Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Shoots and Scores by Bathroom Readers’ Institute

International Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. The vault door is open during business hours for all Hall of Fame visitors to peer at hockey’s holy grail. A Hall of Fame employee is constantly with the Cup, both for its protection and to answer questions. These Stanley Cup guardians tell curious folk such gems as the fact that in 1971 Jean Béliveau of the Montreal Canadiens was the first team captain to circle the rink with the Stanley Cup, and that Wayne Gretzky came up with the idea of the Cup-winning “team photo” (where all players and coaches of the winning club gather at center ice to have their picture taken), after his Edmonton Oilers won it in 1987–88. These are just some of the Stanley Cup strata that will be passed down, from generation to generation, by lovers of hockey.

RISE OF THE UNION
    Organizing the NHL Players’ Association was a bitter fight that started with defeat on the first try, but finally found acceptance by the league.
    I N BRIEF
    That the NHL Players’ Association had the strength to close down the league’s operation for half the 1994–95 season and the entire 2004–05 schedule and playoffs was the result of a long, uphill climb over close to five decades—first to gain acceptance, then to acquire the solidarity to engage in labor war with the team owners.
    The first try at organizing a players’ association—the word “union” seldom was employed in the late 1950s—resulted in a bitter squashing of the workers’ efforts by the league’s old guard of owners, who operated the NHL as if the feudal system were still in vogue. But a decade later, with Toronto lawyer Alan Eagleson as the catalyst in several minor victories for individual players against the hockey establishment; the bright hope that Eagleson’s main client Bobby Orr gave hockey; and the presence of a new group of forward- thinking owners—both with the established teams and the 1967 expansion clubs—the NHL agreed to accept the association.
    PENSION PLANNERS
    In the 1950s, the NHL governors, led by league president Clarence Campbell, a Rhodes scholar, lawyer and former NHL referee, had boasted frequently about the players having the best pension plan in professional team sports. At the same time, they claimed that the league’s profits were, at best, very small. Detroit Red Wings star winger Ted Lindsay, as determined in his off-ice business efforts as he was in his gritty, abrasive playing style, and Doug Harvey, the mighty defenceman of the Montreal Canadiens, were named to the NHL pension board along with Campbell, New York Rangers president John Reed Kilpatrick, and Ian Johnston, a Toronto lawyer and secretary of Maple Leaf Gardens Ltd.
    BUM DEAL
    The NHL pension was started in 1946 by a few players working with a Detroit insurance agent on injury benefits. Led by Maple Leafs owner Conn Smythe, the NHL quickly took over the pension plan and gave Campbell the job of stripping the players of any control. For ten years from the late 1940s, the players paid $900 per year into the plan, a large stipend considering that the average NHL salary was $5,000 a season. The owners added $600 per player, money gained from the all-star game gate and a surcharge on playoff tickets.
    SMALL QUESTIONS, NO ANSWERS
    When Lindsay asked pointed questions about the pension fund and its financing—the owners’ contributions turned out to be very small—he was brushed aside. Never one to back away from a scrap, Lindsay persisted in his efforts to gain an accurate financial picture of the NHL’s operation. Lindsay and Harvey, a lethargic-looking but mentally sharp man, did their own calculations and discovered that the NHL claims of losses or very small profits were false and all clubs made money, and some were very profitable.
    CALL IN THE NEW YORK LAWYERS
    Frustrated at the lack of answers, Lindsay, at his own expense, recruited the New York lawyers who