army

Athletes as Workers focuses on why college athletes are workers and should be compensated as such. We know that's a big issue with the NCAA, but while I don't think anyone would argue players in the NHL shouldn't be paid for their labor, I think a lot of the same thoughts and assumptions about athletes still prevail when it comes to professionals. Those come up a lot when we're talking about what would be a fair contract for Macklin to take. What does it mean to be a worker as an athlete? The idea that athletes should be providing their labor at a discount because of a love for the game can be due to confusion about how something can be both work and play:

"Playing tennis with a friend is mere recreation, but when you contribute playing tennis toward a larger, economically productive enterprise, it is work, and you are entitled to at least some of the benefits of that work. (...) We may not conceive of athletes as simultaneously at work and at play, but there is nothing contradictory about it." (Lennon 2024, 3-4)

It's crucial to understand that it's the athletes' labor which ultimately makes money for a hockey team. If the players do not show up and do not deliver, fan engagement drops off, leading to less revenue created for the owners of the franchise. Lennon makes this point with regards to collegiate sports as follows:

"These athletes contribute their labor to a broader athletic enterprise, consisting not only of their team and university but of also television companies, apparel companies, and millions of fans. Moreover, the college sports industry is essentially dependent on the labor of college athletes: without their labor, there would be no college sports. The same isn’t (at least straightforwardly) the case when it comes to the relationship between, e.g., television executives and college sports." (Lennon 2024, 7)

I'd argue the exact same is true of any team in the NHL. If we take the concrete example of the Sharks, the past season has been full of talk about how the tank is finally full again, about how there are Sharks fans showing up no matter where the team is playing. I'm not saying other players do not play a part in the renewed interest in the Sharks as a contending team (because of course they do), but it's indisputable that Macklin Celebrini is the main draw. He's on all of the The Future Is Teal promotion, it's his accomplishments that are being talked about around the league, it's him that's already being put up as the future face of the NHL by players, fans and broadcasters alike. The Sharks only won two games this season where Mack didn't put up a point. The team was still fighting for a spot in the playoffs in March because he got the team to that point. I don't think any hockey fan would dispute these facts. It stands to reason, then, to argue that much, if not most, of the money the Sharks have earned since Macklin joined the team has both directly and indirectly been generated by or because of him. Lennon says,

"...work has a particular value, exchange value, that is measured in terms of the material goods the work generates for the worker – typically, monetary compensation. This compensation should be fair: employers have a moral reason to ensure that the compensation generated for the worker is sufficient, relative to the exchange value of the work." (Lennon 2024, 5, emphasis mine)

The logical conclusion, therefore, would be for him to get a contract that pays him what he deserves as a worker generating revenue for the franchise. Going off this Professor Hockey tweet (I know I could do proper research into this but there are limits to how much time I have to spend on a tumblr post), 17mil+ would only be fair.

I understand it's not enough to explain why I think he should get that much money, I also want to clarify why I think taking a team-friendly deal is not something Mack should do at this point. Athletes as Workers helped me articulate my thoughts on the matter thanks to Lennon's discussion of how drafting fundamentally restricts the athletes' right as a worker to choose where they provide their labor.

There's this feeling that athletes owe something to the teams that drafted them, which is why trades of athletes like Quinn Hughes or Brady Tkachuk are seen in such a harsh light. And it's fair to say that as a fan you probably invested not only emotional energy into these players but also quite a bit of money, whether it's going to games or buying jerseys. It's fair to have an emotional reaction when your team's star player wants out. A lot of your hopes and dreams as a fan are centered around these players that you ultimately got to draft because your team sucked at the time. I also think there's a feeling among fans that perhaps the team took a chance on these players or believed in them when nobody else did. But I don't think that's ever a fair sentiment when it comes to at least the top five in the draft.

It's certainly not fair to say that the Sharks "took a chance" on Macklin Celebrini. He was the undisputed 1oa. Sure, he wasn't projected to be as good as he turned out to be, but the Sharks knew he would become their franchise player. Mack had zero say in the matter. If given the choice, he might have wanted to go to a team that was an actual cup contender from day one. I think it's very clear that Macklin Celebrini has done much more for the Sharks than the Sharks have done for him. Or, if that sounds harsh, the Sharks haven't done anything for Mack that any other team wouldn't have also done when faced with the incredible good fortune of adding a generational talent to your roster through the luck of the draft.

This is why in my eyes, ultimately, Mack doesn't owe the Sharks anything at this point. I know that's not a nice thing to hear. I certainly want him to stay on my team, and I hope he does feel some loyalty to the team that he has played for for two years. But at this point in the Sharks' rebuild, so much of it is still centered around Celebrini. I'm not trying to discount what the other players of the team are contributing, especially the rest of the young core. But we should also be realistic and honest here, and point totals and analytics don't lie.

If the Sharks want to keep Macklin long-term, it seems paramount to show to the league that we know what our star player is worth, he himself knows what he is worth, and the franchise is willing to actually pay him that worth. If you find that a hard pill to swallow, consider the following:

"Nearly every team in the big four North American professional sports leagues are owned by very wealthy individuals. More than anyone else, these owners of teams are responsible for the fortunes of the partisan fan of professional teams. (...) Indeed, many owners view owning a professional sports franchise as primarily an investment opportunity. This is in stark contrast to the athletes, whose athletic labor is performed in the hopes of winning. Viewing athletes as workers allows partisan fans to notice that owners are decidedly not workers. Partisan fandom thus can in fact be further developed by conceiving of athletes as workers, with whom the fan is likely to have more in common than they do ownership." (Lennon 2024, 21, emphasis mine)

There is, of course, cap space to contend with, but the cap is going to continue to go up and a 17mil deal, for example, will become an increasingly smaller percentage of the total salary spent by the team. If we keep the example of Crosby going, his 8.7mil salary started off as 15% of the cap and then slowly started to represent a smaller and smaller percentage of the total spent by the Penguins. Letang and Malkin then also signed team-friendly contracts in their later years to keep the team together and competing. If Mack and the other star players on the Sharks come together to follow in their footsteps and agree to take team friendly deals in, let's say, four or five years, that would be amazing. As a fan, I would genuinely be thrilled by that outcome. And I'd argue it would be fair compensation in that case since it'd be a collective agreement of the workers in the franchise to take a pay cut that they deem fair for the purpose of a goal they agree on, which is hopefully winning the Stanley cup. But that is not yet where we are at this point in time.

Some more resources:

NHL salary cap 101

Too Many Men podcast episode about the Brady Tkachuk trade, which focuses on player rights