Ontario Hockey League (OHL) commissioner David Branch believes that players are there for the love of the game and should not be paid, and it appears that the Ontario government agrees.
Branch wrote to the provincial government requesting that the league’s 425 players remain amateurs and not become employees regulated by labor legislation, the Canadian Press reported.
“I want you to know that our government is behind you,” Ontario Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport Michael Tibollo replied.
Branch is also president of the Canadian Hockey League, of which the OHL is part, along with the Western Hockey League and Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. He considers major junior players — typically from 16 to 20 years old — student-athletes.
Players are eligible for post-secondary school scholarships. Each season in the league is worth one year of tuition, books and fees. Players also get money for out-of-pocket expenses, equipment and travel costs.
“To us it’s the best scholarship program in North America,” Branch said.
Not everyone agrees. A US$180 million lawsuit was filed in 2014 against the Canadian Hockey League on behalf of all current and many former players for outstanding wages and other pay. If the Ontario court rules for the players, Branch said that some teams could fold.
If players were paid the US$14 hourly minimum wage for a 40-hour work week over an eight-month season, it would cost the OHL about US$8 million a year.
Branch’s letter also cited the involvement of player agents. One agent, Allan Walsh, took issue with that.
“This is just an attempt to avoid paying players minimum wages,” he said on Twitter.
Brach said he wants to work with the Ontario government, as his group has in seven other provinces.
“One of the great questions is: ‘When does the game start being fun, when does it start becoming purely a business?’” he said. “I don’t know the answer for that, but I do know that when you look at the players that have had great success, they played the game because they love it.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier