Counsel in the crease
Subtitle: a big league player in the hockey wars
By: by Robert O. Swados ; foreword by Scotty Bowman.
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2005
Place of publication: Amherst, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 492
Subjects: Swados, Robert O.; Hockey team owners -- New York -- Biography.; Buffalo Sabres (Hockey team); Lawyers -- New York (State) -- Biography.
Genres: Biography.
Description: "In his diverse, intriguing, and very active forty-five-year career, spent mainly in the world of professional sports, attorney Robert O. Swados has worn many hats - owner, league executive, counsel, and franchise builder. With this wide-ranging and good-humored memoir, Swados offers many behind-the-scenes insights into the players, coaches, executives, and owners who have created today's sports entertainment industry." "Swados describes his early involvement in professional sports through his efforts in the 1960s to bring a Major League Baseball franchise to his hometown of Buffalo, New York. The deal was so close that a New York Daily News headline erroneously announced that a new franchise would be going to Buffalo."

"But things really got interesting when in 1969 Swados helped Seymour Knox III and Northrup Knox to establish the Buffalo Sabres. Thus began an exciting thirty-year journey through the ups and downs of the National Hockey League. As part owner, vice chairman, and counsel of the Sabres, Swados has had many opportunities to "score from the crease," and sometimes the action behind the scenes is just as rough and tumble as that on the ice. He tells many fascinating tales about his dealings with winning coaches including Scotty Bowman, with general managers Punch Imlach and John Muckler, with owner John McMullen, and with commissioners John Ziegler and Gary Bettman, among others.

He also talks frankly about the impact of Adelphia's bankruptcy on the fate of the Sabres and about the obsessions and frustrations of the 2004 NHL lockout as well as the future of the NHL. Perhaps no one in professional sports has had such an engaging and productive view."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.