The Defense Never Rests

Raymond B. Blake is an assistant professor of history at Mount Allison
University and the author of Canadians at Last: Canada Integrates
Newfoundland as a Province.

Gordie Howe collected $13,000 in pensions after 26 seasons in the
National Hockey League, Jean Béliveau $12,000 after 20 seasons, and
Bobby Orr $8,400 after 12 seasons. These hockey superstars had been led
to believe that the NHL Pension Plan and Trust would reward them
handsomely in their retirement. It was not to be, however, largely
because the NHL team owners claimed the pension surplus. In the days
before the big player contracts, Bruce Dowbiggin argues, only the owners
benefited financially from hockey. They controlled the sport and were
ruthless in their treatment of the players. The Defense Never Rests
traces the efforts of several former Toronto Maple Leafs players who
challenged the NHL over the pension issue.

Dowbiggin views the pension debacle as a David-and-Goliath struggle.
The players, in his opinion, were uneducated, unsophisticated, trusting,
and so eager to play the game of hockey that they allowed the NHL and
its long-serving president, Clarence Campbell, to act in their “best
interests.” When the players finally established a players’
association and hired Alan Eagleson as its director, they left all
important matters to him. Like the brash little gingerbread man, the
players paid handsomely and suffered dearly for trusting their sly
friend.

Dowbiggin’s sympathies for Carl Brewer, Allan Stanley, Bobby Baun,
and the other retired players are the book’s undoing. He sees their
post-retirement struggle with the NHL as an attempt “to create a
collective consciousness that was denied them when they played.” I am
not convinced. That the players left important matters like pensions to
others and failed to organize themselves cannot be blamed simply on
fiercely individualistic and determined owners like Conn Symthe. Many
other Canadians faced similarly determined employers but created strong
unions and won major concessions. The misuse of the pension surplus was
clearly wrong, but the players themselves must shoulder some
responsibility for their situation. They even allowed Eagleson to run
their organization for years as if it were his private fiefdom. One
would have expected a more balanced account from Dowbiggin, an
experienced and respected journalist.