As one of my editors pointed out yesterday, maybe we should just be relieved that Chris Pronger can type at all given how his career was ended. That’s generally the hope for any hockey player, as forlorn as it may be. And perhaps Pronger was trying to do the right thing and illustrate how so many former players can end up in financial trouble after their playing careers, given that the average career is so short. Certainly there are plenty of stories like that out there.
Or he’s just an out of touch rich guy trying to sound sympathetic and speak our language even though he doesn’t know the alphabet. See for yourself:
The thread comes off as just adjacent to Elon Musk trying to act as he observes humans acting. Of course, the first thing Pronger mentions is escrow. NHL players have been bitching about escrow ever since it was introduced in 2005. They’ve had two chances to come up with a different system in CBA negotiations that wouldn’t involve escrow, and they haven’t come close to doing away with it either time. In fact they whiffed both times, and then cried over spilled cash. Cut and save for MLB players when they start bitching about too many teams spending no more than the cheese you scrape off a used pizza box on their rosters when they had a chance to do something about it and let it go as well.
What NHL players can’t seem to understand – not all that hard to see why they don’t given that most of them have a 7th grade education – is that any CBA and salary cap that is based on projections is going to have some sort of fail-safe in case those projections are wrong. The players could have tried for a system that goes off the previous years revenues, which would have given them a fixed number to set the cap to. They didn’t, twice. They could have tried to negotiate something with the owners taking on more risk. They didn’t, twice. Did you know the NBA has escrow too? No, because NBA players don’t spend nearly as much time bitching about it.
Pronger goes from there to mention taxes, and seeing as how he’s talking about a $5 million salary, in reality he should have been taxed far more than he was, and so should everyone who made what he did and more, so we could have the society we deserve. But Pronger isn’t here to illustrate that, and probably would have a coronary if that was pointed out to him. Anyway, everyone pays taxes, Chris. It’s not unique to hockey players, even though most hockey players likely think all taxes are theft. Or it’s just another form of escrow.
And then Pronger goes completely off the rails.
While I’m sure a $5,000-per-month apartment is nice, and impresses a shit ton of people, it’s also not completely necessary. You could cut that in half everywhere outside of New York. Fuck, $2500 a month in Columbus gets you an actual castle. Though it’ll be a surprisingly podunk and Southern castle to match the setting.
The next tweet in the thread is truly bewildering. First off, Pronger makes it seem like he was buying a $75,000 car every year. A new Beamer these days comes in for less than $60K, and you only have to buy it once. Also, how many players at Pronger’s level just get a car for free as part of a sponsorship?
Then Pronger claims that players have to hire their own personal trainers, masseuses, and chiropractors. Which is strange, because every team has one of those each for players to go to. Like, they’re right there next to the dressing room. Trainer’s room, Prongs, and you spent a lot of time there. Maybe that’s a more recent thing, and in Pronger’s day not every team had each of those three, but they do now. Again, it’s optional.
At the end of all of this, Pronger basically is claiming that the average NHL career nets a player $10 million. And yes, it’s good advice for young players signing their first big contract. Relatable, though, this is not. But then Pronger wasn’t really ever about bonding with his fellow man.
More Vlad Guerrero Jr. Stuff
This daily feature very well may become a Vladito Appreciation Space. He only went for three homers last night in a 6-4 Jays win over the Yankees at the Boogie Down last night. The most impressive was the second:
That’s an inside fastball off the plate at 98 MPH that Vlad Jr. simply rips into the bullpen like he was part of one of the battles in Braveheart. Look where this pitch was:
Jonathan Loasiga thought he’d get cute in the 8th and actually put a pitch on the inside corner. Guerrero showed him what he could do with that shit:
Yankees fans tend to think nothing happens until it happens in the Bronx. Well, Vlad’s MVP candidacy has officially started in that case.