Local labor defenders are asking the National Hockey League (NHL) to correct what they call a historical evil when the League punished the NHL team of the city for going to the strike in 1925.
“This is an injustice that no one has taken responsibility for 100 years,” said Anthony Marco, president of the Hamilton Labor Council and the District on Wednesday, while helping to launch a campaign that calls the NHL to apologize for moving to the Hamilton Tigers to New York City as a result of the strike.
The Tigers were expected to play six additional games without additional payment, and they refused, demanding an additional $ 200 in addition to their $ 3,000 contract.
The five -year -old NHL team was first in the league that year and a strong contender for the Stanley Cup, which was then a contest between the winner of the NHL and the Western Canada Hockey League.
The League responded by transferring the team to New York City and causing the players to write formal apologies to the then President Frank Calder and paid a fine of $ 200 if they wanted to play again in the NHL.
The campaign was launched on Wednesday, titled 100 years of behavior, includes an online request asking the NHL to forgive. The organizers hope to obtain signatures from Hamilton residents and beyond, hockey fans and professional athletes whose current rights and contracts occurred after the first work fights, such as the position adopted by the Tigers, Marco said.
“Work is at the back of the people who fought,” he said. “If you are a hockey fan, this should matter.”
“I would do the same tomorrow,” said a surprising player decades later
The team movement had emotional and financial impacts in the city of Hamilton that reverberated for many years, says Myer Siestycki, professor of politics at the Metropolitan University of Toronto who has investigated the strike of the Tigers.
He said the “calls the NHL campaign to give an account of the parody that committed to an excellent hockey team and against the city of Hamilton.”
CBC Hamilton looked for NHL comments but did not receive an answer on Wednesday.
According to Siemiacki, the Hamilton Tigers captain, Shorty Green, said at that time that if the league owners benefit from the additional games, players should also.
Siemiatycki cited Green on Wednesday:
“Professional hockey is a matter of money manufacturing. The promoters are in the game for what they can do of it, and the players would not be in the game if they do not look at issues in the same way. Why, then, should we ask that two playoff games play more for the end of sweetening the finance of the league?” Green said on the eve of the strike.
“That is a common chorus that crosses labor history,” Siestycki said. “Workers who have to do more work, with the profits and income that reaches the property.”
Green went on to play with New York Americans. He scored the first goal at Madison Square Garden and is a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame, along with fellow Tiger Billy Burch.
Decades after the strike, Green still felt that the players did the right thing, Siemiatycki said, who investigated the event.
“I never regretted my part on the strike, although it cost me a chance in the Stanley Cup,” Siemiatycki said Green in an interview after retirement. “All we asked was that the players were given a part of the income. He would do the same tomorrow.”
