Kuklas Korner: Canucks and Beyond

Kuklas Korner: Canucks and Beyond:

I empathize with Tocchet and firmly believe that people should be able to earn their way back from mistakes. BUT this is the NHL which so many enjoy bashing enough already… why must we make it easier? Not to mention, he did cop to promoting sports gambling in the millions of dollars, while working in a professional sport.

I realize he wasn’t (and thank God) taking bets on hockey games, but this ain’t rocket science—the whole affair was a BIG no-no, regardless.

Contrasting Tocchet to Rose strikes me as particularly pointless. It’s comparing apples to oranges: Rose wants his plaque in the MLB HOF; Tocchet’s proponents want him to be front and center in the current game.

Here’s where I disagree with Alanah.

The reality is, if you want to get serious about banning gambling in hockey, or in any pro sports environment, you’ll end up with nothing but crickets in the locker room. You don’t think players sit around and play poker on flights — and not for matches? You don’t think they have NCAA pools and defend the honor of their alma mater with bets and dinners? (only in hockey, it’s probably the frozen four, not the silly sixteen). how about the golf course?

And yes, the amounts of money are large. So are the salaries involved in the group doing the betting, and the net worth of the people who were doing this. That doesn’t surprise me; other than the number of zeroes attached, none of this is different than what happens in corporate offices and locker rooms around the continent. Tocchet’s biggest sin, from what I can see, is that as the group of bettors and friends expanded and the amount of money being processed grew, he didn’t seem to realize this had stopped being a “fun things for friend” and turned into an “illegal sportsbook”. To his benefit, he seemed very aware of the potential impacts and problems of doing anything with hockey and stayed far away.

Yes, this was wrong. But it’s main sin wasn’t that he was doing it, but that he allowed it to grow to a scale well beyond what dozens of other people within the NHL are also likely doing in their own circles and teams and organization. I don’t see what that should blow him out of hockey forever, not unless you want to go whacking all those poker games and frozen four pools, too. No, I didn’t think so.

Now, he screwed up. he got caught. He’s pled guilty to a class 3 felony, so he’s going to have a felony conviction on his record. That alone might well solve this for the league, because it may well impact his ability to get a visa to cross the border. He’s a canadian native — I don’t know if he ever got american citizenship, but it might cost him his green card and an ability to re-enter the states. If so, that pretty much ends it.

But if not? let him serve whatever sentence is handed down, and let him get on with life. If you want him on probation within the league, fine. But an outright ban? Folks, this isn’t game fixing, or point shaving, or steroids or growth hormone. This was a group of friends who liked to bet with each other (that grew into a very extended group beyond what it should have), a guy who kept track of the bets, and a mistake that we ought to be willing to move beyond. Banning Tocchet serves no useful purpose to the league, and IMHO, too severe a penalty will make dealing with future, similar situations more difficult, but not reduce the chances of them actually happening. It’s punitive for the wrong reasons.

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