Air Canada’s Letter to the NHL

By
Steve Farnham
-
5
76

From Denis Vandal, Air Canada director of marketing and communications

Dear Commissioner Bettman:

We are contacting you today to voice our concern over last night’s incident involving Max Pacioretty and Zdeno Chara at the Bell Centre in Montreal. This is following several other incidents involving career threatening and life endangering head shots in the NHL recently.

As a strong supporter and sponsor of NHL Hockey in Canada and several U.S. cities, Air Canada is very concerned with the state of hockey today. While we support countless sports, arts and community events, we are having difficultly rationalizing our sponsorship of Hockey unless the NHL takes responsibility to protect both the players and the integrity of the game. From a corporate social responsibility standpoint, it is becoming increasingly difficult to associate our brand with sports events which could lead to serious and irresponsible accidents; action must be taken by the NHL before we are encountered with a fatality.

Unless the NHL takes immediate action with serious suspensions to the players in question to curtail these life threatening injuries, Air Canada will withdraw its sponsorship of Hockey.

We are following progress on these matters very closely and look forward to your response.

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5 COMMENTS

  1. Good for Air Canada. Bettman’s response was really arrogant and inappropriate. There is a reason that so many people are outraged, including the Prime Minister< is we love the game. We care for the players and don't want to see people getting injured.

    If you think Chara should have been held accountable for his actions please join the Facebook cause at http://bit.ly/hiKGld

  2. really ? suck it up it happened and we all hope for speedy recovery but he didnt do it on purpose u guys are dumb to think that

  3. I feel that zdeno chara did not purposely mean to injure him.. Air Canada is only willing to withdraw their sponsorship because it was a Canadian player that got hurt.. There has Bren Many other players that have been injured but all of a sudden they decide they decide they want consequence .. NHL stands for NATIONAL… Not time to favorize..!

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