Add Your Name
Rod Bryden, NHL Governor and owner of the Ottawa Senators, has been
doing some serious lobbying to all levels of government to try to lower
taxes on the Canadian teams to ensure they stay put. For example, the Montreal Canadiens annually pay more in taxes than all the US teams combined. However, we believe that gaining tax concessions in the current Canadian political environment is a non-starter unless the League/owners and the NHLPA/players bring something substantial to the table first.
We have prepared two letters for the NHL and NHLPA from the FANS
requesting a serious, workable offer of financial assistance to save
small market Canadian teams. One letter will be sent to Bob Goodenow and every player in the NHL. The other letter will be sent to Gary Bettman.
We believe, and hope the majority of you believe, that it is important
the NHL not lose any more of its Canadian franchises. This is likely a
no brainer for most Canadian members but we need the support of our American members as well, and hope you agree that the League will suffer from the loss or movement of any more Canadian teams.
These letters can be accessed from the home page of our site
(http://www.nhlfa.com/). We ask you to add your name to these letters
to push the NHL and NHLPA to take some serious action to save our small market Canadian teams. Please tell your friends and family to log-on and sign the letters, too.
Chapter Concept Moving Forward
As most of you are aware, we have successfully launched our trial
NHLFA Chapter in Ottawa. The Chapter idea seems to be working and we
hope to roll out additional chapters across North America soon.
The Ottawa Chapter arranged to get Rod Bryden to speak at its meeting
last evening. Mr. Bryden discussed his lobbying efforts on behalf of
the small market Canadian franchises (a monumental issue right now). A good crowd of members were present as well as a lot of media.
Congratulations to the Ottawa Captain and co-captains for the great
job they've done in establishing a local NHLFA presence in Ottawa.
A subsection of the NHLFA.com Web site will be unveiled soon for the
Ottawa Chapter.
A Clarification on Media Coverage
Media reps, don't be alarmed if you see an NHLFA news story that you
didn't get a news release about. We've simply done an interview (ie.
about the Yashin hold-out situation) and have been picked up on the news wire (ie. AP or CP). We will still be sending you North American news releases prior to releasing them.
We also wanted to provide you with a heads up in case you see anything
as a result of the Ottawa Chapter meeting Monday. Even though this is an
Ottawa Chapter event, Rod Bryden's speech has League-wide ramifications.
Legal Beagles
We've been quite busy working with the NHL lawyers regarding the issue
of trademark license for our Association name, NHLFA.
The League appears open to granting us permission to retain the name,
subject to certain conditions. Since our name has the letters "NHL" as
part of it, the League has the right to either permit us to continue using the name – or not. It was very fortunate that we met early on with Gary Bettman to brief him on our Association. Had we not done this, it is quite likely we would have received a cease and desist order (on the use of the name) many months ago.
Since receiving the original draft agreement from the League, we have
been working on a response to clarify a number of issues and, we hope,
to offer some suggestions which will allow us broader use of the name than the
League had originally foreseen (the Chapter concept is one such issue).
In a recent conference call with the League's VP of Legal, our impression was that the League is reasonably open to many of our concerns regarding the trademark license. We will soon be forwarding to the NHL our requested revisions to the Agreement. We will keep you posted.
PS. A number of you asked us to send you an NHLFA poster or flier
which you could post on bulletin boards or hand out at games. Thank
you. We haven't sent it due to the above legal issues, but as soon as we receive the OK on broader use of the NHLFA name, we will create a poster and distribute it.
Expanding the Store
We have finally been able to arrange for secure e-commerce for the NHLFA Store on the Web site, which means it will be much easier for you to purchase NHLFA-branded merchandise – no more bothering with cheques (although that option is still available). We will have a wide array of new, high-quality merchandise available in the NHLFA Store very soon and we hope you will support the Association by buying something. We'll let you know as soon as it's ready.
NHLFA.com
We haven't done much tinkering with the Web site since its launch, but that is about to change. We are going to revamp the site, improving the look and making it more appealing and interesting for members.
And Finally...
Our thanks to all of you who keep spreading the word and getting your friends to join. We're at almost 12,000 members. Our strength is in numbers. Please keep up the good work so we can be a truly effective voice for fans.
Jim Boone &
Jim Spendlove
boone@nhlfa.com
spendlove@nhlfa.com
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