UKRAINIAN PRO HOCKEY UPDATE (02/14/99)

UKRAINIAN PRO HOCKEY UPDATE

by Ihor Stelmach

Late summer's tale: the Phoenix follies

So, here's a real question for you: is he Captain America, or Captain Crook? Is he the NHL's premier power forward, or hockey's most obstinate head case? Is he just misguided, or simply misunderstood?

Keith Tkachuk will probably tell you he is a little bit of all of the above - within reason, of course. But the rugged left-winger for the Phoenix Coyotes will also tell you that all the fuss and flak he took this past summer stemmed from his highly publicized demand for a rich new contract. Furthermore, all the criticism ended the minute the deal got done.

At least that's what he banked on, under the assumption the two-time 50-goal scorer got to the bank at all.

"That's what all this was about, the money. I realize that," Tkachuk, the Coyotes' captain, said from his summer home in Cape Cod, Mass. "That's how it is in life. The bad outweighs the good. If it weren't for the money, it would be all good. But I can't control what other people say about me. Especially the media."

It wasn't just the media. The fans spoke loud and clear, too. Ever since word leaked out a year ago during training camp that Tkachuk did not intend to honor the remaining three years of his contract because he felt he was grossly underpaid, the stones continued to be cast.

His public image, he admitted, has taken quite a beating. As his contract squabble dragged on, more and more dark moments from his career were rehashed and retold. It was truly an unavoidable haunting for the 26-year-old bruiser from Boston.

They mentioned his wild days in Winnipeg, the time he rolled his Jeep and left the scene of an accident. They brought up the old gambling allegations and the lawsuit filed by a shady Edmonton businessman. They recalled his past contract disputes, such as the one that eventually led the Chicago Blackhawks to sign him to a five-year offer sheet worth a cool $6 million up front - a deal the Winnipeg Jets ultimately had to match. There was no place to hide.

"A couple things I've said put me in the situation I was in then - things I've learned from," he said. "But I still think people misunderstand what I'm all about. The bottom line is I know I'm a good person. I go out and work hard and give it all every night, trying to help my team become successful and trying to become a great player."

Still, everything that was anything, from Tkachuk's sister getting into a fistfight at a Scottsdale restaurant more than a year ago, to his supposed involvement in the trashing of apartment rooms in Nagano, Japan, during the last Winter Olympics, was regurgitated.

"He got bashed pretty good again just the other day in USA Today for that comment he made in Japan about 'this was a big waste of time' after the U.S. got eliminated," said Tkachuk's agent, Bob Murray, in an August conversation with Bob McManaman of The Hockey News. "He was just upset the team didn't accomplish what it set out to do, like all of them were. Instead, he was made out to look like an ingrate all over again."

The fallout figured to be even greater as training camp 1998 approached, if a new deal wasn't reached and, as expected, Tkachuk had staged a lengthy holdout, refusing to play for the $2.8 million he was to be paid this season and the $3 million he was due in 1999-2000. After rejecting the team's three-year extension in June worth a total of $33.8 million over five seasons, Tkachuk already had been called everything from overly greedy to unfit to be captain. His leadership and principles were questioned.

After the 1997-1998 season, teammate Rick Tocchet openly suggested there were some leadership problems that needed to be addressed. Though never directly naming Tkachuk, it was seen by some as a blanket indictment of Captain Coyote. Not so, said Tocchet. It was more of a general comment aimed at everyone in the dressing room. However, Tocchet insisted that Tkachuk's contract dispute was a potential team-derailing distraction that could have ruined the start or even the entire current season.

"It was a bad situation for Keith because he was getting a lot of negativity from the fans," Tocchet said. "It was too bad because, if people got to know him, he's really a good guy and he wants to win. It's just a situation where things were real confusing for a while."

"Either way, it had to get rectified early so we could get on with the season positively," he added.

Many campaigned for Coyotes' GM Bobby Smith to either trade Tkachuk or let him sit out the entire season. For the price Tkachuk was asking - a restructured deal worth $40 million over the next five years - the latter was a very viable option. GM Smith said as much during an August story in The Arizona Republic:

"There were three scenarios," he said. "We could have traded him, we could have given him what he wanted, or we could have let him sit out the season. I wasn't willing to eliminate Option C at that point. We just might have done that at the end of the day. We might have decided that it was simply the right thing to do."

Then, he lowered the boom.

"I thought we had a good enough team to make the playoffs without him," Smith said. "All we've been able to do with Keith Tkachuk is make the playoffs and lose in the first round."

That last comment was the most damning of all. Tkachuk and Murray each reacted angrily to it and questioned Smith's logic for making such a stinging statement at such a critical point in negotiations.

"I still don't know what he was trying to accomplish by saying something like that," Murray said.

Tkachuk, who was working out on his own and skating with a group of players at Boston University at the time, tried to downplay the remark.

"Bobby gets a little excited sometimes - just like me," Tkachuk said. "What am I going to do, go down to Phoenix and beat up Bobby Smith? He's going to say what he's going to say and do what he's going to do. I didn't expect him to talk great about me then. But that comment was ridiculous on his part. That's no way to treat your best players. Look, I don't hate the guy. But maybe it won't be the same in the future. I'll be the same player, a guy who works hard and gives it all every single night, but..."

But the relationship definitely was on the verge of a meltdown. That much was obvious. The two sides hadn't spoken through much of last August after a month's hiatus when Smith pulled his offer from the table. At the same time, Smith made it clear that he didn't want to trade Tkachuk. It had been reported that he had turned down a straight-up deal with the Philadelphia Flyers for Eric Lindros.

"If that's true, it's nice to hear," Tkachuk said, "but I'm still not sure Bobby Smith wanted me on his team."

The heart of the issue was what Tkachuk would earn in the current season and next. He wanted to be paid among the NHL's elite now. The Coyotes were open to giving him his $8 million-a-season request, but only after he showed signs of fulfilling the final two years of his last deal, which they were willing to sweeten.

But Tkachuk wanted more up front. If he played for an extra million now, he would want an extra $7 million later. That translated into an average salary of about $11 million a season for the three-year extension - numbers too high for the Coyotes to consider.

"That was a significant amount of money just to fulfill the obligation he already had," Smith declared somewhat sternly.

Not according to Tkachuk, however. "I was promised a new contract by Bobby and I expected him to deliver," he said. "I didn't want to get in a situation where we were talking bad about each other in the press. I just wanted to get something done.

"I was being painted as the bad guy because of what was going on, but until this came up I don't think I was portrayed as a bad guy. When I signed that contract in Winnipeg, a lot of people didn't understand. They got stirred up about it. I understood that, coming from the background I did, where things were pretty modest.

"Not everybody's going to like it or agree with it. But unfortunately, this is the business side of professional sports. I knew from the beginning that this thing probably was going to take all summer, that it wasn't going to happen overnight.

"I also realized that some people probably were going to want to boo me. Obviously, that's not what any player ever wants to hear. But I've been booed before, and there's nothing you can do about it."

Coming Up: How this entire messy Tkachuk contract situation finally got resolved (happily), complete with stats on Captain Coyote's 1998-1999 contributions. Thus far his Phoenix squad rates as the league's most pleasant surprise ... And, we'll give you a detailed look at the professional minor league ranks, Ukrainian-style.

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