Real transparency still a long way off for NHL despite sharing protected lists
The NHL came around on going public with teams' unprotected lists for the upcoming expansion draft, but the league still has plenty of work to do when it comes to sharing information with its fans.
While announcing the decision to publicize the lists, deputy commissioner Bill Daly stated Wednesday that "one of our guiding principles from the start of this process was to prioritize transparency," admitting keeping the lists private wouldn't have accomplished that.
The league's general managers didn't initially want to share the lists of players their clubs were leaving unprotected for possible selection by the Vegas Golden Knights, which Daly confirmed, saying he believed GMs "on balance favored maintaining the privacy of the process."
This should come as no surprise to anyone who's followed the NHL recently. While the decisions to reveal the lists and make the expansion draft a TV spectacle represent two steps toward transparency, the league has attempted to conceal information and thus protect its key figures in a host of ways over the years.
The most obvious example is the fact that the NHL allows its clubs to individually set policies about revealing contract terms, rather than insisting teams publish the financial details - which inevitably leak out within minutes of a signing announcement regardless.
Some teams make a point of disclosing their deals, giving year-by-year breakdowns and providing other useful details, but the majority of clubs offer a simple "per club policy, terms were not disclosed" and withhold the info that emerges moments later from one or more of many reliable insiders.
Commissioner Gary Bettman added fuel to the fire a couple of years ago when he said he's not sure fans care about player salaries, despite the overwhelming success of (and demand for) websites like CapGeek and CapFriendly.
Bettman's comments were predictably panned, but it's clear he was speaking on behalf of the league's owners and GMs, who may not enjoy being embarrassed down the road for offering ill-conceived deals.
The NHL's secrecy about injuries is another issue. Unlike the NFL, NBA, and MLB, this is the only league within the four major U.S. pro sports that allows its clubs to be purposefully vague about physical ailments.
Rather than being required to tell reporters - and by extension, fans - what's bothering a player, coaches and GMs can simply resort to calling it an "upper-body" or "lower-body" injury, a practice that's become commonplace in the NHL but nowhere else.
Another strategy the league uses to shield its employees from scrutiny is failing to denote which teams have been officially eliminated from playoff contention on the official standings page. This might not seem like a big deal, but the NBA has no problem publicizing which teams' seasons are effectively over on its official website, and the NHL does identify which teams have clinched postseason berths.
It's another element of the league's clear focus on the positive, which comes with a reluctance at times to present negative news - an approach the NHL takes in a number of ways, some of them ever-so subtle. The adoption of the "loser point" for overtime or shootout losses has been debated since its inception, but it also has a convenient effect on team records, making owners, GMs, and coaches look better in the process.
Maintaining a third column in the standings - which used to be reserved for ties - and dividing a team's losses between two columns makes every team's record more aesthetically pleasing. Although the OTL column certainly matters, there are still only two true outcomes (wins and losses) rather than the three different results seen in pre-shootout times.
When ESPN's Pierre LeBrun first reported the GMs' reluctance to publicize the expansion-draft lists during their meetings earlier in March, it provoked an immediate backlash from members of the hockey media. The next day, Colin Campbell admitted the league was considering changing its mind because the information is "going to get out there."
The NHL's executive vice president and director of hockey operations is exactly right. Whether it's expansion-draft lists, contract details, injuries, teams eliminated from the playoffs, or a club's true win-loss performance, the info is always going to get out thanks to plugged-in reporters and the advent of social media.
Wednesday's announcement was a refreshing acknowledgement of that from the league, but a rich history of truth-averse practices demonstrates the NHL still has a long way to go before it can be considered truly transparent.