So this was back in January 1946 when Maple Leafs defenseman Babe Pratt, who’d played the bulk of his career with the Rangers, was banned for life by league president Red Dutton for betting on NHL games.
The lifetime ban, however, was commuted to a five-game sentence when the very same Dutton argued for leniency in an appeal to the Board of Governors two weeks later. Contemporary reports indicated that the suspension lasted nine contests, but a check of the Toronto game logs contradict that.
Regardless, the reason advanced by the league president to give Pratt a second chance was, according to a New York Times article of Feb. 15, 1946, that there was, “no clearcut rule on the books” prohibiting players from betting on NHL games.
By the way, Pratt’s dalliance with the dark side did not prevent him from gaining induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 1966. Come on, there was no clear-cut rule against it. Why would Pratt have known not to bet on games?
Almost eight decades later, there are still very few rules on the books relating to gambling other than the prohibition of betting on NHL games. That, we have been told over the last couple of days, is the way both the NHLPA and NHL want it. No one is in favor of restricting these players’ rights to place bets on other sports.
But Ottawa’s Shane Pinto has been suspended for 41 games for, well, nobody quite exactly knows because of confidentiality agreements built into the 22-year-old’s plea bargain with the league, but everyone who has talked to anyone in the league has a pretty good idea it had something to do with third-party access to the winger’s personal account with a betting concern.
This apparently is verboten in this world of Internet gambling, of which I am personally uninvolved. I do not vote for postseason awards, but if I did, would it be illegal to place bets on, say, the winner of the Hart and Norris? Perhaps it is time for the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association to put some clear-cut rules on the book, don’t you think?
I don’t understand the confidentiality and lack of transparency built into this settlement negotiated between the league and the union, which even restricts PA executive director Marty Walsh and union officers from disclosing the reason for the suspension when he meets with teams on his ongoing fall tour.
That does not mean, though, that players won’t be advised of actions that are prohibited even if not spelled out in the CBA or NHL constitution. Like, don’t share account info with buddies. The players are on a need-to-know basis. So are teams.
We’re told by league sources that there was a flurry of communication between individual team management and players in the wake of the Pinto announcement. There is no reason for this to become adversarial.
There is, of course, no way to assess whether the time matches the crime. A half-season neither represents a felony nor a traffic citation. That the league did not pursue a full hearing indicates that the case may not have been at all — what’s that word, oh right — clear-cut. Though, again, I am told that no other player has been flagged for suspicious activity.
And listen, I am as offended by the proliferation of gambling promotion into the sports landscape as anyone. But there is no line that can be drawn from Pinto wearing a helmet with an gambling house logo and Pinto doing wrong. There is such a thing as personal responsibility.
Did we excuse athletes from DUI violations because their teams were sponsored by beer companies? (On second thought, never mind.)
Pinto is an unsigned restricted free agent carrying a qualifying offer of $874,125 but who was believed seeking a two-year deal worth an average of somewhere in the Alexis Lafreniere range of $2.325 million per. The Senators did not have the cap space to accommodate that contract. They would have needed to move a player in order to clear space.
But upon notice of the league investigation around the start of training camp, there was no incentive for Ottawa management to make such a move or to continue negotiations. Maybe that is the primary reason the suspension is retroactive to opening night even though Pinto is not under contract.
Now, the Senators have leverage in their favor once contract talks resume in a few months. If they stand on the qualifier, the deal and cap hit would be prorated to $437,062.50 over a half-season. Management could hardball the Franklin Square native — who recorded 20 goals and 35 points as a rookie last year — into a below-market two-year deal. We’ll see.
By the way, I don’t quite understand why the NHL did not inform Ottawa of the investigation until the advent of camp. Would the league have approved a trade to an innocent — what’s that term again, oh right — third party?
True enough, the Senators lose an important player for a half-season even if they might have lost him for weeks to a negotiating impasse, who knows? But this resolution ultimately benefits Ottawa just the way that the league’s decision to rescind Brady Tkachuk’s one-game suspension for picking up an instigator penalty within the final five minutes of the game against Buffalo on Oct. 24. Surely it is a coincidence that there is new and favored ownership in Canada’s capital city.
A long, long time ago, Babe Pratt violated a rule that did not exist. Now, Shane Pinto has violated, well, apparently something.
Progress.
Isn’t it grand?