Toronto Maple Leafs: How the League Failed Brianna Decker

What you are about to read has nothing to do with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Navigating the wild waters of public relations is an endeavour of which has never been more difficult than it is today.

The unfettered access afforded to the world by social media is, at its core, a double-edged sword.

On one hand, the existence of a forever-logged-in audience allows for any message, if sent correctly, to transcend any medium and summarily launch image facelifts and meticulously curated statements to millions of people at the tap of a button.

On the other hand, well, that’s where things can get dicey.

If the world is a reality show, then Twitter is the camera. And the thing most people tend to forget about reality shows is, at one point or another, those cameras turn off and everyone gets to go home.

But Twitter doesn’t turn off. Rather, we live in a world now where the cameras always roll and the spotlight always shines.

This is a problem; namely because if you happen to train a camera on someone for long enough, at one point or another, that person will slip up and reveal a side of themselves they had previously kept hidden for a reason.

In the blink of an eye, social media pulls a180 on its ability to fast track the positive aspects of PR and suddenly begins fast-tracking the negative instead – only this time, it’s twofold.

Case in point; PR lay-ups are few and far between these days. A product of social media’s unfailing tendency to turn the most positive musings into unconscionable negatives, they just don’t come around that often.

And when they do, well, you better make sure you slam that ball home.

FS

Speaking of slam dunks, on Friday evening, the NHL was Vince Carter at the 2000 Dunk Contest.

Preaching from a pulpit of diversity, the league opted to switch up their All-Star format this year by inviting four of the most influential female hockey players currently immersed in the sport to attend the event, mingle with the players, and ultimately take part in Friday’s Skills Competition.

Kendall Coyne Schofield, Renata Fast, Rebecca Johnston, and Brianna Decker would all stand at centre stage and compete as “showcase participants”.

From a PR (and human decency) perspective, it was a brilliant idea.

Not only would the inclusion of female players sit perfectly in line with the NHL’s diversity message that underscored the entire weekend. And not only would the nationally televised stage offer a phenomenal, wide-ranging level of exposure for the women’s game as a whole.

No, this was bigger than all that.

If executed properly – and that’s big “if” – this decision would stand as definitive proof that these women, regardless of gender or orientation, are just as good at this dumb sport as the men.

So far, so good.

When first making this decision, it’s doubtful that anyone within the NHL office expected the four attendees to win their respective events. The odds were slim. Each event consisted of a field where only one woman would go up against as many as four other men, leaving little doubt, from a probability standpoint, as to whom the presumptive winner would likely be.

This is why, when Brianna Decker ultimately won the Enterprise NHL Premier Passer Competition™ to the shock of onlookers everywhere, the NHL had effectively stumbled upon a PR goldmine.

Or, at least, they should have.

The full potential of Decker’s win is best illustrated when viewed from the NHL’s perspective.

The central theme of All-Star Weekend was none other than diversity – a message declaring hockey’s role as a welcoming haven to all groups of people. To illustrate this theme, the NHL broke down a long-standing gender barrier and allowed women to take part in their premier mid-season event as official members in their otherwise completely male-dominated industry.

And in spite of the circumstances, in spite of the overwhelming odds, one of those women, Brianna Decker, participated in what is generally perceived as the weekend’s most singularly challenging event, against the best male talent hockey has to offer and won.

In the perspective of the NHL, this should have been the best-case scenario.

FS

The most dominant off-ice narrative in women’s hockey today, unfortunately, happens to be the sheer lack of financial support offered to its players. Like it or not, that’s a fact. Not a nice one, but a fact nonetheless.

Whereas NHLers can dedicate their entire existence to on-ice improvement with little thought paid to life’s ancillary responsibilities, these women are forced to work regular jobs with often irregular hours for the mere opportunity to play hockey AND have a place to live at the same time.

In fact, the CWHL only just began paying its players prior to the 2017-18 season, with annual salaries ranging from $2,000 to a top-end total of $10,000.

To put that number in perspective; over the course of an 82-game season, 814 current NHLers will cash a game cheque which exceeds the absolute maximum amount that a woman can earn for playing the exact same sport.

Again, this is the most dominant off-ice narrative in women’s hockey right now. It hangs over the sport like a plague-  a reminder of just how small their existence currently is in the context of the men.

Imagine loving a sport, investing both your interest and passion into it, only to have its dire financial climate thrown in your face at every turn.

That doesn’t sound like much fun at all, which really should have made the NHL’s next move excruciatingly simple.

During a marquee event being put on, in large part, to demonstrate the league’s public willingness for growing the women’s game, one would think that the best course of action would be to quell its single most harmful narrative, even if only for one weekend.

Well, at least from a PR standpoint, that is.

The agenda is pretty simple: Showcase the vast array of talent women’s hockey has to offer, drape them with national exposure, and provide a brief escape from the profession’s most challenging aspects for fans and players alike.

The NHL even offers a $25,000 prize to the winners of their All-Star events – more than double that of the highest CWHL salary. And through a stroke of sheer PR good fortune, one of those winners turned out to be Brianna Decker – who actually plays in the CWHL and was invited by the league, more or less, to hammer home their focus on diversity.

This, quite literally, could not have worked out any better.

When it comes to slam dunks, Brianna Decker made the entire NHL into Vince Carter; flying through the air, arms outstretched, with nothing but themselves between the ball and the basket.

All they had to do was slam this one home. It was so easy.

Gary Bettman could make a big show of his generous contribution. All male players already on the ice – who were fully in the midst of losing their minds with excitement over Decker’s brilliance, by the way – could burst over the bench and lift her up in a John Scott-style Rudy moment that would live on in gif-form for eternity.

Even if the NHL doesn’t care about growing the women’s game, even if whether or not the CWHL or NWHL survive never crosses their mind, paying Brianna Decker what amounts to a thoroughly inconsequential amount of money was the kind of PR slam dunk that comes around once in a decade.

FS

The NHL didn’t just botch this dunk. No, they don’t get off that easy.

By refusing to a) merely recognize Decker’s achievement and, b) pay her the money she rightfully earned, Vince Carter somehow managed to tear his own ACL in mid-air instead, turn the ball over, and while writhing on the ground in self-inflicted pain, watch as CCM stepped over his lifeless body to put him on a poster for the world to see.

Frankly, it’s hard to overstate just how insignificant $25,000 is to a league that claims nearly $5 billion in annual revenue.

For instance, the NHL has handed down 10 separate disciplinary fines from the beginning of the 2018-19 season to this point in the year. In total, the players on the receiving end have paid a cumulative amount of $44,146.96 to the league for their various transgressions – almost double that of Decker’s rightful prize money and over four times larger than her highest annual salary.

That means, as of now, the NHL has raked in almost twice as much in revenue from the violent, rule-breaking actions of their employees than they were willing to pay Brianna Decker for winning a contest they had invited her to.

Just think about that.

In a follow-up to Friday’s debacle, the NHL began the next day by quietly floating out how, upon review, Decker actually “…clocked in with an unofficial time that was later determined to be just seconds off the winning time of 1:09.088 recorded by Oilers forward Leon Draisaitl.”

So instead of simply paying her, instead of doing the true and absolute bare minimum, the NHL instead went to the effort of reviewing Decker’s time, expending resources in the process, just to confirm that she, in fact, did not win the event.

That was the hill the NHL chose to die on.

Not cracking down on the predatory headshots running rampant in their league. Not instituting a domestic violence policy to ensure that no team employs a known abuser. Not even something as borderline as fixing their clearly broken and widely hated playoff format.

This. This is where the NHL took a stand.

Of course, the league has recently sought to rectify their mistake by gifting each of Decker, Coyne Schofield, Johnston and Fast with $25,000 to donate to the charity of their choice, which is an indisputably nice gesture regardless of whatever motivations lay behind it.

And yet, upholding those same donations AND paying Decker her original amount was a blatantly obvious PR option as well and would have cost a grand total of $125,000.

Mitch Marner, for instance, made over five times that amount solely from performance bonuses last season.

FS

Yes, the NHL turned what appeared to be a bonafide win into a public embarrassment. Yes, they somehow got in their own way, proceeding to make things even worse while conducting damage control.

But this is not news. Not in the slightest. This type of self-sabotage has happened before, its happening right now and, without a doubt, will happen again.

Rather, what the All-Star Weekend debacle truly signifies is something else entirely; the full extent of change hockey desperately needs from the top down to survive.

This change starts with the implementing of a new brain trust – one that doesn’t see inviting women to their male-dominated events as merely “good enough”. A brain trust fully dedicated to supporting the grassroots growth of this game to all groups of people, and believes that doing so will aid in its longevity.

And a brain trust that, at the bare minimum, doesn’t see a 3-second difference in a meaningless All-Star contest as a hill worth dying on.

On Friday, the NHL failed Brianna Decker. But it doesn’t have to, moving forward.

Thanks for reading!

All salary data courtesy of capfriendly.com

All financial data courtesy of NHL.com & statista.com