30 years of Bettman

[edog37]

Well both yes and no.

And stabilized the league.
But with the euopean influence, the league got even more flavour. How could Bettman really fail in such a mission?? He had some terrible expansion drafts, where both Nashville and Atlanta where on the move. Atlanta moved. Columbis was a bottom feeder for years, a hole where careers came to die, and reach their first playoff after years, and first playoff round win like 15 years into their existence. Bad GMing ofC, but also bad strategic by Bettman. Arizona, Comumbus, Atlanta, Nashville, Ottawa has been poorly run. Ottawa had three years of no1 draftpicks before oilers, and was even worse than Oilers.

Bettman was in a position where he could not really fail. The hockeymarket exploded, thanks to rusdia got open, smaller countries like Sweden and Czech took big leaps, and Finland had ar the end international success and hockey became their national sport. With such grow on the sport, how could Bettman really fail?

He didnt move teams around, created stability, BUT he had a whole year of lockout, he has given arizona more leash than any other city in the hhistory of prosport. He has upset a lot of players, he has been scilent about former players concussion problems, and aldo soften tje game up to much. Blah blah blah.
Questions about quebec return after winnipegs comeback is answered,
30 teams is enough, no expanding
Some years later he expans anyway.
Not letting Quebec get a team. In the end. Bettman hasnt really been stellar.
Easy to dislike. Has a hard time to connect to fans. No charming personality at all. To closed up to public. Etc.

He gets a 2,5 out of 5 from me.

Bettman doesn't decide, the BoG does. That's what people on here never seem to grasp. If you have a problem with Quebec not getting a team back, blame them. The fact that Montreal voted against Quebec coming back as well as coming over from the WHA initially is telling. Other than pure nostalgia, Quebec is a small potatoes market that doesn't really move the needle economically for the league. Same goes with Winnipeg, but they were fortunate & had everything line up at the right time.

Don Macpherson: Why the NHL (and the Montreal Canadiens) said no to Quebec City

In "deferring" the Quebec City expansion bid, National Hockey League owners protected the Quebec monopoly of their partner, Geoff Molson.

montrealgazette.com

Yes, Bettman could have failed very easily. It wasn't the slam dunk you think it was. A lot of opportunities became available, but even to this day, the BoG is still made up of a lot of dinosaurs which in turn, puts the brakes on NHL potential. It was far worse under previous regimes. Bettman worked miracles by comparison & still does to this day.

 

[voyageur]

Do people not really understand that the commissioner isn't the "Super Owner" of the entire league?

The owners decided where their team is. The duo who bought the Winnipeg Jets moved them to Phoenix because THEY wanted them in Phoenix, not Gary Bettman.

Bettman's responsibility to the league is to keep the gravy train of free arenas going. Therefore, teams with leases shall not move, as cities aren't going to build arenas if their 30-year leases aren't ironclad.

The NHL BOG voted to expand to 30 teams by the end of the century. THEN they voted to hire Gary Bettman. Southern Expansion was not his strategy, it was it job description.

Isn't that really where Gary's troubles all started? You can't say he doesn't have a say in where the NHL owners put their franchises. He literally went to court to prevent Jim Basillie from moving a franchise from Arizona back to Canada, instead taking ownership of the franchise, through bankruptcy proceedings, and then finding short term investors to leverage debt for financing in the market for years after, until Glendale finally kicked the team out, after some shady accounting. Was that at the owners behest?

In principle the NHL wants stability, I think you are 100% accurate there. I think Gary was recruited from the NBA because the owners saw him as someone who could help hockey match the NBA's growth, which was rising considerably in the Michael Jordan era.

His NBA connections with Disney/ABC helped the NHL in broadcasting, where it was still lagging. Bettman's legacy in hockey is cable sports, that's for sure.

He brought in some of the wealthiest people into the exclusive club, through relocations and expansion. I believe it was his influence as much as anyone else's in the BoG. However the rich man's toys threw off the competitive balance of the league, created a distinct financial divide, and that became his primary issue at the turn of the century. The Salary Cap.

The NHL has operated since the late 90s expansion in the sphere where it tries to emulate some of the NBAs successes, but tries to avoid direct competition, outside of the major markets, where you carve off Raleigh, Columbus, Nashville, Las Vegas, Seattle, instead of Charlotte, Cleveland, Memphis, Utah, or Portland. You have market strengths in Buffalo, Pittsburgh, St. Louis.

One of his early successes was the World Cup taking the reins from the Canada Cup, a tournament that featured the best players in the world. Once the Olympic opportunity arose though, in 1998, the platform for the event was no match. Now the opportunity is even more limited, because one of the best hockey countries in the world is blacklisted, even in the Cold War days hockey crossed those ideological borders.

So in the sports market where the World Baseball Classic makes inroads, the NHL finds itself still struggling to get its share of the sports market, in an international way. Worst thing about it is somehow the All Star break in mid season became an official union paid absence for a prolonged period, with no major league sporting events other than the NBA competing against it.

 

[Xanlet]

I don't understand why people say the NHL is run so well under Bettman. He has multiple lock outs under his belt. Colin Campbell has been kept in charge of hockey operations for decades despite being laughably incompetent at his job. The department of player safety has been a joke for decades as well with suspensions amounting to a spin of the wheel. There has been zero consistency in rules or officiating. Also, for those who paid attention, Bettman was instrumental in downplaying concussions at every turn, literally putting the player's lives in danger which tragically led to several players passing away from, in all likelihood, multiple concussion syndrome.

And don't even get me started on the multiple failed or failing franchises under his tenure.

 

[Dirty Old Man]

And don't even get me started on the multiple failed or failing franchises under his tenure.

Oh, please do start. Please list all of those contractions we've had the last however many years.

NM, I'll do it for you. Ready? Here we go:




Done.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

Isn't that really where Gary's troubles all started? You can't say he doesn't have a say in where the NHL owners put their franchises. He literally went to court to prevent Jim Basillie from moving a franchise from Arizona back to Canada, instead taking ownership of the franchise, through bankruptcy proceedings, and then finding short term investors to leverage debt for financing in the market for years after, until Glendale finally kicked the team out, after some shady accounting. Was that at the owners behest?

Why yes, yes it was. This has only been explained countless times. The consequences of not getting involved in the Coyotes bankruptcy included, but were not limited to:

* Loss of control on who could be an owner when a franchise went into bankruptcy
* Loss of control on where a franchise could operate when that franchise went into bankruptcy
* Loss of protection of any franchise's territorial rights without the franchise's consent and indemnity payments for allowing another franchise in when some team went into bankruptcy and the winning bidder decided to pick up and move
* Destruction of franchise values from the 3rd point [which is ... more than vaguely important to owners]
* Loss of money provided to a franchise that then goes into bankruptcy [Balsillie wanted all the letters Jerry Moyes had signed with the NHL wiped out and the NHL to be treated as an unsecured creditor]
* Freezing / stop in some fashion of negotiations with cities over lease terms for franchises [no city is entering a deal with a team to build an arena/stadium with all related infrastructure knowing if the team goes into bankruptcy, those terms could be wiped out completely]
* Increased league instability from any owner who decided to step out of line when the league said 'no' on something and used bankruptcy in some fashion to get around league rules for their own benefit, at the expense of the league and the other owners

And all of this wasn't limited to the NHL. It would have applied to every pro sports league in the U.S., which is why every other league - especially MLB, NBA and NFL - filed documents with the court backing the NHL. It's also why not one other owner in any pro sport spoke out against the NHL and in favor of Balsillie: they all knew the implications of him being successful on their team's value (which they use as leverage for other business transactions) and their team's ability to get free shit from their state and local governments, and all of that > Balsillie moving a team to Hamilton.

Bettman does not control where teams operate. The owners do. He gives his ideas and thoughts, they can always run him over and do as they wish. They don't because he's looking at the league as a whole, and because when they've followed him he's made them a f***load of money. [And I'm sure he's had to remind them of 1995, when they panicked with the '95 season on the line and overran him at the last minute and spent the next 9 years paying for it.]

This is all so simple, and yet people still continue to think Bettman was installed 30 years ago and right after that the owners signed away all their control and made Bettman dictator for life, everything to the contrary be damned.

 

[KevFu]

Isn't that really where Gary's troubles all started? You can't say he doesn't have a say in where the NHL owners put their franchises. He literally went to court to prevent Jim Basillie from moving a franchise from Arizona back to Canada....Was that at the owners behest?

It absolutely was at the owners behest. Don't look at where JB was trying to take the team, look at the NEXT TIME someone tries it if JB was successful....

JB was trying to have a bankruptcy judge declare the territorial rights fee to be paid to Toronto and Buffalo. The the NHL Constitution gives the territory to the teams, and if another team wants into the market, the existing team gets to set the price.

Every single owner in the league was against JB being successful -- the OTHER sports Leagues sent letters to the court in support of the NHL's position! -- because anyone who finds the right bankruptcy judge could move their team across the street from your team.

 

[KevFu]

He brought in some of the wealthiest people into the exclusive club, through relocations and expansion. I believe it was his influence as much as anyone else's in the BoG. However the rich man's toys threw off the competitive balance of the league, created a distinct financial divide, and that became his primary issue at the turn of the century. The Salary Cap.

The distinct divide between rich teams and poor teams is something that exists in every sports league. The salary cap was absolutely necessary, just like the NFL and NBA decided. And baseball probably needs as well with the Mets spending $350m and the A's spending $50m.

The end result is that the NHL has the absolute best CBA compared to MLB (no cap), NFL (no guaranteed contracts, players are cut all the time. NBA (so many exemptions in their cap, far lower total compensation to players, and far, far, far less parity).


The major criticisms of Bettman that aren't related to where franchises are located are: Labor stoppages! MLB and NBA have had those, too. MLB lost the 1994 end of the season, the 1995 start of the season and two other start of seasons to labor issues. The NBA lost two half-seasons. The NFL hasn't had massive work stoppages because their union is too weak.

But the NHL came out SO FAR AHEAD with their CBA that the last extension took hours at the end of a Zoom meeting during COVID, because after they figured out the restart and how to handle the loss of revenue within the CBA, they just said "while we're all here and the world is shut down, might as well knock out a CBA extension."


I also don't think the "Trying to emulate the NBA's successes" is a fair assessment. Like, the NHL and NBA both had geographic conferences long before Gary Bettman worked for either league. The NHL went to six groups of five -- just like the NBA! -- but BASEBALL did it first (in 1994) and the NBA did it AFTER the NHL. The NHL did it for 1998, the NBA in 2004-05. And they all did it for the same reason: The Central Problem.

The NHL hasn't really copied anything from the NBA, except the brief period where they copied the All-Star game team captain drafts.

 

[joelef]

It’s funny how American sports is run . In every other industry things like drafts and salary caps would be illegal

 

[Bear of Bad News]

It’s funny how American sports is run . In every other industry things like drafts and salary caps would be illegal

Not in a collective bargaining situation, they wouldn't be.

 

[joelef]

Not in a collective bargaining situation, they wouldn't be.

I do wonder if the nfl ever expanded to Europe how that would ru work out since eu alllow free movement

 

[Yukon Joe]

I do wonder if the nfl ever expanded to Europe how that would ru work out since eu alllow free movement

That's been cited several times as a reason why the NHL might never expand to Europe.

Edit: my mistake - you said the NFL.

Well what's been proposed is a London franchise - which isn't part of the EU.

 

[voyageur]

It absolutely was at the owners behest. Don't look at where JB was trying to take the team, look at the NEXT TIME someone tries it if JB was successful....

JB was trying to have a bankruptcy judge declare the territorial rights fee to be paid to Toronto and Buffalo. The the NHL Constitution gives the territory to the teams, and if another team wants into the market, the existing team gets to set the price.

Every single owner in the league was against JB being successful -- the OTHER sports Leagues sent letters to the court in support of the NHL's position! -- because anyone who finds the right bankruptcy judge could move their team across the street from your team.

There's things that I don't know the entirety of in this event, which was 2009, so I will accept the information provided.

I am not sure how scrupulous other teams in other sports are with their franchises. The NFL paid a lot of money out in reparations to the city of St. Louis for basically pulling their franchise from under the rug to allow them to move to L.A. Because the NFL wanted L.A.

The NHL didn't want Hamilton, that's pretty clear. Quebec City as well.

And that's at least a significant amount of owners that can block any move, which Gary may or may not endorse. I understand who works for who, in this case.

From the NHL perspective, Jacobs is the kingpin, and if he doesn't like you, or your market, as he was apparently one of the people involved in vetoing Hamilton's previous attempts to get into the NHL, as an investor in the Sabres, your chances are slim. If his concession business can operate in your arena, you have a better chance. Not unlike how Molson's leveraged WHA expansion by forcing their products in Winnipeg, Edmonton. Anschultz is another one who has the hammer, with ASG having some clout beyond their franchise.

It's not a friendly business in that sense. You have to tow the line to get into the NHL.

 

[Tawnos]

There's things that I don't know the entirety of in this event, which was 2009, so I will accept the information provided.

I am not sure how scrupulous other teams in other sports are with their franchises. The NFL paid a lot of money out in reparations to the city of St. Louis for basically pulling their franchise from under the rug to allow them to move to L.A. Because the NFL wanted L.A.

The NHL didn't want Hamilton, that's pretty clear. Quebec City as well.

And that's at least a significant amount of owners that can block any move, which Gary may or may not endorse. I understand who works for who, in this case.

From the NHL perspective, Jacobs is the kingpin, and if he doesn't like you, or your market, as he was apparently one of the people involved in vetoing Hamilton's previous attempts to get into the NHL, as an investor in the Sabres, your chances are slim. If his concession business can operate in your arena, you have a better chance. Not unlike how Molson's leveraged WHA expansion by forcing their products in Winnipeg, Edmonton. Anschultz is another one who has the hammer, with ASG having some clout beyond their franchise.

It's not a friendly business in that sense. You have to tow the line to get into the NHL.

Toe*

The thing about the NFL stuff is that the move was done with their approval. The JB Hamilton move would not have been done with the NHL's approval. That's the fundamental thing about it... the league was in control.

If Balsille wanted to move the Coyotes to Seattle in that manner, it would have been almost exactly the same fight. The only difference would be the territorial factor, but the outcome ultimately would've been the same. It still would not have been allowed.

 

[KevFu]

It’s funny how American sports is run . In every other industry things like drafts and salary caps would be illegal

The funniest thing is, you have a ridiculously capitalist American society, where our sports leagues are closed, but have "socialism" within them: Revenue sharing, the draft, salary caps..

And in Europe, which is incredibly more socialist as a society, have sports leagues that are just ridiculously capitalist: No salary cap, no draft, very little revenue sharing, player rights are sold in a pure highest bidder capitalist manner.

It's almost like societies use sports as an escape from their particular reality!

 

[joelef]

The funniest thing is, you have a ridiculously capitalist American society, where our sports leagues are closed, but have "socialism" within them: Revenue sharing, the draft, salary caps..

And in Europe, which is incredibly more socialist as a society, have sports leagues that are just ridiculously capitalist: No salary cap, no draft, very little revenue sharing, player rights are sold in a pure highest bidder capitalist manner.

It's almost like societies use sports as an escape from their particular reality!

That’s not true many European and South American football clubs were purely created from political purposes ie redstar Belgrade

 

[Xanlet]

Oh, please do start. Please list all of those contractions we've had the last however many years.

NM, I'll do it for you. Ready? Here we go:




Done.

The league itself had to step in and take ownership of the Coyotes when their former owner declared bankruptcy, did that little matter slip your mind?

 

[Dirty Old Man]

The league itself had to step in and take ownership of the Coyotes when their former owner declared bankruptcy, did that little matter slip your mind?

Is it still here, 15 years on almost? How many seasons was the franchise absent? Or did that little matter slip my mind as well?

 

[CHRDANHUTCH]

The league itself had to step in and take ownership of the Coyotes when their former owner declared bankruptcy, did that little matter slip your mind?

league also stepped in on Pittsburgh, not once, but twice and Buffalo, not just Arizona

 

[edog37]

league also stepped in on Pittsburgh, not once, but twice and Buffalo, not just Arizona

once during the 1975 bankruptcy for a month. At no other point was the NHL considered an "owner" of the team. Not even during the 1999 shenanigans.

 

[CHRDANHUTCH]

once during the 1975 bankruptcy for a month. At no other point was the NHL considered an "owner" of the team. Not even during the 1999 shenanigans.

nope....Howard Baldwin rings more alarms, so it was twice in PIT before Lemieux and FSG Kept hockey in PIT, sorry

 

[KevFu]

once during the 1975 bankruptcy for a month. At no other point was the NHL considered an "owner" of the team. Not even during the 1999 shenanigans.

After Moyes/JB did what they did, the NHL had to be the owner of the Coyotes until a new sale could be made.

The Penguins and Sabres bankruptcies didn't have the same issues. Their bankruptcies were debt reorganization, and the new owners knew exactly what they were getting on the other side.

A better comparison would be the the Islanders after John Spano was found to be a fraud, because he was also violating NHL ownership rules like Moyes. The NHL didn't take ownership of the Islanders, because the previous Islanders owner never got paid for the sale of the team. The Islanders were rightfully HIS and returned to him. (I believe the NHL appointed someone to run the team day-to-day because Pickett was just out).

The NHL couldn't return the team to MOYES after the bankruptcy, because Moyes was a conspirator to run the Coyotes into the ground to get them into bankruptcy.

And that act slowed down the sale of the team to a next owner, because all kinds of information came out about the Coyotes financials in the bankruptcy hearing, which made the potential owners pause.

That kind of discovery didn't occur with the Islanders: the Islanders were actually worth more AFTER Spano than before, because Spano signed the massive TV deal in the interim.

 

[BKIslandersFan]

The league itself had to step in and take ownership of the Coyotes when their former owner declared bankruptcy, did that little matter slip your mind?

So? NBA did it. MLB did it.

 

[Xanlet]

Is it still here, 15 years on almost? How many seasons was the franchise absent? Or did that little matter slip my mind as well?

It's hard to tell since they are in a minor league barn and living off of life support from other franchises. But I'm sure having an NHL franchise play in a 5,000 seat arena is just a sign of how healthy the league is and what a great job Bettman is doing.

 

[Xanlet]

Are you Bettman supporters following recent events at all? Like the whole fiasco with the new merchandise supplier, Fanatics? This is an unequivocal downgrade, not a sign of a top sports league heading in the right direction.

What about digital ads? Bettman says his polls are showing fans find games more enjoyable with digital ads! So the question is, is he lying to put a good spin on them, or does he actually believe that nonsense? Either way, it's clear he doesn't care about eroding the fan experience of watching the game.

Also, is anyone going to try and defend the abysmal all star weekend this year? Even the players (Marchand and Zegras) have openly mocked how terrible it was.

On multiple fronts, the NHL is a circus, a clown show, an open joke among sporting fans in general. This is the legacy of Bettman, keeping the NHL as a perpetual farce that the mainstream of sports doesn't take seriously. Even on ESPN (Who now have rights to the NHL!) they have multiple personalities like Stephen A. Smith who literally don't think NHL franchises really count as a city's sports team!

I've heard the argument that, hey, the owners like him so he must be doing a great job. Well, I'm not an owner, I'm a fan, and from a fan's perspective, he's done a terrible job.

 

[S E P H]

So? NBA did it. MLB did it.

Wow, did not know this! Which teams were they?