Anaheim Ducks general manager Brian Burke called them "coach killers."
Toronto Maple Leafs general manager of limited duration, Cliff Fletcher, has made it clear he feels his chances of making the team better via trades will be difficult because his hands are essentially tied.
Seemingly all of Ottawa is making defenceman Wade Redden out to be a bad boy because he declined a forced trade from the team he swore long-term allegiance to and backed it up with his signature on a contract.
As the trade deadline approaches across the NHL the topic of no-trade and no-move clauses has hit the front line of reporting and, not surprisingly by NHL standards, the players are being made to be the bad guys and general managers, the people in near complete control as to whether or not no-trades or no-movement clauses are made available, are doing the crying.
Now to be fair, Burke has a history of not giving them out and Fletcher inherited his, mostly from recently fired general manager John Ferguson, but that just makes it easier for them to carry the banner that reads as it so often does in the NHL GM ranks: Save Us from Ourselves.
This might be a good time to point out that no-trade and no-movement (a variation on the no-trade that protects the player from an admittedly harsh move like waiving a player to the minors so that he might eventually be picked up by another club on recall, a move that Rangers GM Glen Sather is credited with inventing and Brian Burke has largely perfected as a way of getting around such things). As Larry Brooks in the New York Post recently pointed out, no trades and no movements aren't a contractual afterthought, they are a product of design, a component every bit as valuable and calculated as the final dollar figure and the length of term.
Redden is a case in point; he gave up unrestricted free agency to sign with the Senators. One of the reasons why was that the Senators were willing to offer what he wanted at this point in his career, a chance to stay with Ottawa and, if that changed, to have some say in his future.
In case after case around the NHL, veteran players have opted for security in their deals, many of them turning down extra money in return for the peace of mind that comes from knowing they are secure in their surroundings and that neither they nor their family will be disrupted by a move without their permission.
General managers didn't have a gun to their collective heads when these deals were made, they signed off on them and they almost always did it with the blessings of the people who employ them, the owners.
And, for the record, this is something the players invented largely in reaction to what the GMs had done. Once they saw the way Sather buried defenceman Darius Kasparaitis and the way New Jersey Devils buried Alexander Mogilny in the minors in order to recover from self-inflicted salary cap problems it pretty much became a necessity. Oddly enough players began to think that perhaps the "team as family" speech, so prevalent whenever they were asked to play hurt or go out and "take one for the team" didn't go both ways when it came time to respect a long-time contribution to the team's overall success.
In Toronto, it's hard to vilify Mats Sundin because of his long-time service and the fact that he has shown more class in his time in Toronto than the people who control the franchise have in any of the four-plus decades that they've collected fortunes while failing to even come close to competing for the Stanley Cup.
Not surprisingly then the vilification process is done through media, too much of which buys into the stealthy argument that the player is "hurting the team" by refusing to renege on a deal that both parties signed in good faith and with a clear conscience.
Leafs forward Darcy Tucker got a taste of that in a recent attack in the Toronto Sun where George Gross, a long-time columnist and former sports editor known for his friendships with Leafs owners over the decades, put the pen-slash-knife to Tucker -a player who just happens to have a no-trade deal. In a one-source unattributed story Gross said an unnamed NHL "executive" told him that Tucker had "lost it" and was finished as an NHL contributor.
Redden got similar treatment when after all his years of good service he was suddenly deemed to be "selfish" for not making general manager Bryan Murray's life easier. Now to be fair, Murray didn't give Redden the no trade, but he pretty much moved from coach to general manager (replacing John Muckler who did manage to get the team to the Stanley Cup finals last spring) because of the argument that a change was needed and you can be assured that his time in that role is limited if he can't do better than his predecessor.
That's a lot of pressure on Murray, but is that Redden's fault? He signed a deal. He's living by it. Is it his fault the Sens didn't win the Cup last spring? Is it his fault the team doesn't have the goaltending or toughness to be better this time around? Is it his fault for being loyal when it came time to sign or should he have played the market like ex-teammate Zdeno Chara did en route to collecting free-agent money out of Boston? And ask yourself this: do you think Redden or his agent leaked word of his refusal to accept a trade to San Jose?
Why?
If it weren't for a clause in the CBA prohibiting teams from asking players to restructure the financial side of their contracts do you think for a moment the GMs wouldn't be doing that too? And for what? Ever see a general manger step down from a team because there was a better one out on the market and for the good of the team he needed to step aside? Not in my lifetime. Probably not in John Muckler's either.
If an owner wanted a new player while the old one was under contract he had to pay off the terms of the soon-to-be-ousted GM first. Heck, it was only fair. Even John Ferguson got that much respect.
It never ceases to amaze me how often media members fall into this trap. In contract negotiations they will often tell one side or the other to drop their demand or at least "split the difference" for the "good of the team" (as if they regularly take pay cuts and give back benefits and vacation time in their contract negotiations for "the good of" the broadcast outlet or internet site or because the paper that employs them was trying to be "the best newspaper it could be").
On the odd time in which this has happened it's usually a negotiated settlement, a practice media and especially the blog media, seem all too willing to deny a hockey player.
Simply put if a team wants a player to waive a clause in their contract they should have to make it worth the player's while. They should negotiate it. That's the way of the world in business and as we are constantly reminded by the owners, the GMs and the league itself, hockey is a business.
"If you don't want them to have it, then don't give it to them," said Calgary coach Mike Keenan, a former general manager in St. Louis and Florida and a man who has adopted a somewhat reasonable approach. "It's part of negotiating. Some (players) will say, 'I'm not going to sign.' It's part of the climate you're dealing with today."
Darcy Tucker is finished, Wade Redden is selfish, Mats Sundin is unreasonable, write it or say it if you know it to be true.
But don't forget to point out that more often than not a coach gets "killed" not by the player with the no trade contract, but by the general manager who is looking to save his own job or who has come into a situation where he wants his own guy.
Don't believe it? Well then ask Detroit coach Mike Babcock who "killed" him in Anaheim and with a year left on his contract with the Ducks.
Hint: It wasn't a player.