Colin Campbell's Biases

By now you've doubtless read about the scandal surrounding NHL disciplinarian Colin Campbell.  To most fans, Colin has been an inconsistent and frustrating figure in the NHL head office.  One minute he's giving out five game suspensions for an action, the other he's writing off a repeat offender's action as "legal", though you'd be hard pressed to find a difference in video review.

We've known for a long time that Colin Campbell is inconsistent and arguably incompetent.  Now we have a clue as to why.  The story originally broke on MC79, a blog I linked here from the very beginning.  Tyler Dellow, author of MC79, is nothing if not thorough and meticulous.  As you read the TSN article, it becomes clear that Colin has clear biases and blatantly oversteps his bounds by peddling his influence in favor of his son, Greg Campbell, and the teams Greg plays on.  This is just flat out against the rules of the NHL.

When you reach the bottom of the TSN article, you find the NHL's and Colin Campbell's official responses:

Contacted by TSN for its reaction to Dellow's piece, deputy commissioner Bill Daly said: "Any suggestion that Colin Campbell performs his job with any less than 100% integrity at all times and in every decision he makes is way off base and just factually wrong.  Because of the potential for a conflict of interest, or more importantly a perceived conflict of interest,  the League has implemented various structural protections that prohibit Colie from having any oversight or disciplinary authority relating to any game in which his son, Gregory, plays.  Its always fair to question and criticize League decisions as being wrong, but not on the basis that they aren't justly and fairly arrived at."


Contacted by TSN for his reaction, Campbell said: "For me, it's much ado about nothing. Stephen and I would have banter back and forth and Stephen knows I'm a (hockey) dad venting and both of us knowing it wouldn't go any further than that. Stephen would laugh at me. The game in question (when Gregory Campbell was penalized late in the Atlanta-Florida game) wasn't on TV and I was asking Stephen to find out for me if it was a soft call. That's all there ever was to it. The (refs) working that game are still in the league, aren't they? Stephen handled the officials, just like Terry Gregson does now, and I've got a lot of emails to those guys asking about this soft call or that soft call and that's in a lot of games. I'm not ultimately responsible for the (on-ice) officials, that's Terry Gregson's responsibility, but I have to answer to GMs on these calls."


And that's the end of the story as far as the mass media is concerned.  Even though Bill Daly and Campbell are flat out lying about the situation, completely contradicting what we now know is fact and is on the legal record, TSN doesn't comment, doesn't respond.

In my first-ever blog post I mentioned I had worked in the media prior to this and I specifically mentioned that the one thing I felt I could bring to the blogging community is commentary on the incestuous relationship between genre media and the genre it covers.  You'll notice that car magazines are never very critical of car companies - even in the 80s, when the Big Three from Detroit were making ugly, underpowered, uncomfortable steel boxes on wheels, Road & Track and Car & Driver had good things to say about them.  You can see the same thing in gaming media (glowing previews of games that turn out to be crap), and of course sports media.

TSN will report the story.  They will do their duty by getting an official response from the NHL, and then they'll drop it.  No matter how blatant and obvious the lies, they will leave it there and hope that most fans don't care.  Why?  Because TSN, like ESPN, like the CBC, all depend on the NHL for inside access.  They will not jeopardize this.  It is up to us, the bloggers, the fans on the forums, to make ourselves heard.

The NHL and NBA are the Mickey Mouse outfits of the pro sporting world.  Neither can shake decades of refereeing or front office controversy.  The NBA has Tim Donaghy and the 1998 Finals Game 6 in Utah.  The NHL has Alan Eagleson and now Colin Campbell.

For a league with as sordid a history as the NHL has, going back to quashing the original NHLPA in '57-'58, and then abusing the players in the Alan Eagleson era, the last thing the NHL needs right now is another scandal.  They need to be open, up front, acknowledge their mistakes, and hire an actual, competent outsider to hand out discipline.  Someone connected to franchises, teams, players, and his own son in the league, is not qualified.  This is not a surprise to anyone who's followed Colin Campbell's examples of "discipline" over the years.