Philadelphia Flyers Disregarding Travel Rules Latest Instance of Ignoring CBA

Usually if a flight takes off a little earlier than expected, that can be a good thing for travelers. 

That’s not how it works in the NHL, however, as the Philadelphia Flyers were fined an undisclosed amount Sunday for flying to Nashville on Dec. 26 during a three-day break that does not allow for travel of any kind.

The idea behind the restriction is grounded in competitive balance—if a team leaves in the evening of Dec. 26 for a game on Dec. 27 while other teams follow the agreed-upon rule, that would, theoretically, give the team departing a few hours earlier than everyone else traveling later a slight advantage.

According to Flyers GM Ron Hextall, the players asked to leave early and the team obliged.

"When the players asked, once we made the decision that we were going to do what they wanted to do – and in the end obviously I felt it was the right decision for the club as well – given the CBA I'm not gonna ask the players if they want to fly the night before," Hextall told the media. "When they came to me I thought it was a reasonable request, so the decision was made."

It didn’t help the Flyers at all, as they lost 4-1 to the Predators.

The story was first reported by Chris Johnston of Sportsnet. Via FlightAware data, the Flyers took off from Philadelphia at 8:24 p.m. and landed in Nashville at 9:07 local time, putting the flight time at 1 hour, 42 minutes. The CBA does not allow for flights longer than 2 hours, 30 minutes for day-of-game travel.

John Russell/Getty Images

Is not allowing Dec. 26 travel a dumb rule? It sure is. But so is a two-minute penalty for accidentally shooting the puck over the glass from inside your own zone. Just like the travel restriction rule, it’s one that everyone acknowledges and can’t be enforced in some buildings and ignored in others. We all know it’s dumb but we accept it. Players and referees can't get together before a game and say, "Can we just ignore the puck-over-glass penalty because we both know it's moronic?"

And really, if a team’s plane goes wheels up at 12:01 a.m. on Dec. 27, it’s hardly a unique situation for a team. It’s not ideal, but it happens at times during the regular season. 

Let’s say a team plays in New York at Madison Square Garden at 7 p.m. The game concludes around 9:30. The players end post-game interviews and get on their bus at 10:15. It’s about an hour to any of the area airports. By the time the players and equipment are unloaded from buses and loaded onto planes, a post-midnight takeoff for a two-hour flight to play a game the next night is practically a guarantee.

Depending on the location of a particular city's airport, a midnight departure to a new city can be a common occurrence when playing back-to-back games.

Should that be the case for a team coming off a three-day break? Maybe, maybe not. But that’s what the NHL and NHLPA explicitly wanted and put in writing in the most recent CBA, so there’s no one to blame for this infraction but the players and Flyers organization.

The selectively recognized CBA is nothing new for the NHL, which includes players, teams and the league alike.

Consider for years that organizations signed players to contracts that blatantly circumvented the salary cap (Marian Hossa, Brad Richards, Roberto Luongo) yet it was only the New Jersey Devils who were punished by the league when they attempted to sign Ilya Kovalchuk to a similar back-diving deal.

Then, in another case of staggering arbitrariness, the league restored the first-round pick that was taken away from the Devils because the organization had new ownership.

A player is not allowed to work for the league while under contract with a team, yet Flyers defenseman Chris Pronger (another player with a back-diving contract) works for Player Safety despite having three years remaining on his player contract. 

The most recent lockout was surely about money, but there were plenty of meetings over months that involved battles over other aspects of the CBA, like players wanting a three-day break over the Christmas holiday. They won that fight, only to have players on some teams organize informal practices on Dec. 26.

If the league is going to lock out every eight years over this massive document, is it too much to ask to have both sides abide by and respect what’s in it?

And the incongruity wouldn’t be complete without the league announcing the dollar value of the Kings’ punishment for allowing the suspended Slava Voynov to practice with the team while trying to hide the Flyers’ fine.

This is hardly a capital crime but it’s a stupid one, right up there with robbing a donut shop filled with cops. Only the robber was a legislator who helped pass a law that donut shops never be robbed during the holidays. And he wasn’t wearing a mask. And didn’t understand why it was wrong to rob the donut shop in the first place.

Dave Lozo covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @DaveLozo.