Minor league hockey players benefit from NHL relationship (2024)

Justin Florek hardly aspires to a 15-year career in the American Hockey League. The 24-year-old left wing out of Northern Michigan has his eyes on the NHL, the highest level of the game, just like everyone else who plays for the Providence Bruins. The minimum annual salary in the NHL is north of $500,000, and a handful of players earn at least $10 million each year.

While he bides his time in Providence, however, Florek at least earns a salary adequate to support his wife and young daughter without having to pinch pennies.

“The lifestyle of an AHL hockey player, relatively speaking, it’s pretty good,” Florek said. “We live pretty well. We’re professional athletes, and that’s how we get treated.”

Even though they are paid only during the six-month regular season, American Hockey League players earn a minimum of $42,375 per year. The average annual salary in the AHL, the equivalent of baseball’s Triple-A classification, is more than $90,000. Players' per diem at that level is $65.

Entry-level players in the ECHL, the lowest level of affiliated professional hockey, earn a minimum of $10,790 per season — almost double the annual salary that entry-level players earn in minor-league baseball. The ECHL per diem is $39 per day.

Their collective-bargaining agreement also guarantees ECHL players a furnished bedroom within a furnished, utilities-paid apartment — a benefit that varies in value based on the cost of living in each city. Married players are entitled to their own furnished, utilities-paid apartment.

Neither minor-league baseball nor minor-league hockey sees enormous attendance figures. Nor do they generate high ratings on TV or radio. The difference, say those involved, comes from collective bargaining.

Minor-league hockey players since 1967 have bargained collectively with their employers through the Professional Hockey Players’ Association. Florek is the Providence Bruins’ player representative to the PHPA, the only minor-league players' union in American professional sports.

It was Doug Messier — father of Hall of Famer Mark Messier —of the now-defunct Portland Buckaroos who led a group of players that hired a lawyer to guide them through the creation of a union. The hope was to achieve adequate health insurance, so that Canadian-born players in the United States didn’t have to send their wives back to Canada to deliver children.

The creation of the Professional Hockey Players’ Association came at about the same time that NHL players were forming their own union.

The Major League Baseball Players Association under Marvin Miller came into existence in its present form at around the same time. Its first strike occurred in 1972, lasting 13 days and resulting in additional payments into the players’ pension funds. It has proven to be the most powerful labor union in sports.

By virtue of its modestly paid membership, the Professional Hockey Players’ Association began without significant financial resources. Even into the mid-1990s, the headquarters of the PHPA was the basem*nt of the Portland, Ore., home of executive director Larry Landon. The players’ union now has a staff of 12 and owns its own office building in Ontario.

“I can remember the days when I’d answer the phone and say, ‘PHPA,’ and they’d say, ‘Can I have accounting?’ I’d say, ‘One second. PHPA accounting. Can I help you?’” Landon said. “ ‘Can I have insurance?’ ‘One second. PHPA insurance. Can I help you?’ ”

Opposition from ownership was a common theme in the formation of each fledgling union.

“We had owners post things on the board that players would lose this, this and this if they vote for the union,” said Landon, who played parts of six seasons in the AHL in the early 1980s. “We just had players take pictures of that, and we filed charges.”

Any efforts to unionize minor-league baseball players so far have gone nowhere — perhaps due to the limited financial resources of the potential members, perhaps due to the different cultural backgrounds of those potential members, perhaps due to a lack of belief in their legal protections.

“When you’re talking to a 20-year-old that is chasing a dream, it’s very, very hard to say, ‘You’ll be protected if you get retaliated against,’ ” said Garrett Broshuis, the former minor-league pitcher turned lawyer who has filed a lawsuit against Major League Baseball on behalf of a collection of plaintiffs.

While the NHL Players’ Association has a strong relationship with the Professional Hockey Players' Association, working jointly to establish standards such as minimum salaries for two-way contracts, the Major League Baseball Players’ Association has shown little interest in assisting its minor-league brethren.

In the most recent negotiation between major-league players and team owners, in 2011, the major-league players even bargained away benefits for those who weren't members. The two sides agreed to terms that serve to restrict signing bonuses for players selected in the June amateur draft or signed out of a foreign country such as the Dominican Republic. Those policies have served to limit the money owners spend to acquire players, without costing major-leaguers anything.

In the three years since the new policies were put in place, the number of major-league players selected in the first 10 rounds of the June draft who have signed for bonuses worth less than $50,000 has almost quadrupled.

Asked in November, at a charity event in Boston, if he was paying attention to the lawsuit filed by minor-league baseball players, MLBPA executive director Tony Clark said, “We're aware of what's going on. We're aware of those that are involved and are interested to see how that line moves going forward. I want to say it's been almost a year. We're paying attention.”

Clark was asked to clarify if the MLBPA was involved in the lawsuit in any way or if it was just watching from a distance.

“Right now, we’re watching,” he said.

bmacpherson@providencejournal.com

On Twitter: @brianmacp

(401) 277-7340

Drug policy disparity

Other than the disparity in salary, nowhere is the power of the major-league players’ union — and thelack of power among minor-league players — more obvious than in drug policy. MajorLeague Baseball negotiated and revised over time a drug policy with the MLBPA, but it has unilaterallyimplemented all aspects of its drug policy for minor-league players.

According to official releases, Major League Baseball has suspended 35 minor-league players without pay for useof either performance-enhancing drugs (like steroids and amphetamines) or drugs of abuse (such asmarijuana) since Jan. 1. Not one major-league player has been suspended for a drug-policy violationduring that time.

Once suspended, the only recourse for minor-league players is an appeal to Major LeagueBaseball. Major-league players have a collectively bargained right to an independent arbitrator — theprocess by which Ryan Braun had his 50-game suspension overturned three years ago.