'It's The Player's Right When They Negotiate A Contract,' NHLPA Executive Director Marty Walsh Fires Back At Bettman Over No-Trade Clause Controversy

In recent weeks, the issue of NHL players having no-trade or no-move clauses (NTCs or NMCs) and their ability to dictate where they want to play has come to the fore.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman got the ball rolling on this topic by noting, in his opinion, NTCs/NMCs were “not a good thing.”

“This notion now where, (a) you can select where you want to go, to and (b) you can demand a trade…That was never the original intention," Bettman said at the start of October. "If this becomes a problem — I don't think one off-season a problem makes — but if this becomes a problem, it's something we're going to have to discuss with the players' association.”

Quick to respond to the notion of no-trade clauses being a problem was NHL Players Association assistant executive director Ron Hainsey, who made a legitimate defense of the proliferation of NTCs and NMCs. 

"His conversation about no-move and no-trade clauses, we do take as an attack on players' CBA-negotiated rights," Hainsey said. "It’s a player’s right to negotiate salary, salary structure, term, as well as a no-move or no-trade with their club if they’re able to do so and bargain in good faith. It’s pretty simple if you’ve negotiated a no-trade. Whether it’s 10 teams or 15 or 32, the club isn’t able to trade you to those teams without your consent. Our position is that the clauses are acting as they were intended to work."

On Wednesday, NHLPA executive director Marty Walsh backed Hainsey’s comments by defending players’ fairly bargained-for right to have input on where they play. Walsh’s tone was more conciliatory than Hainsey’s.

Still, the message was the same: players bargained in good faith to include it in the league’s labor agreement, and nothing that’s happened since the collective bargaining agreement was ratified this past off-season has gone against the league and players association’s stance when they were negotiating.

"It's the player's right when they negotiate a contract," Walsh told the FAN Hockey Show Wednesday regarding NTCs and NMCs. "And I think 300-plus players have it, so general managers have no issue negotiating with players and putting it in there."

From this writer’s point of view, the NHLPA is winning the argument so far. No union member has a knife behind the back of NHL GMs when they hand out NMCs and NTCs like candy. So while Bettman is within his rights to effectively revisit the topic when the league next negotiates a new CBA in 2030, if they’re going to trade off those rights to satisfy the league on this issue, the NHLPA will want something, and something significant, from the league in return.  

Unless we want to see the NHL return to its early days of indentured servitude for players, players deserve some kind of win at the negotiating table. We'd end up back to the olden days of owners truly owning their athletes, rather than working in partnership to commodify their talents.

Players will not accept that type of all-encompassing control. 

So while it’s true Bettman’s job is to find the holes in the dam in every labor deal and try plugging those holes in the subsequent CBA, it’s Walsh’s job to ensure that, if the players give in to owners’ requests in certain areas in the negotiations, the owners will have to give back in other areas.

People may hate NTCs and NMCs, but they’re going nowhere for the next four years, and maybe longer. Until no-trades or no-moves disappear, only NHL GMs and team owners can show restraint. Nobody is making them hand out NMCs and NTCs.

Until GMs and owners learn to stop giving NMCs, players will keep demanding them, and the numbers will only grow.

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