Emergency players fund. Helps former players, their families(e.g widows) members of the hockey community, etc. also helps those people with mental health, substance abuse, etc.
It's pretty vague, I don't think there's a ton of information out there on exactly how the program disperses funds.
At the end of the day Hartman pays into the union/PA, so if he wants to appeal the decision they have to file one on his behalf.
The issue is that the "victim" in this case (stutzle) doesn't have a means of "appealing" the suspension, and demanding a bigger suspension, say 15 or 20 games. The mechanics of the suspension/appeal system dont allow for the suspension to increase, only decrease. If stutzle was allowed to request a larger suspension, I suppose the NHLPA would have to act on his behalf as well, but that's not how the system works.
At the end of the day players like Hartman are going to appeal a suspension of this magnitude every time. He's earned something like 16M pretax in his career, and this is going to cost him .5M gross income from his money this year. This suspension (his 5th) is probably going to cost him even more on future contracts. Maybe he gets bought out, buried in the minors, or whatever It's a potentially career defining suspension that could cost him a lot more than just the .5M to the players fund.
