Ziggy Stardust
Master Debater
Another Goodenow Article
NHL union leader is feisty fighter
Chris Snow, Star Tribune
September 30, 2004 NHL0930
Why is the NHL's offer of a $1.3 million average wage unacceptable to men who shoot and save pucks for a living?
Why is the NHL's goal of devising a link between revenue and the players' keep viewed as unfair and un-American?
Why have the players gone all-in, betting their collective annual income of $1.5 billion on the NHL caving at some point this season?
Bob Goodenow is why.
What Goodenow says is gospel to his congregation, the 700 guys age 18-42 who constitute the National Hockey League Players Association (NHLPA). It is gospel because Goodenow, the NHLPA's 51-year-old executive director, has led them to the promised land time and again since 1992.
They listen also because he seems to enjoy taking on agonizing duties. Just as hockey players get sticked in the face and play on, Goodenow embodies a consistent willingness to tread in daunting places.
That place at this moment is between Commissioner Gary Bettman and the resumption of NHL hockey.
"You want somebody who's strong," said Wild defenseman Willie Mitchell. "He's straight up, he tells it how it is; that's the way it should be."
The bottom line: Fight Bob Goodenow, and, nine out of 10 times, you lose. His past suggests this and nothing less.
Road to the NHLPA
If Goodenow's life had gone as planned, he would have played in the NHL. Instead, following two minor-league seasons in Flint, Mich., he opted for law school.
It wasn't for a lack of will that he failed at hockey. As a right winger on the Detroit Jr. Red Wings, Goodenow's eye socket was crushed by a puck. Legend has it that he told teammates he could keep playing, even as blood gushed out of his face.
Usually, though, it was Goodenow doing the damage. He had a cannon of a slapshot. One caught Harvard goalie Joe Bertagna in the face. Bertagna spent the night in a Boston hospital.
"I had visions of Wally Pipp, with Lou Gehrig coming in and taking my job," Bertagna recalled.
It was in Cambridge, Mass., when he was 21, that Goodenow emerged as a leader. At Harvard, the players, as opposed to the coaches, elect captains, and Goodenow was tapped in 1973-74.
"I can't recall his personality being what I think it is now, which is acerbic and tough," said Bertagna, now the commissioner of Hockey East. "I don't recall him having the edges."
Said Yale head coach Tim Taylor, who coached Goodenow in college: "I can only attest Bobby has a warmer side and a human side."
Frank Caputo didn't see that.
Caputo, of Carnegie, Pa., is now 76. Back in 1984 he was a union representative for about two dozen members of the Teamsters Local 249. All were employees of the Firefighter Sales and Service Co. in Sharpsburg, Pa. Goodenow was the boss of that company.
The time came to negotiate a new contact. Goodenow and Caputo met but accomplished little else.
"Bob was an obstructionist on every sentence," Caputo recalled. "He made me livid because I could see immediately that his sole purpose was to make sure no contract was enacted. He was successful [11 months later] because those guys couldn't hold out for long."
Caputo is livid once again, this time because Goodenow sits on the opposite side of a labor showdown.
"I look at the guy as an opportunist," Caputo said.
Told of Caputo's comments, Goodenow, in a phone interview last week, said: "He can say that. I was hired to do a job fairly. I still am. In that way I'm totally focused."
Goodenow won that battle, then joined the hockey agent business. By 1990, he had assembled a stable of about 20 clients, including Bob Mason, now the Wild goalie coach. Goodenow, then as now, was always about getting the best deal, a lesson Mason learned in the 1987 offseason.
Goodenow had Mason fly in to Detroit on the eve of the 1987 draft. Mason was a free agent, and Goodenow wanted to mediate any contact between teams and Mason. The goalie arrived, and Goodenow led him to a hotel room.
"He just said, 'Stay here, buy some beer,' " Mason said.
Goodenow came back intermittently holding a napkin with an offer scrawled on it. Four teams made bids, including Mason's most recent team, the Washington Capitals, Mason said. Mason instead signed with the Chicago Blackhawks.
The following day, to Mason's dismay, the Blackhawks signed college goalie Ed Belfour and picked goaltender Jimmy Waite eighth overall. Belfour's agent was none other than Goodenow.
"Goodenow kept that from me," Mason said. "He should have let me know. ... Knowing that, I might have stayed [with Washington]."
The anti-Eagleson
Alan Eagleson was a groundbreaker, then a sellout. The NHLPA was founded in 1967, and he was appointed executive director. By the end of 1991, he was on his way out. He had buddied up with NHL owners and scammed the player pension fund. He eventually went to jail for fraud.
In came Goodenow, who acknowledges that his style "could be seen as the anti-Eagleson."
Under Eagleson, the only way Player X knew how much Player Y made was if Player Y told him. Goodenow set to disclosing salaries in 1992, according to Minneapolis-based agent Neil Sheehy. The league average that year was $368,000.
"The next thing you know your statistics are way better than someone else's, and they're making $200,000 more than you," Sheehy said. "That's when salaries took off."
The league average in 2003-04 reached $1.81 million.
By the late 1990s, Goodenow made it possible to look up anyone's pay on the NHLPA Web site. Today, Goodenow's use of technology extends to his constituency. He updates players on the lockout and other issues through a password-accessible Web site.
If a player doesn't have a computer of his own, Goodenow will supply one. He has issued hundreds, he said.
"Goodenow came in and all of a sudden changed the whole landscape," Sheehy said. "His communication with the membership has been phenomenal."
At times, though, his communication infuriates the agents who must answer to him. According to multiple agents who spoke on the condition of anonymity, Goodenow or an NHLPA associate occasionally calls to ask about contract negotiations before a deal is done to make sure the agent is seeking enough money.
Most times, though, if an agent gets a call, it is because he settled for what the NHLPA views as a below-marketplace deal.
"It's quite a bit overstated, our role in contracts," Goodenow said. "Over 95 percent we find out when they're faxed in to us. ... We ask for explanations when we see trends."
Sheehy said he has received heated calls about deals he's done but not until the contracts were signed.
"I've had arguments with Bob Goodenow," Sheehy said. "Is Bob intimidating? He can be. Does he get ticked off? Yes.
"But he wants to know what you think. He wants to make sure you've looked at issues from all different sides and done the best for your client. If you don't debate him, he doesn't know you've done that."
Goodenow is more forceful when it comes to arbitration. Only about 10 percent of these cases are handled by agents. NHLPA lawyers argue the remaining 90 percent.
"If you're not dealing with it on a regular basis, you can get tripped up," Goodenow said. "It's a specialized area."
Just this summer, players averaged 73 percent raises at arbitration, according to NHL data. Pay hikes such as that help explain the six-year, $20 million extension Goodenow received in 2002.
Yet he has said he will not accept any pay during this lockout, even while fans spit venom and blame his way. But Caputo, like many who have had showdowns with Goodenow, does not expect the man to blink.
"I don't imagine he kowtows to anybody," Caputo said.
NHL union leader is feisty fighter
Chris Snow, Star Tribune
September 30, 2004 NHL0930
Why is the NHL's offer of a $1.3 million average wage unacceptable to men who shoot and save pucks for a living?
Why is the NHL's goal of devising a link between revenue and the players' keep viewed as unfair and un-American?
Why have the players gone all-in, betting their collective annual income of $1.5 billion on the NHL caving at some point this season?
Bob Goodenow is why.
What Goodenow says is gospel to his congregation, the 700 guys age 18-42 who constitute the National Hockey League Players Association (NHLPA). It is gospel because Goodenow, the NHLPA's 51-year-old executive director, has led them to the promised land time and again since 1992.
They listen also because he seems to enjoy taking on agonizing duties. Just as hockey players get sticked in the face and play on, Goodenow embodies a consistent willingness to tread in daunting places.
That place at this moment is between Commissioner Gary Bettman and the resumption of NHL hockey.
"You want somebody who's strong," said Wild defenseman Willie Mitchell. "He's straight up, he tells it how it is; that's the way it should be."
The bottom line: Fight Bob Goodenow, and, nine out of 10 times, you lose. His past suggests this and nothing less.
Road to the NHLPA
If Goodenow's life had gone as planned, he would have played in the NHL. Instead, following two minor-league seasons in Flint, Mich., he opted for law school.
It wasn't for a lack of will that he failed at hockey. As a right winger on the Detroit Jr. Red Wings, Goodenow's eye socket was crushed by a puck. Legend has it that he told teammates he could keep playing, even as blood gushed out of his face.
Usually, though, it was Goodenow doing the damage. He had a cannon of a slapshot. One caught Harvard goalie Joe Bertagna in the face. Bertagna spent the night in a Boston hospital.
"I had visions of Wally Pipp, with Lou Gehrig coming in and taking my job," Bertagna recalled.
It was in Cambridge, Mass., when he was 21, that Goodenow emerged as a leader. At Harvard, the players, as opposed to the coaches, elect captains, and Goodenow was tapped in 1973-74.
"I can't recall his personality being what I think it is now, which is acerbic and tough," said Bertagna, now the commissioner of Hockey East. "I don't recall him having the edges."
Said Yale head coach Tim Taylor, who coached Goodenow in college: "I can only attest Bobby has a warmer side and a human side."
Frank Caputo didn't see that.
Caputo, of Carnegie, Pa., is now 76. Back in 1984 he was a union representative for about two dozen members of the Teamsters Local 249. All were employees of the Firefighter Sales and Service Co. in Sharpsburg, Pa. Goodenow was the boss of that company.
The time came to negotiate a new contact. Goodenow and Caputo met but accomplished little else.
"Bob was an obstructionist on every sentence," Caputo recalled. "He made me livid because I could see immediately that his sole purpose was to make sure no contract was enacted. He was successful [11 months later] because those guys couldn't hold out for long."
Caputo is livid once again, this time because Goodenow sits on the opposite side of a labor showdown.
"I look at the guy as an opportunist," Caputo said.
Told of Caputo's comments, Goodenow, in a phone interview last week, said: "He can say that. I was hired to do a job fairly. I still am. In that way I'm totally focused."
Goodenow won that battle, then joined the hockey agent business. By 1990, he had assembled a stable of about 20 clients, including Bob Mason, now the Wild goalie coach. Goodenow, then as now, was always about getting the best deal, a lesson Mason learned in the 1987 offseason.
Goodenow had Mason fly in to Detroit on the eve of the 1987 draft. Mason was a free agent, and Goodenow wanted to mediate any contact between teams and Mason. The goalie arrived, and Goodenow led him to a hotel room.
"He just said, 'Stay here, buy some beer,' " Mason said.
Goodenow came back intermittently holding a napkin with an offer scrawled on it. Four teams made bids, including Mason's most recent team, the Washington Capitals, Mason said. Mason instead signed with the Chicago Blackhawks.
The following day, to Mason's dismay, the Blackhawks signed college goalie Ed Belfour and picked goaltender Jimmy Waite eighth overall. Belfour's agent was none other than Goodenow.
"Goodenow kept that from me," Mason said. "He should have let me know. ... Knowing that, I might have stayed [with Washington]."
The anti-Eagleson
Alan Eagleson was a groundbreaker, then a sellout. The NHLPA was founded in 1967, and he was appointed executive director. By the end of 1991, he was on his way out. He had buddied up with NHL owners and scammed the player pension fund. He eventually went to jail for fraud.
In came Goodenow, who acknowledges that his style "could be seen as the anti-Eagleson."
Under Eagleson, the only way Player X knew how much Player Y made was if Player Y told him. Goodenow set to disclosing salaries in 1992, according to Minneapolis-based agent Neil Sheehy. The league average that year was $368,000.
"The next thing you know your statistics are way better than someone else's, and they're making $200,000 more than you," Sheehy said. "That's when salaries took off."
The league average in 2003-04 reached $1.81 million.
By the late 1990s, Goodenow made it possible to look up anyone's pay on the NHLPA Web site. Today, Goodenow's use of technology extends to his constituency. He updates players on the lockout and other issues through a password-accessible Web site.
If a player doesn't have a computer of his own, Goodenow will supply one. He has issued hundreds, he said.
"Goodenow came in and all of a sudden changed the whole landscape," Sheehy said. "His communication with the membership has been phenomenal."
At times, though, his communication infuriates the agents who must answer to him. According to multiple agents who spoke on the condition of anonymity, Goodenow or an NHLPA associate occasionally calls to ask about contract negotiations before a deal is done to make sure the agent is seeking enough money.
Most times, though, if an agent gets a call, it is because he settled for what the NHLPA views as a below-marketplace deal.
"It's quite a bit overstated, our role in contracts," Goodenow said. "Over 95 percent we find out when they're faxed in to us. ... We ask for explanations when we see trends."
Sheehy said he has received heated calls about deals he's done but not until the contracts were signed.
"I've had arguments with Bob Goodenow," Sheehy said. "Is Bob intimidating? He can be. Does he get ticked off? Yes.
"But he wants to know what you think. He wants to make sure you've looked at issues from all different sides and done the best for your client. If you don't debate him, he doesn't know you've done that."
Goodenow is more forceful when it comes to arbitration. Only about 10 percent of these cases are handled by agents. NHLPA lawyers argue the remaining 90 percent.
"If you're not dealing with it on a regular basis, you can get tripped up," Goodenow said. "It's a specialized area."
Just this summer, players averaged 73 percent raises at arbitration, according to NHL data. Pay hikes such as that help explain the six-year, $20 million extension Goodenow received in 2002.
Yet he has said he will not accept any pay during this lockout, even while fans spit venom and blame his way. But Caputo, like many who have had showdowns with Goodenow, does not expect the man to blink.
"I don't imagine he kowtows to anybody," Caputo said.
