Scenario:Although small, you hold incredible talent in the game you love.
Skill aside, you are disadvantaged by a sport that favours the strong, large and mean.
Even still, you were drafted in the VERY late rounds of the NHL draft and received a rare opportunity to play on the biggest stage for your sport.
You were picked up for spare change from a struggling team on the East Coast.
Returning to your home province, you join a strong Canadian franchise with rocketing talent and huge winning potential.
You play a depth role, but get to grow a beard in the spring. You join the ride to the Stanley Cup finals. Your boyhood dream is nearly fulfilled.
You get meaner.
You play better defense.
You get to beat the crap out of Cory Stillman.
The following season, you continue the winning ride to the top of your division, with the same core group that you shared the last year’s success with.
The game changes, and your value increases. Your leadership is established and important.
You become fast friends with the team’s franchise talent, and get to pair up with Robyn Regehr to take on Shaun Donovan and Jarome playing Age of Empires III on the charter flights between cities (true story).
As defacto local royalty, you embrace the role, taking a public life and large involvement in charities and fundraising activities. You are given the label of being the most ‘cerebral’ in a sport that lives off clichés and the words ‘um’.
The fans love you for who you are off the ice.
Most of the fans love you for who you are on the ice.
You have a chance to sign an extension, and stay in this same city for 3 more years.
The catch: You have to take a home-town discount.
The other catch: The Team GM doesn’t believe in no-trade clauses
So, is there an unwritten agreement that this new extension keeps you in this city?
Is it understood without speaking that while you provided your team with valuable cap room and important defensive depth but simultaneously made yourself incredibly vulnerable in a trade scenario, that loyalty dictates that you stay with the team for a little while longer?
Apparently not.
This, in brief, is the boning of Andrew Ference.
I understand that hockey is business, and winning is everything.
But it involves people.
These ‘people’ while professional athletes, and earning millions of dollars make decisions based on the ‘softer stats’ just as often as they do for the ‘dollar bills’. Andrew Ference based his decision on the former.
Now, Andrew is a tough character and he will get over the trade, but this situation begets another question:
Will this damage the reputation of the Calgary Flames when trying to attract talent into their organization?
Maybe not in the depth department, i.e. guys fighting for jobs, but instead the high-priced talent that can take you all the way?
Is it even important to worry about ‘feelings’ in a game based on winning?
Edit: Ference pretty much sums up the 'unwritten' loyalty thing here
