Seeing Stars: A Two-Tier NHL?

Watching the news the other day, I got to thinking about what several sportscasters were calling the need for the NHL to protect its star players. The issue finds itself in the spotlight again after Sidney Crosby’s concussion, but it’s a recurring one. I reason: if the league is to protect certain star players, then, obviously, there need to be different rules for stars and non-stars, which itself demands rules for categorizing players, and a kind of two-tier system of “citizenship”.

It’s possible, of course, to protect star players by protecting all players (every star player being a player), but, in that case, it would make more sense to describe the situation as one requiring protection [full stop]. Anyway, my assumption is that to protect star players is to protect some players, not all.

How do we divide players into stars and non-stars?

1. We could let the teams themselves decide. Each team could get an equal number (one or two) of “star” labels that they could attach to any player. Selection would occur at the beginning of the year and would be set for that year. These could be fixed or possibly trade-able, kind of like in a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions.

2. We could assign “star” status to players whose salaries are above a limit. Ostensibly, how much a player earns is a quantification of his worth to his team. This might mean one team has three stars, while another has one or none, but, from the league’s point of view, perhaps it isn’t important where the players play; what’s important is to protect the best ones.

3. We could let fans decide, like in All-Star voting!

How do we protect stars?

The most obvious method of protection is deterrence, which is what the NHL already does through penalties, fines and suspensions. Hit someone: pay the price. Because penalties and suspensions affect a team as well as an individual player, they have the added bonus of making sure that teams also stand to lose when players make dangerous plays.

If we want more protection for the stars, an obvious place to start would, therefore, be to hand out longer suspensions and bigger fines for transgressions against star players. For example, the same head shot delivered to the noggin’ of Sidney Crosby would be twice as costly as that delivered to the head of Dennis Wideman. Our sense of equality—the notion that one player’s health is more valuable than another’s—may bother us, but this type of inequality is hardly rare. A visiting head of state has more protection than his aide, for instance. That may still bother us, but we generally accept it as practical. If someone assassinates the prime minister, it’s more chaotic than if someone shoots his aide. Perhaps the same holds for hockey. An injured Sidney Crosby is worse for the league (and his team) than an injured Dennis Wideman.

The natural follow-up question is: how much more costly should a transgression against a star player be? For the sake of simplicity and some sense of equality (two tiers, not a thousand) let’s assume that we treat all star players equally. Sidney Crosby is no more important, and, thus, no better-protected than Alex Ovechkin; but how much better-protected should Alex Ovechkin be than Jay Beagle?

I don’t know. Keeping in mind that suspensions of 3 or 4 games are not uncommon, a multiplier of ten is too harsh. Five is strong, but seems on the border of reasonable if we stretch reasonability. Two through four is, in my opinion, the range we would be looking at.

One could argue that the players who are suspended most often are those fourth line guys who need to play hard in order to keep their spot on the team, and that they make the least amount of money, so increasing fines and suspensions would hit them too hard. On one hand, that’s no argument. If they can’t make the team without playing “on the edge”, then they shouldn’t be on the team. On the other, we can be sympathetic. We could suspend them with pay or limit “without pay” suspensions and fines to players making more than some set amount of money per year.

The bigger problem is that teams can replace these players without too much trouble. So the penalty is felt by the player more than by the team. This may be acceptable and may produce the results we want (less injuries to star players), but there’s no guarantee. However, we would certainly bolster our chances of success if we penalized the team, as well.

One idea is to make sure the team suffers off the ice. Fines? Perhaps. But what about some kind of penalty on the salary cap? What about adding an $x/year “ghost” to a team’s payroll for a set time in addition to any fines or suspensions handed down to the player? This would mean that a team that puts a star players at risk would feel the cost as an organization and for some time.

Another idea, this time one felt on the ice, would be to increase the length of powerplays for penalties taken against star players. The details aren’t important (maybe +2 minutes for any penalty taken against a star player, akin to the +2 plus minutes a players gets if a high stick draws blood; or some kind of increase to certain penalties that are most likely to injure), but the weakness is apparent: it might be a blow to the offending player’s team, but it’s a blow felt only in one game. If the team was already losing, who cares?

How would it affect the game?

I suppose it’s anyone’s guess, but if the league made it much more costly to deliver a dangerous hit to a star player than to a non-star, it would probably mean more room to play and greater freedom for star players in general. Considering that most players don’t intend to injure an opponent, we may conclude that players who might be tempted to deliver a questionable or risky hit to a star player would decide against it, either on their own or on instructions from their coach.

Note

I don’t think a change toward what I’ve proposed is good for hockey or the NHL, but if both brass and pundits keep talking about protecting stars, I don’t see how they can do that without segregating players into classes and imposing harsher penalties on transgressions against the more important class—the new “untouchables”, if you will.

My understanding is that “protecting star players”, which both the league and sportscasters talk about, contains within it two assumptions: (1) Star players are not being adequately protected and should have more protection; and (2) Star players are different from non-star players and to protect star players is, therefore, not the same as protecting all players.

My point is that if these assumptions are true and the league does act to protect star players, it will, by definition, create a two-tier NHL. I think this is bad. Of course, there are other ways of protecting stars (they could have safer equipment than non-stars, etc.) but each creates two tiers. What I’ve done is tried to take the way in which the NHL protects players now—increasingly so—and expand it to fit my assumptions.

I’m glad most people think that my conclusions are absurd. I hope that instinctual response points toward this conclusion: either the message that “star players need more protection” is misguided or the current way of protecting players is, in general, wrong.

Sancho Panza’s Efficient Breach

An economic approach to law is on the rise. Efficiency is the big fish. A common example is the idea of an “efficient breach” of contract, which ostensibly leaves all parties better off. It works like this:

Bill agrees to sell Andy a dog for $50. Later, Bill meets with Chris and finds that Chris will pay $200 for the same dog. Bill breaches his contract with Andy and sells the dog to Chris. Bill pays Andy $50 (what Andy would have gotten, had Bill carried out the contract).

When the situation began, Andy had $50 and the desire to buy a dog, Bill had a dog and the desire to sell, and Chris had $200 and the desire to buy a dog.

If the contract had been carried out, Andy would have lost $50 and gained a dog, Bill would have gained $50 and lost a dog, and Chris would be left with $200 and the desire to buy a dog.

After the breach, Andy has $100 (his original $50 plus what he was paid by Bill) and the desire to buy a dog, Bill has $150 ($200 from the sale to Bill less $50 for what he paid for breaching his contract with Andy) and no dog, and Chris has lost $200 and gained a dog.

All three people are in a better position.

Andy still wants a dog, but he now has $50 more to spend on one. Bill sold his dog and made $150 instead of $50. Chris, who valued the dog more highly than Andy, got the dog.

We could start to poke at the idea with a stick and see if it holds up, but that’s not the point of this post. Suffice to say, not everyone agrees that efficient breach is a great idea, whether based on moralist (a promise is a promise!) or realist (if Bill won’t pay Andy, then they’ll have to go to court and that costs money, too) grounds. What this post is about, however, is an example of efficient breach—and, therefore, an economic approach to law—in Miguel de Cervantes’ 17th-century masterpiece Don Quixote!

The situation is this:

Sancho Panza, Don Quixote’s squire (or “squire”, as Don Quixote is something of an anachronistic make-believe knight errant) is in conversation with the squire of another knight errant (or “knight errant”, if you will). Don Quixote and the other knight, the Knight of the Wood, will be dueling at dawn. Thus, Sancho and the second squire, the Squire of the Wood, will be seconds in the duel; and the Squire of the Wood tells Sancho that it is custom in Andalusia for seconds to also fight.

Sancho counters this argument by saying that that custom only applies to ruffians and fighting men, not the squires of knights errant. Don Quixote, says Sancho, has never mentioned this rule and he knows all the rules of knight errantry.

However, Sancho goes further:

“No matter how much I’d like it to be true that there’s a specific rule that squires have to fight when their masters fight, still, I wouldn’t obey it, and I’d pay whatever fine they make peaceable squires pay, and I bet it wouldn’t be more than two pounds of wax, and I’d be happy to pay those two pounds, because I know they’ll cost me less than the bandages I’ll need to heal my head: I already count it as split and broken in two.” (Part II, Chapter XIV)

In Sancho’s hypothetical, there is a rule requiring squires of dueling knights errant to fight. We can think of it as being a rule in a contract signed by every person who becomes a squire. There is also a penalty for breaching that rule: two pounds of wax. Sancho weighs the cost of two pounds of wax against the cost of having his broken head healed and finds that it makes more sense to breach the contract and pay the wax. The other squire, we may say, will do whatever Sancho does.

Before the duel was decided, both Sancho and the other squire had the benefits of being squires, the desire to continue being squires and some amount of money (let’s say the equivalent of 100 pounds of wax). The guardian of squirely law (the other contracting party) also has some set amount of money.

If the rules were followed, the squires would still have the benefits of being squires, would still (probably) want to be squires, would still have the equivalent of 100 pounds of wax, but would now have broken heads, which would cost more than 2 pounds of wax to heal. In effect, they have, let’s say, 70 pounds of wax. The guardian of squirely law would gain nothing and lose nothing.

If Sancho breaches the rules and pays 2 pounds of wax to the guardian of squirely law, and the Squire of the Wood does the same, both end up with whole heads, the same benefits and desires regarding squireness, and 98 pounds of wax. The guardian of squirely law has whatever money it had plus 4 pound of wax.

Hence, if we don’t take into account any loss to the guardian of squirely law (for example, a loss to the prestige of the squire profession on which it relies to receive benefits from third parties and grant them to its member squires), all three parties are better off. Of course, this also doesn’t take into account the other squire’s possible desire to fight or the possibility of either Sancho or, more probably, the Squire of the Wood, winning the fight, thus coming out unscathed (no broken head) and thereby having to pay nothing for healing and nothing to the guardian of squirely law.

But as imperfect as the example is, it’s interesting to find this type of reasoning in the novel. Indeed, the entire conversation between Sancho and the other squire is a crafty defense by Sancho, who also says that he can’t fight because he doesn’t have a sword, to which the squire responds, so then we’ll use sacks, to which Sancho agrees, because sacks don’t hurt, though the squire counters that they’ll be sacks with stones in them…

Life in Future Times

I used to hurt, because I knew I wouldn’t be alive in future times. Not only was I painfully interested in the technologies and lifestyles and possibilities of the year 100-from-now, but I imagined the future without the realism with which I thought about the past. Life in the fourteenth century was tough. Life in the twenty-fourth century I believed would be easier. Perhaps that is true. Perhaps life will be easier, longer, filled with more comfort.

Yet walking home today, for the first time not only did I feel glad to be alive when I’m alive (now), but, even more so, happy that I will not be alive in the future. In one hundred years, I will be dead. And that made me smile. Assuming a worst-case scenario—a global catastrophe, an increase in poverty, irreparable environmental damage, etc.—that’s understandable. In a best-case scenario, I feel myself in the minority. How could a world of greater equality, governed by an increasingly-single (hence, increasingly peaceful in the traditional sense) government, founded on racial and ethnic harmony, dictated by science and ruled by an ever more-efficient and economic system of law be bad?

The evasive answer is: it’s not, but it’s just not for me. The truthful answer is that I’m only starting to find out. I have a gut feeling, an instinct, that something is going wrong—or, at least, that developing social, political, philosophical and legal trends are leaving me opposed and behind. At the same time, I see that, for most of the people around me, things are going right. It’s not a case of one boy crying wolf and the rest of the village going matter-of-factly about its business. It’s a case of everyone seeing the wolf but disagreeing about its fundamental nature: friend or foe, saviour or downfall?

I suppose the true issue is one of proportionality. The problem is a teeter-totter. On one side is the individual, on the other the community. On the individual’s side are rights and a rights-based interpretation of the law; on the community’s is an economic, efficiency-based view. The debate is not a new one and it will not be resolved any time soon. But I sense the balance shifting smoothly and irreparably toward the side of the community. I sense popular opinion shifting with it.

And so I smile, happy that I am alive now, still in a time of relative balance, when I don’t have to live my life continuously striding up a slope, slipping and sliding, struggling to keep from falling into what I don’t believe.