This reckoning is long overdue, especially at the junior levels where 15 year olds leave home to live in strangers' houses, where they're not paid minimum wage despite generating profits for the league, owners, and agents, and where they're subjected to abuse from all kinds of people in power but can't speak up for themselves because they're all trying to make careers. It is not a good system, and at the moment there does not seem to be a group looking after the player's interests that has any kind of leverage.
It's encouraging to see people speaking up individually, but a lot more needs to change.
Georges Laraque tried to form a CHL players union in 2012 with very modest demands but it got torpedoed:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/spor...rticle4851890/
Quote:
– On what this fight was over: "I never said that the junior players were mistreated. I never said it wasn't a good league. The two things I said was that, one, the 18th months they have [to use their education plan] is unacceptable. It should be four years. They know that every player that plays junior hockey wants to play a couple years in the ECHL or the AHL to try and make it. It's unacceptable to have 18 months because you know they're not going to take that scholarship. The second thing is, the NCAA... If they change the bylaw, then the players could go there. They won't lose their eligibility, but the [CHL] are blocking it."
– Why he did get involved: "I thought I could be part of something that could change junior hockey forever. Help kids get an education. That's noble. That's the imprint I want to leave on hockey. I played in the NHL for 13 years. I fought all those years. Now I can do something positive. And helping these kids have their own union is a noble cause."
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The Ontario PC government in 2018 ruled that junior players don't deserve minimum wage:
https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/...ws-for-workers