“The second thing that Bettman said that confirmed a lot of things that I believed was that the teams had no idea what was going on. There were times over the past couple of years I would ask teams about this and they would say: “we honestly don’t know,” and I didn’t know whether or not to believe it. I came to believe it but in the beginning, like a lot of people I didn’t believe it, but Bettman did confirm that which is that they kept the teams in the dark about what they learned, and I know that bothered teams. It bothered some of the teams, it frustrated some teals to a great deal.
Look at Calgary, a week ago they allowed Dube a mental leave and then two days later
Carter Hart goes on mental leave and we start to realize what is happening and the Flames took a lot of criticism for it. But based on what Bettman said it’s pretty obvious here the Calgary Flames did not know how close this was getting or how serious this situation… or even more how more serious this situation has become. I know the teams were really bothered by it, but Bettman clearly felt this was the best way to do it. It just confirmed that a lot of these teams were in the dark.”
– Elliotte Friedman, 32 Thoughts