Letter From Lemieux To NHL: Teams Should Be Held Responsible

Added on Mar 15, 2011 by J Merrill in

NHL

After the NHL announced yesterday that they were considering handing out team fines, ESPN has uncovered a letter that shows it has at least one fan of the idea. Former superstar player, and now co-owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins Mario Lemieux sent a letter to Garry Bettman ( Commissioner of the National Hockey League) Dated March 7^th, saying he felt it was a smart thing to do.

Lemieux’s main point in the letter is that the NHL does very little to deter some of the actions of some of the players in the NHL. The Letter reads “On behalf of the Pittsburgh Penguins organization, I am writing to propose a discussion by the Board of Governors and general managers about the NHL’s current system of supplementary discipline — and how it affects not only the integrity but the perception of our great game.” Lemieux goes further and says “The current system punishes the offending player but does very little to deter such actions in the future. We need to review, upgrade and more clearly define our policies in this regard, so that they can provide a meaningful deterrence and effectively clean up the game.”

Lemieux’s idea is to implement a system where the team itself is automatically fined for the suspension of one of its players, and he had no problem laying out the specifics. “While there have been 50-plus suspensions since the start of the 2009-10 season, the suspensions themselves don’t seem to be deterring these illegal acts and tactics. And we’ve often seen repeat offenders. We think it is time that teams also are held accountable for the actions of their players. We propose instituting a policy of automatically fining a team when one if its players is suspended — with the amount of the fine based on the length of the suspension. This should serve as a disincentive for teams as well as players to employ these kinds of tactics.”

Lemieux went on to lay out the numbers in the letter, and you can see them below.

• 1-2 games–$50,000 fine to team

• 3-4 games–$100,000 fine to team

• 5-8 games–$250,000 fine to team

• 9-10 games–$500,000 fine to team

• 11-15 games–$750,000 fine to team

• More than 15 games–$1 million fine to team

After laying out the numbers, Lemieux had two more points to make. One of them is that if a team has a repeat offender then the fines above would be doubled. He also wanted to make sure that people understood that these moves would greatly effect ALL the teams in the NHL, and he is considering the NHL as a whole, and not just his team. He concluded “Please note that if this proposed system were in operation today, the Pittsburgh Penguins would have been fined $600,000 this season because of recent suspensions to two players. We all have to take responsibility if we are going to improve the game.’”

Bettman told the media in attendance that this exact issue is definitely part of the agenda for the Board of Governors meeting in June. He said “I will be discussing with the Board of Governors at the June meetings the fact that I intend to, for next season, provide that clubs will ultimately be responsible for the acts of their players so that if a player or players on a club are the subjects of repeat disciplinary procedures and resultant supplemental discipline, ultimately it is the club and perhaps the coach that will be held responsible.”