ANALYSIS: Solid brainstorming, no firm commitments at World Hockey Summit

One question that was repeatedly asked by many fans in the lead-up to last week’s World Hockey Summit was, “Will they or won’t they?” as in: will the NHL, NHLPA and IIHF come to an agreement during the four-day event in Toronto on further NHL participation in future Winter Olympics?

The answer was neither ‘yes’ nor ‘no’.

The World Hockey Summit was never intended to be a watershed moment for international hockey relations nor for any other hot-button issue related to the game.  The Summit was always a conference intended to bring together global hockey leaders, stakeholders and fans with an interest in brainstorming and sharing ideas on how to meet the challenges facing hockey and to find ways to continue sustaining or expanding hockey’s reach in local communities.  Therefore, nobody should really have been disappointed when a photo of IIHF president Rene Fasel, a clear supporter of NHL participation in the Winter Games, and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, who has remained non-committal on sending his players to future quadrennial shindigs, together shaking hands on a deal, never materialized.

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A decision in favour (or not in favour) of sending NHL players will ultimately result from days, weeks and months of future negotiations and many mundane, undocumented, closed-door, rancorous meetings.  This Summit was for bigwigs like Fasel and Bettman and Bill Daly and Brian Burke to state their case and their position on major hockey issues in a controlled forum to the public with limited feedback or expectations of official agreements.

It was obvious to anyone in attendance that appearances by, and interaction with, Fasel and Bettman, widely acknowledged as two of the most influential men in hockey worldwide, were tightly controlled.  Fasel’s Q and A session largely consisted of questions from moderator Jim Hughson with little participation from assembled delegates.  However, while credit should be given to Fasel who made himself available for media scrums on three separate occasions, Bettman seemingly departed the Summit almost immediately after he arrived.  After Bettman’s Q and A session, this writer took a seat in the media room where Bettman fielded more questions from reporters.  The promised fifteen-minute media session was inexplicably cut to just over ten minutes, a small but telling point.  For a commissioner who has made extremely difficult but economically prudent decisions in his tenure, but has a reputation of talking down to his audience, it would have been appreciated if he had stayed the extra five minutes to listen to a few more questions and open up to share more of his insights and perspectives on the game he leads in North America.

Despite the lack of resolution on the Olympic issue, the Summit could still be considered a success – with guarded optimism.  The atmosphere was relaxed and mostly “collegial and collaborative” as USA Hockey’s Dave Ogrean put it, and mutual respect, at least in public, pervaded the three venues where the Summit took place.  Solid brainstorming and exchange of ideas flowed from most of the six topic-area panel discussions on Tuesday through Thursday and the four introductory hot-stove panels on Monday evening.

For example, agents Don Meehan and Pat Brisson found common ground with Toronto GM Brian Burke when they discussed the role of agents in working with young players.  All three cautioned parents in the audience to be on guard against unscrupulous fraudsters posing as agents who may attempt to exploit teenaged hockey players and their families.  Other examples of cooperation occurred in a hot-stove session where growing the game was discussed when representatives of widely differing interests – Steve Yzerman (NHL team GM), Hayley Wickenheiser (women’s hockey star) and Uwe Krupp (German national team coach) all concluded that funding and facilities are the overwhelming drivers of growth and excellence.  Moreover, the Wednesday morning panel reviewing the Vancouver 2010 Olympics finished with unanimity on the need for getting NHL players to participate in future Winter Games.

Yet as everyone realistically knows, unoffical consensus, high-sounding language and flowery rhetoric accomplishes nothing for hockey unless it is accompanied by follow-up work and official agreements based on the ideas and concepts presented at the World Hockey Summit.  This is why one can only give the conference a “report-card grade” with a qualifier at the present time - success, with guarded optimism - as the final result will not be known until leaders and delegates return home and meet within their countries to decide which goals and ideas can be feasibly implemented.  If certain goals, like increasing funding for women’s hockey in Europe, seem worthy but unattainable, it will be incumbent upon those who made pledges to make the unattainable attainable, like Fasel or Finland’s Arto Sieppi, who emerged as a strong advocate for the women’s game, to use their clout to influence others and to change attitudes to ultimately benefit the game of hockey.