Just coincidence? Well, maybe not if some of the Osgoode grads we talked to are right about their judgements.

Many feel the reason for this is based right in the classroom, where Osgoode graduate Gordon Kirke (LLB'69) - one of Canada's more prominent sports attorneys - has taught sports and entertainment law since 1987.

Graduates like Lawrence Brody (LLB'97) say Kirke gave many of those Osgoode students their taste for sports law. "Osgoode has a very strong sports and entertainment course and it's because of Kirke and the profile he's built for the school," says Brody, whose Toronto-based Prodigy Athletes and Artists represents professional soccer players around the globe.

Kirke, who was cited as one of the 25 most important people in the sports industry by The Globe & Mail, now serves as legal counsel for Philadelphia Flyers captain Eric Lindros, wrestler Bret (Hitman) Hart, race car driver Kathryn (Kat) Teasdale and Olympic snowboarder Tara Teigan.

The first Canadian director of the Sports Lawyers Association, Kirke has acted for the Toronto Blue Jays, the CFL's Toronto Argonauts and the NFL's Indianapolis Colts. He prepared the original papers which created the Blue Jays and has done contracts for past and present Blue Jays such as Roger Clemens, Joe Carter, Carlos Delgado and Roberto Alomar. And in August 1997, Kirke completed the Players First Report in connection with sexual abuse and harassment in hockey.

Hockey agent Mike McArthur (LLB'84) credits Kirke's teaching for the many hockey player agents to come out of Osgoode, but also thinks location plays a key role, since Toronto is the epicentre of the hockey world. "You're in the midst of a hockey hotbed," McArthur says. "The majority of the students in the school are Canadians and Canadians know the game very well. It just makes it more likely that sports lawyers who come out of Osgoode will be involved with hockey."

McArthur's love affair with hockey made sports law an attractive career option. He played junior B in his hometown of Simcoe, Ont., where he was a teammate of future Toronto Maple Leafs goalie Rick Wamsley. McArthur was offered a hockey scholarship to Harvard. "I was from a small town and I didn't know what Harvard was," McArthur says wistfully, "so I turned it down." Instead, he went on to captain the Osgoode hockey team.

But his interest in the world of agents was sparked when he did some legal work for NHL players for his Simcoe-based firm. "That started the ball rolling," said McArthur, who quickly discovered breaking into the high end of the business would be difficult. "Most of the NHL players have long-established relationships with their agents."

But determined to make his move into the business, he chose the same path players follow to achieve their own big-league dreams. Now McArthur works on hockey's frontiers, representing minor leaguers and up-and-coming junior prospects.

He has 11 clients in the junior and minor professional ranks, two of which he cites as "real possibilities" to become NHLers. Aiming at a client base between the ages of 17-23, McArthur has tried to sell himself through avenues which would appeal to this audience, including the Internet where he's set up his own Web site.

He might just be on to something. Opportunity is knocking in hockey, which is the fastest-growing sport in North America. The Atlanta Thrashers became the NHL's 28th franchise this season, and when the Columbus Blue Jackets and Minnesota Wild come aboard in 2000, it will be an even 30. An additional 113 teams play minor pro hockey. Call Ripley's, because, believe it or not, Texas actually has more pro hockey teams (13) than Canada (10).

It's in the Western Pro League, which houses 10 of those Texas-based teams, that McArthur has seen a return to what he describes as "the old days of the NHL. There's no security of contract," he says. "You get injured, you get released."

This is the first generation of hockey players who have played the game with independent representation. In February, 1957, Detroit captain Ted Lindsay, working with a New York attorney named Milton N. Mound, had unsuccessfully bid to organize a players' union. Hockey operated as a feudal system in that era - the players serving as serfs, the owners filling the role of nobles. The noblemen held firm and quashed the uprising.

Union organizers such as Lindsay, and Toronto's Jim Thomson and Tod Sloan, were banished to Chicago, the NHL equivalent of Siberia. In a six-team league where all but two teams qualified for the post-season, the Blackhawks reached the Stanley Cup playoffs just once between 1946 and 1959. It would be another decade before the players would attempt to organize again - this time successfully.

The year 1967 was not only Canada's centennial, it was a benchmark of change for Canada's game. Six new teams entered the NHL, doubling its size. The league also officially recognized the National Hockey League Players' Association, the first union for hockey players.

At the head of this organization was Toronto lawyer Alan Eagleson, who won the trust of the players when he brokered a two-year, $85,000 deal for Boston rookie phenomenon Bobby Orr. The Bruins had offered Orr a two-year pact worth $20,500. It was a trust which should have not been given so easily. Three decades later, Eagleson pleaded guilty to three counts of fraud in the United States and three more in Canada and paid $1 million in restitution to players from whom he had stolen money earmarked for their pension and disability funds.

Bob Goodenow, the Detroit lawyer who replaced the deposed Eagleson as head of the NHLPA, has put in place safeguards to ensure no such scandals will be repeated. Agents now must be certified by the NHLPA, or NHL teams may not deal with them. Contract negotiations are closely monitored by the NHLPA. Player salary structures, once guarded more closely than the Cadbury secret, are now readily available on the NHLPA's Web site.

So how much difference have agents made? Consider that in 1967, the average NHL salary was $17,000. Today, it soars above $1.17 million, an increase of more than 145 per cent. Even taking inflation into account, that's impressive.

The action is the attraction which draws most barristers to sports law, where the clients are high-profile celebrities and the top agents can also garner celebrity status. "It's a non-traditional line of work," Brody notes. "It's sort of a sexy way to practise law. "The legal skills come into it to a certain extent, but much of what I do is selling," he says.

The competition between agent and team can get as nasty as the game itself. "You get yelled at a lot," Brody says. "You're like a professional yelling catcher."

Brody works in an entirely different playing field and not only because soccer is played with shoes on grass instead of skates on a frozen pond. Professional soccer players' contracts are bought and sold by teams in what is referred to as a transfer deal. "It's like a mini commodities market," he says.

A soccer fan himself, Brody kicked around the idea for his future while still studying at Osgoode, much to the dismay of his classmates. "People thought I was crazy," Brody recalls. Today, he's one of the most prominent soccer agents in Canada, with clients in countries like Sweden, Denmark and Ghana. (On this day, he is negotiating a transfer deal which would send Thomas Morgan, captain of the Irish Olympic team, to Sondahl of the Norwegian League.)

The size and popularity of soccer attracted Brody to take his skills into this field. "You look at the NHL and it's one major league with twenty-some teams," he said. "In Europe alone, there are 51 soccer leagues. There are 92 teams in the English League and another 44 in the Scottish League."

Brody's journey is the ultimate drawing card of sports law - its endless possibilities. And it's a field that's allowed someone like McArthur to practise law in the small town of Simcoe, yet deal with clients in Russia. "It's taken me to places I never thought I'd go as a lawyer," he says. Or, as Brody puts it: "It makes every day exciting and that's not a bad way to earn a living."