Red Line, Blue Line, Bottom Line: How Push Came to Shove Between the National Hockey League and Its Players

Ashley Thomson is a full librarian at Laurentian University and co-editor or co-author of nine books, most recently Margaret Atwood: A Reference Guide, 1988-2005.

Rushed into print just before the NHL called off its 2004–05 season,
Red Line, Blue Line sets out to examine the competing positions in
hockey’s labour dispute. The author, an ex-business journalist turned
academic whose background includes a master’s degree in labour and
industrial relations, starts off with a historical overview of labour
relations in hockey, and then moves on to a discussion of the reserve
clause and how it was successfully challenged by athletes seeking
“free agency,” a mechanism whereby players transfer to the open
market in order to sell their services to the highest bidder.

At this point, Edge veers unexpectedly off track as he reflects on how
free agency came to pass in professional baseball, basketball, and
football. That discussion leads to a chapter on strikes and lockouts not
just in hockey but in other professional sports as well. Then it’s on
to the topic of salary caps. When the hockey lockout began, caps were at
the top of the owners’ negotiating items, but because they exist in
other pro sports, Edge cannot resist the temptation to discuss caps in
that wider context. Next up is revenue sharing (also in the context of
the other pro sports), which is followed by a discussion of salary
disclosure and arbitration (readers now accustomed to comparisons will
be disappointed to learn that because salary arbitration does not exist
in basketball and football, Edge must restrict himself to baseball). The
last chapter addresses the prospects for a settlement in the hockey
dispute, with Edge speculating that the NHL will die as players seek
alternative employment in Europe.

Based on secondary literature, and written in a faux academic style,
this book has an opportunistic, dated feel about it. Hockey fans with
time on their hands would be better advised to help their spouse with
the housework.