Wayne Kondro
The Ottawa Citizen
The bottom line is that a few mea culpas are definitely in order.
However, Ottawa Senators fans say Alexei Yashin still has a chance to win his way back into their hearts with a few acts of contrition and a whole lot of effort on the ice after he announces today that he is ending his year-long contract holdout and will play for the team in the upcoming NHL season.
It won't be easy.
"It's very hard to be sympathetic with somebody who's earning millions of dollars per year and wanting millions more, especially when he signed a (contract)," Acting Ottawa Mayor Allen Higdon said yesterday. "If the fans get any sense that this is a manoeuvre, or is a bargaining ploy, I think they'll come down on him very hard."
Nepean Baptist church pastor Tom Amherst, who delivered
a sermon this summer about the theological importance of
keeping one's word in hockey contracts, said Yashin owes
Senators fans "some sort of contrition or humility."
"It would be really helpful if he would say something like: I learned from this and I really do love Ottawa and I want to try to give it my best and I hope you'll take me back," Amherst said.
The jury is still out on whether fans will easily forgive Yashin, said Kanata Mayor Merle Nicholds. "This one went way too far. They feel that what he's done over the past year has been a betrayal of trust and he's got to work to win that trust back again."
Nicholds said Yashin also has fences to mend with his teammates.
"He's going to have to really work hard at becoming part of the team again, working with his fellow players and letting them know he's back and he's going to help," she said.
Jim Watson, who recently resigned as Ottawa mayor and is now president of the Canadian Tourism Commission, noted that some fans will probably never forgive Yashin.
"That's understandable. It's a bit like the game of Russian roulette we've played with whether the Rough Riders are coming back," said Watson.
"You can only put fans through so much turmoil, up and down like a toilet seat cover, before they start to get fed up. We saw it happen with Major League Baseball after the strike. That's had a lingering effect to the point where there are literally thousands of fans who never came back to the ballgame."
But Watson predicted that most fans will warm up to Yashin if they sense that he's making a sincere effort.
"This has happened before, and my hope is that we've seen the last of the political and legal arenas and can expect to see him in the hockey arena," he said.
Even if Yashin doesn't make his peace with fans and teammates, his return to a Senators uniform constitutes an enormous victory for the owners and fans of professional sport across North America, said Jim Boone, co-founder of the Ottawa-based National Hockey League Fans Association.
"For the fans of Ottawa, they deserve a lot of credit because they sort of stuck to their guns and supported Mr. Bryden throughout the whole process," said Boone. "They're the ones who have suffered the most. But by the fans and Bryden and the NHL winning this one, it sends a strong message to players of all pro sports that you have to honour your contract."
Boone said Yashin has been an obvious victim of "bad counsel" and his return to the Senators constitutes an admission that he made a judgment error.
"Now it would be nice if he came out and cleared the air with the fans, not just in Ottawa, but with the entire league, if he came out and said he made a mistake here but he's going to move on," said Boone.
Yashin hasn't exactly endeared himself to fans with the holdout or through such antics as reneging on a $1-million gift he once made to the National Arts Centre, said longtime Senators season ticket-holder Mike LeBeau.
But a lot of the residual anger will dissipate if Yashin leaves it on the ice, LeBeau predicted.
"As long as he's not an axe murderer, I have no qualms about what he does in his personal life. As long as he performs for the team, that's all I care about. People will forgive and forget if he puts 50 goals in the net."
"You don't have to like him," said former Ottawa mayor Jim Durrell. "There's a lot of great athletes whose personal ethics and all the rest are not something that we would want our daughters bringing home.
"But that is not the issue. I don't pay to go to see really nice people go to our church or do whatever. I go to see a good athlete perform and that's what I'm interested in. I think he's one hat trick away from being forgiven, and that's the long and short of it."
Lanark-Carleton MP Ian Murray said Senators fans should just forgive and forget.
"I think Alexei has likely learned a lesson," said Murray. "He's a young man and people make mistakes, and I think it was a mistake for him to challenge Rod Bryden that way, and I'm happy to see him back and hope that the team will make him feel very welcome."
Senators fan Len Potechin, who filed a civil suit against Yashin seeking financial redress for the 26-year-old Russian's failure to suit up, said all has already been forgiven.
"All we wanted to do was get him to play. Tell me who you're going to get for $3.6-million (U.S.) that's a better player than Yashin," said Potechin.
"He should go into the dressing room and say. 'OK, I tried to make an extra buck for myself. Every one of you guys tried to make a buck. too. Should I have done it? No. But I did. Now come on, let's win.' "
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