{"id":1293,"date":"2025-07-16T23:45:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T23:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/1293\/"},"modified":"2025-07-16T23:45:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T23:45:12","slug":"hamilton-labour-council-wants-nhl-to-apologize-for-suspending-players-100-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/1293\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamilton Labour Council wants NHL to apologize for suspending players 100 years ago"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Hamilton and District Labour Council is hoping to right a century-old grievance between the city it represents and the NHL<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The labour council demanded the NHL apologize on Wednesday for its treatment of players on the now-defunct Hamilton Tigers when they tried to engage in collective action during the 1924-25 season. Anthony Marco, the council\u2019s president, said that when the Tigers went on strike to get better pay, they were engaging in a struggle that resonates to this day.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got labour strife happening at a provincial level, at a federal level, at an international level, and this is a good reminder of the fact that 100 years ago, some of the basic things that these players were fighting for still exist today,\u201d said Marco. \u201cIt\u2019s a reflection, in my mind, on how gig work is going these days, that people are being expected to work without pay, our people are being expected to work with very little pay.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Tigers played in Hamilton from 1920 to 1925 and were atop the NHL\u2019s standings that final year. The league expanded its season by six games in 1924-25 but players\u2019 pay was not increased.<\/p>\n

Hamilton players demanded an extra $200 each or they would not lace up for the NHL\u2019s playoffs. Then-league president Frank Calder suspended the striking Tigers players and fined them $200 each.<\/p>\n

Calder then declared the Montreal Canadiens the league champions and representatives in the Stanley Cup final. Montreal lost the cup to the Western Canada Hockey<\/a> League\u2019s Victoria Cougars three games to one in the best-of-five series.<\/p>\n

Hockey\u2019s beloved emergency backup goalies face an uncertain future with new NHL rule<\/a><\/p>\n

The Tigers were then moved to New York City and renamed the Americans.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe team stuck by their guns, and they said \u2019this is what it\u2019s going to be,\u2019 and they probably didn\u2019t end with the result that they would have liked, but it certainly was an affront not to just those players, but to the city as a whole, who had for several years gotten behind that team, and for the first time ever saw them finish in first place at the end of the regular season,\u201d Marco said.<\/p>\n

Marco believes enough time has passed for the NHL \u2013 which ratified a new collective agreement with the NHL Players\u2019 Association on July 8 \u2013 to admit that Calder\u2019s treatment of the striking players was too harsh.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really speaks to the fact that Hamilton, which has always been known as a union town, had the first basic attempt from the NHL players to start a collective action, it was the first players strike, and it happened at least a full generation before the NHLPA [founded in 1967] ever got into place,\u201d said Marco. \u201cA hundred years is a good reminder. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019re at the point now where you can say that if the NHL has any moral objection to issuing an apology for this, you can say it\u2019s been a century, I think you might be able to get past it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Requests for comment made to the NHL, NHLPA, and the minor-league Professional Hockey Players\u2019 Association by The Canadian Press were not immediately returned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Hamilton and District Labour Council is hoping to right a century-old grievance between the city it represents…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,448,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,82,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-1293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-nhl","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}