The painful truth about the NHL and its pensions

if a regular guy was in a job for 6-7 years in his 20's and made 200 grand in his best year, I don't feel sorry for him. He still had the majority of his life to get on with another career.

I'm with you 100%, sad that some of them are so battered after they acan't work, but the money they made (which even in the heydays was more than the average joe) needed to be better used and invested, I know lots of retirees who worked their asses off/got injured on the job (or even cripped), that are no better off than these guys.

Agreed.
If I was making 200,000$ a year today, I'd be putting at least half of my net pay away for the future.

I worked in the banking industries and saw a LOT of people who had made very good money with financial problems. Seems they automatically adjusted their standard of living to the big salaries and nothing was left when they fell on bad times.

Every case is different but this isn't one where the money was thrown away on cars and booze. I knew Walt and he was one of the most "frugal" (I'm being polite here) guys you'd ever meet. He didn't do bad in the last few years he played but wasn't making that kind of money for most of it. He coached at the minor pro level for a number of years but that just paid the grocery bill. An ex-wife was entitled to half his earnings as well as half his pension, such as it was. He had two kids and put them through school. He tried the ditch digging thing but the years of pro hockey had taken their toll so he was unable to pursue that for very long. He couldn't even continue to play our weekly pick up hockey game. So at the age of 40 or so, was an unemployable high school graduate. Years ago he'd have been scooped up by a car dealership or beer company and have been set for life, but that's not who they hire anymore. Nope.............he drove a 1980..ish blue/rust Ford truck right up to the day he died.

For the guys they mention here, those fellows were unable to work after their hockey careers were over. Their bodies were literally torn up by the game. You can call it a simple pension but I think the league owes them a more substantial disability pension for their years of service. If those types injuries had happened while a guy was working at a mine or sawmill he'd be getting that. Either long term disability insurance or WCB would be looking after a guy who couldn't work anymore. For the amount of money these guys generated the league and the owners, their pension should be proportional to that.

Lots of dudes in the service can't work after they're released due to their service and many times they are cut off by veterans affairs, if they are lucky they get a one time payment. They also need to put in 20 years to get a partial pension, not 400 games. Sad to see for anybody for sure, but again, I can't get teary eyed for guys who got to do what most only dream off and made poor future plans, we all know the body is not going to hold up, they should off spent the off season (like many do or did) preparing for their future.

That's just it, they were expecting a pension of some kind after the 410 games but there really wasn't one and I believe it was when you hit 55? and was a lump sum. Like QBC said, if it in a mine or mill he'd be looked after. There should have been better medical treatments and records as well as insurance, but there wasn't back then. Another friend of mine played around 100 games in the NHL (Grapes still talks about him) but suffered a career ending injury while playing in Europe. The team had insurance that looked after everything including sending him back to school. He'll be fine but a decade earlier and he'd have had nothing more than a house that was paid for.

I have a friend who played in the NHL in the late 80s and early 90s. He got to 400 games and he gets 2 pensions...he gets an amount, per year, which just started for him when he turned 45 back in January. He'll also get a lump sum of something like $200,000 when he turns 55.

My friend played most of 8 seasons in the NHL and a bunch more bouncing between the NHL and the IHL. He never got rich on a player's salary, but was smart with his money and lives a pretty leisurely and secure life.

I also agree that service men and woman who are faced with the same problems should be looked after much better than they are. We all owe them.