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No Excuse For Euro Exclusion - Sep. 1, 2013 – Ken Campbell

Swedish forward Ulf Sterner became the first European to play an NHL game Jan. 27, 1965. The world’s best hockey league wouldn’t get its first European GM for another 17,549 days – until Feb. 13, 2013, at which time the Columbus Blue Jackets named veteran hockey man and Finn Jarmo Kekalainen to the position.

That’s more than 48 years between broken barriers. And for me, that’s wrong. If the average NHLer’s career lasts six years, we’re talking about eight generations of European players, but just a single European GM. We’re talking incredible disparity in the NHL’s management system relative to the makeup of the NHL Player’s Association, which according to union sources ranges from 22-33 percent in any given season.

If the NHL’s GM community were representative of the league’s rosters, Kelalainen’s achievement would barely have raised a ripple. Instead, the hiring sticks out precisely because of hockey’s pace of progress, which makes tree ring growth look like time-lapse photography. That’s the only conclusion you can draw, especially when you bear in mind the league has had only two European coaches in its modern history (Russian Johnny Gottselig was the first from 1944-48, when he was bench boss of the Chicago Black Hawks). Indeed, that it has been almost 13 years since Finn Alpo Suhonen stepped behind the bench of the Hawks and late Czech legend Ivan Hlinka coached the Pittsburgh Penguins – and that neither lasted much more than a season – is another indictment of the NHL’s slow-to-change culture.

“ HOCKEY MANAGEMENT IS ABOUT TRUST. WHEN YOU GET THE CHANCE, YOU GO WITH SOMEONE YOU KNOW

– EX-NHL PLAYER

I’m not suggesting there’s a conspiracy to keep Euros out of high-level management positions. There are understandable influences on who is welcomed into the coaching/GM fraternity that don’t work in favor of Europeans: the language barrier can be a major issue (as it was with Hlinka), as can the fact many non-North-American NHLers move back to their homelands across the Atlantic Ocean after retirement.

But you can’t tell me there haven’t been European NHLers fluent in the language who would jump at the chance to be a coach or GM at the NHL level. Former NHLers Ulf Samuelsson and Tommy Albelin have served as assistant coaches. And before he was hired in Columbus, Kekalainen worked in various management capacities in Ottawa and St. Louis and was a finalist for the Blues job.

The NHL ought to have done a better job integrating people from all backgrounds, but there’s one essential reason why it hasn’t happened to an appropriate degree. “The Old Boys’ Club is still alive and kicking,” said one longtime NHLer, who spoke on condition his name not be used. “Hockey management is about trust at its core and when you get the opportunity – a rare opportunity that can disappear at any moment – you go with someone you know and trust.

“Not saying European players aren’t trustworthy. It’s to say that strong bonds between players often start at the junior level and, as we know, there’s not a long history of Europeans in the junior systems. So you don’t have that connection early on to carry you through past retirement and into the management field.”

That’s understandable, but not enough to absolve the game of its responsibility to do better. For instance, Joe Nieuwendyk and Steve Yzerman got GM jobs with a relative dearth of experience. What would it take for a team to make the same offer to Slava Fetisov or Sergei Fedorov (currently a GM in the Kontinental League), or a Jaromir Jagr (who worked as a coach-GM for his hometown Czech League team during the lockout)? There’s no good reason for them not to get a shot.

With the NHL looking to bolster its presence in Europe, it must look at that continent as more than a place where great players and fans hail from

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