A Seller's Market

The hockey season started with Bobby Orr's left knee encased in plaster, 47-year-old Gordie Howe becoming a right-wing president, Bobby Clarke chasing a Stanley Cup hat trick for the Philadelphia Flyers and 5'7�" Marcel Dionne jumping center with 7'2" Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. As pucks dropped last week, the 18-team National Hockey League introduced five new coaches; three new owners; a tough gag rule that prohibits even the most decorous on-ice chit-chat between players and officials; and some stringent economic measures, particularly increased ticket prices (up an average $1.50 to $2). Over in the 14-team World Hockey Association, where Ol' Gordie now is the playing president of the Houston Aeros, there are no less than seven new coaches; new franchises in Denver and Cincinnati, making up for disbanded clubs in Chicago and Michigan/Baltimore; and a transferred team in Calgary, by way of Vancouver and Philadelphia.

On the business front, the NHL has lost its national game-of-the-week contract with NBC because of abominable ratings and a stubborn reluctance to provide the network with the best possible game each Sunday. Moreover, NHL players are traveling almost exclusively in the coach compartment of regularly scheduled flights on game days, rather than on luxurious charters, and they are being charged $7 for the hockey sticks they like to dispense as souvenirs. Even more drastically, NHL and WHA teams have contributed to the unemployment rate by abandoning their outright sponsorship of minor league teams and by flatly releasing large numbers of borderline players. Finally, the average NHL salary has plummeted almost 10%, down to a measly $70,000, while the average WHA paycheck has shrunk some 15%, to a piddling $45,000 for less than seven months' work. Or play.

Hockey's franchise rush is over. The frontiers have been explored, a few scouting parties have been lost along the way and now it is time to build some of the primitive outposts into self-sustaining settlements. And if hockey is a hard game on the ice, the front-office fight for survival is shaping up to be no less rough-and-tumble. Nothing illuminates the situation better than the off-season trade that brought Marcel Dionne to Los Angeles.

Jake Milford, the jovial but shrewd general manager of the Los Angeles Kings, was scouting the Memorial Cup junior (amateur) playdowns in Kitchener, Ont. last May when he received an urgent phone call from his boss back in California. "John," intoned Jack Kent Cooke, the owner of the Kings and a man who abhors all nicknames, "I'm going after Marcel Dionne on June 1." Milford nearly dropped the telephone. "How in heck do you expect to get him?" Milford asked Cooke. "Don't you worry, John, I will get Marcel Dionne from the Detroit Red Wings," Cooke replied. "I always get my man and Dionne is just what the Kings need—a star." Pause. Silence. "Do you hear me all right, John? You know that I always get my man, don't you, John?" "Yes, Mr. Cooke." Click!

Marcel Elphege (Li'l Beaver) Dionne, 24, has scored more points (366) in his first four NHL seasons than did Rocket Richard, Gordie Howe, Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, Bobby Hull or anyone else who has ever played in the league. Last year Dionne, a floating hit-and-run center with dazzling acceleration and more body contortions than Luis Tiant, scored 47 goals and had 74 assists for the low-flying Red Wings, trailing only Orr and Esposito in the points race, and won the Lady Byng award for his sportsmanlike behavior on the ice. But Dionne was unhappy in Detroit, in large measure because the Red Wings seemed to change general managers, coaches and operational policies nearly as often as their star scored goals. Twice the Red Wings suspended Dionne after he had flare-ups with coaches-in-residence; twice they quickly reinstated him. Another time Dionne, who talks at such a rate that a former teammate, Gary Bergman, once told him to take a break and wipe the sweat from his tongue, publicly blasted the Red Wings, saying, "There are only three NHL-caliber players on the team." In truth, Dionne was exaggerating.

All things considered, the Red Wings were hardly surprised last fall when Dionne told General Manager-Coach Alex Delvecchio that he would be exercising the option year in his contract during the 1974-1975 season. In a well-publicized attempt to placate their ace, the Red Wings appointed Dionne team captain and unretired Sid Abel's Old No. 12 jersey for him. Dionne responded with his best season, and Delvecchio optimistically expected his captain to sign a new contract. Midway through May, though, Dionne's attorney, Alan Eagleson, informed the Red Wings that there was no change of heart on the part of his client and that Dionne would become a free agent on June 1.

Delvecchio was bitter. " Dionne is a pretty selfish individual," he said. "Now it looks as though what he did last year was all for himself." Delvecchio paused for a moment, then added, "Whatever he did, he's still a good little hockey player."

The Eagleson grapevine promptly leaked word to the rest of the hockey world: Marcel Dionne would soon become a free agent. Montreal, St. Louis, Buffalo, Toronto and Los Angeles of the NHL immediately let Eagleson know of their interest in Dionne, and so did Edmonton of the WHA. As Eagleson and Dionne opened negotiations with the NHL clubs, what they clearly wanted to avoid was a confrontation with the NHL's reserve rule. According to the Clarence Campbell Clause (unlike the Rozelle Rule, it has never been invoked), when teams cannot agree on proper compensation for a player who has exercised his option, an independent arbitrator decides the issue.

Montreal, St. Louis and Buffalo soon bowed out of the bidding. Toronto offered Dionne a five-year $1.25 million contract and proposed to indemnify the Red Wings with four regulars. Cooke countered with a five-year contract for $1.5 million, but could not match Toronto's indemnification proposal.

Dionne preferred the Los Angeles money, while Detroit preferred the Toronto players. "What finally happened," Eagleson says, "was that we helped Detroit act more reasonably." In other words, Eagleson told the Red Wings that Dionne would sign with Edmonton of the WHA—and thus leave them with nothing while delivering one of the NHL's top box-office draws to the rival league—unless they quickly reached agreement with Cooke on player compensation. "Under no circumstances were we letting the matter go to an arbitrator," said Eagleson, who, incidentally, was simultaneously campaigning to land a multimillion-dollar lifetime contract for Boston's Bobby Orr.