Damien Cox on Goodenow

[Jim Bob 0]

http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/columns/stor...mien&id=1900652

Over the past five years, Goodenow has taken a calculated gamble in declining to sit down with the league and negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement when Bettman and Co. made appeals that teams were suffering dangerous financial losses.

There are those who suggest the union's best chance for a deal might have been two years ago. Indeed, the union is clearly now in a give-back position to some degree, having already offered an across-the-board pay cut of 5 percent, and if ownership holds its ground in pursuing a salary cap or significant claw-backs it is difficult to envision how the deal will get better for the players over the coming months.

Former Vancouver Canucks GM Brian Burke worked with Goodenow as a player agent in the mid-1980s, but since then has found himself either in management or employed by the league, and thus in direct opposition to his former colleague. He questions whether Goodenow's bulldog approach will work this time, as least not as well as it did in 1992 and 1994.

"In my humble opinion, a big part of being an effective leader is knowing how and when to make a deal," says Burke. "There was a Confederate general named John Bell Hood, and when Robert E. Lee was asked about Hood, he said, 'too much lion, not enough fox.'

"Being willing to fight at the drop of a hat isn't always a leader's mission."

The hockey world knows Goodenow can fight, knows he is tough. Getting his players back to work anytime soon, however, may well require more finesse, less Col. Jessep from hockey's best known hard-liner.

[Jim Bob 0]

I doubt media pressure would affect the NHLPA one bit.

And I don't think the owners can afford to crack again.