this, and never hesitate to bring it up time and time again. And the owners never foster any delusions about what the game means to them. It is about money. And no owner fears that he may never get to run a company ever again if the NHL folds. The owner still has other vested interests. If the League collapses, the owner moves on, and runs other companies.

What does the player get to do?

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