Auspicious Beginnings

Since Season 15, Lionel Byrde was a member of the Texas Renegades. Not only was he one of the figureheads of that historic era of Renegades, maintaining close relationships with both the most incendiary members of the Texas locker room while also appearing to the rest of the league as a generally upstanding individual, but he was the captain of the team when they won back-to-back Challenge Cups in Season 20 and Season 21. Lionel Byrde’s numbers may not have won him many personal awards, but they were impressive. After spending one season as a send-down, he immediately made an impact for the Renegades with 17 goals and 15 assists on his rookie campaign. This effort would win him the Ryan Jesster Award as the league’s best rookie, and would also cement his status as one of the Renegades’ premier stars.

Season 17 was perhaps Byrde’s best for the Renegades, as he notched an impressive 24 goals alongside 20 assists, and left the season as a whopping +17 — an impressive stat-line for that era of the league. While that proved to be the high point for Byrde’s production as a goal scorer, he would continue to record 35+ point seasons almost every year he played, save for a down year in which he recorded a respectable 34. As part of this, he even managed to record one 30 assist season. Along the way, he won not only those two Challenge Cups previously noted, but also managed to pick up three consecutive gold medals as part of a stacked Canadian team.

If we were to end this story here, Lionel Byrde would have had an uncomplicated and storied career. He was never the best player on his team, but he was always one of the most consistent, and his leadership on and off the ice helped to define the golden era of the Renegades. But unfortunately, the story does not end there: leading in to Season 24, Lionel Byrde decided to leave the Texas Renegades. In some cases, you can forgive a retirement tour, in the event that a player really wants to try for a cup and their former team needed to rebuild, or perhaps as part of a shift in management and a change in direction.

But that isn’t what happened.


The Greed of Lionel Byrde

Lionel Byrde abandoned the Texas Renegades after Season 23 out of sheer, unadulterated greed. The Minnesota Chiefs, then being helmed by notable general manager Sergei Karpotsov, were in the middle of a very brief contending window. One of their key rivals, the Manhattan Rage, had just signed star defenceman Barney Stinson, and they needed to answer somehow. That answer came in the form of Lionel Byrde, but it didn’t come cheap. The exact terms of the contract no doubt helped to lead to a significant rule change. Due to the fierce negotiating of Lovell Kunkel Agencies, Lionel Byrde was able to secure a contract worth 21 million dollars in the first year, and 7 million in the second. At the time, Byrde already knew he intended to retire: and this was his ploy to have a large nest egg to leave with.

It wouldn’t be long after that player agencies were officially banned from the league, a move intended to protect general managers and owners from the difficulties of dealing with some of the more scrappy agents. While this was a controversial decision at the time, it may have aided managers: but the damage was done for the Minnesota Chiefs. It was a bold move on Karpotsov’s part, a gamble that he knew full well might not pay off. And pay off it did not. At a time when perennial all-star Alonzo Garbanzo was earning a meagre two million a year, and perennial free agent Pedro Sarantez took a gamble on his own two million contract, Lionel Byrde at up a full third of the team’s cap space, give or take.

This incarnation of the Minnesota Chiefs fell short of expectations.

In his first season for the team, Lionel Byrde scored just 6 goals. While he added 30 assists, this remained a significant departure from his 19 goal season that he recorded in his last season in Texas. He was still a good player, certainly — still Lionel Byrde. But he wasn’t the 21 million dollar player he was signed to be. In part, this is because Byrde knew he had one foot out the door. None of that money went towards his own personal development: it went right into the bank account, where it would stay. The once-Renegades captain became the archtypical retirement-tour veteran, going through the motions but never putting in that extra work. The Chiefs did adequately in the playoffs, but they lost in the Eastern Conference Finals to the Steelhawks, 4-1, as Byrde failed to exhibit the leadership that had made him a hero in Texas.

There were even rumours at the time that Lionel Byrde’s arrival with the team delayed the arrival of one of the team’s top prospects at that point, Winston Windsor. The same season that Windsor recorded 9 points in 10 games for Great Britain in the IIHF, he found himself sent back to the minors. Much the same happened the season after. It wasn’t until Lionel Byrde’s final retirement and exodus from the team that the Chiefs front office finally allowed him to leave the SMJHL. While these rumours have never been confirmed, the numbers don’t lie: and they spell ByrdeMan.

In Byrde’s second season with the Minnesota Chiefs, he had a startling return to form. Scoring 20 points and 21 assists for a retirement season of 41 points. However, he also recorded a career high 93 penalty minutes as he began to slow down, and began playing dirtier to try to make up for it. At the same time, the production of other players on the team, such as the enigmatic and sometimes controversial Chernika Banananov began to decline. While Byrde’s season looked good on paper, some saw it for what it was: a player in terminal decline playing a more selfish game to the detriment of his team. Accordingly, the Chiefs had a worse regular season outing that year, and though they made it to the Eastern Conference Finals again, they would drop that series 4-1 to the West Kendall Platoon.

The Lionel Byrde gamble didn’t pay off. The season after he left, the team was strapped of players and assets, and failed to make the playoffs. The team made the playoffs the year after, but would lose in the first round. Indeed, in the ten seasons that followed Byrde’s bloated contract and negative influence over the team, the Chiefs would only win a total of four playoff games, and would never make it out of the first round. Most of the time, they were swept. The team has had a difficult history ever since then, and though much of that cannot be blamed on the malicious behaviour of Byrde himself, it’s hard to deny that his tenure with the team was the beginning of the end. In the seasons that followed, multiple Chiefs players would follow Sergei Karpotsov to Edmonton, where they were able to win a Challenge Cup. Meanwhile, the Chiefs (now Monarchs) struggled through false-starts and waning hope.


Conclusion

One wonders what the legacy of Lionel Byrde might have been if he had of opted to stay in Texas, or even if he had of retired after his final year with the team. It’s hard to imagine a player having such a storied career for the first eight seasons, only to leave a black mark over his career and his reputation in his final two seasons. His single-handed destruction of the Minnesota Chiefs is clear: what is less clear is the way in which he sabotaged the careers of those he interacted with along the way. His influence was such that, nearly thirty seasons later, he convinced the management of the Buffalo Stampede to release young prospect Will Windsor before he could even make it to the SHL — another harsh blow to the Windsor family as part of a one-sided blood feud that seems destined never to end.

If there can be any moral to this sad story, it’s to take care in free agency. Sometimes, a major free agent can be the spark that a team needs to make a run. In other cases, the star you think you’re getting turns out to be a poison pill.