It wasn’t the Stanley Cup, but Law’17 students Brad Morris and Conor O’Muiri pulled out a big win on Nov.7 at the 4th annual Hockey Arbitration Competition of Canada held in Toronto. 

Thirty-two teams from 16 universities throughout Canada and one from the United States competed in simulated NHL salary arbitration hearings that involve real NHL players who went through the process with the League this past summer. 

For Morris and O’Muiri, two students who grew up playing sports and who still play hockey for the intra-mural Queen’s Law hockey team, “having the chance to combine hockey with our legal training was an awesome opportunity and probably the reason we did so well in this competition.” 

Queen’s sent four teams this year, and was very successful with three teams advancing to the quarter-finals, and two teams facing off in the semi-finals. Ultimately, Morris and O’Muiri advanced to the finals and defeated a team from Syracuse University to win the 2015 Hockey Arbitration Competition of Canada.

In this competition, students are given the opportunity to sharpen their oral and written advocacy skills within the specialized context of an NHL salary arbitration proceeding.

The arbitrations are judged by prominent members of the NHL community including lawyers who have represented clubs in arbitration proceedings, players’ agents including Don Meehan of Newport Sports, one of the top hockey agencies in the world, and Ian Cooper, an NHL analytics guru who runs a popular hockey analytics website. 

The final round concerned the 2015-16 salary of Edmonton Oilers defenseman Justin Schultz. Queen’s represented the Edmonton Oilers and was tasked with justifying a salary lower than the $3.9 million midpoint. 

O’Muiri credits the Queen’s team’s success to the time they allocated to their rebuttal. “We decided beforehand that deconstructing opposing counsel’s argument was the most effective use of our time, while reinforcing our own themes and comparable players.”  

Morris noted another important factor in their win. “We listened to each of the arbitrator’s comments and feedback after each round robin match, and then applied what they said in the playoff round.” 

Both students also credit their Queen’s Law colleagues for their help going into the finals, bouncing ideas off of them and helping them to find angles to rebut the opposing counsel’s argument. “The competition just reinforced the notion that Queen’s Law is such a strong community,” they said.

The teams from Queen’s Law prepared weeks in advance for this competition, compiling written briefs based off of research into the NHL Collective Bargaining Agreement, the players at issue and comparable players. Brad mentioned that in their research, they noticed “a lot of teams made the mistake of using inadmissible comparable players – referencing contracts that had already expired – or players who were ultimately irrelevant comparables.” They then practised their submissions, especially focusing on their rebuttal to opposing counsels’ submissions.

The students from the four Queen’s teams have gained valuable oral and written advocacy skills and learned how to quickly assess the opposition’s argument and develop their own compelling rebuttals. 

“Like most sports fans, we love to debate the merits of player signings” Morris and O’Muiri said. With this win at the Hockey Arbitration Competition of Canada, they’ll certainly have more credibility when they’re debating this topic with friends and fans in the future.