Gary Bruce Bettman was born on a stormy Spring morning on June 2, 1952 in Queens, New York to a Jewish, ahh screw it. If you want to know his entire pathetic history, try Wikipedia. I'm more interested in his time as Commissioner of the National Hockey League, which began in 1993 and inexplicably continues to this day. Inexplicably is probably the wrong word. The reason he is still there is because of money. I'm sure if you were to ask him about it he would give you his usual Lawyer jargon and never actually come close to answering the question.
The team owners brought Bettman in to raise revenues, and that he has done. They've gone up from $400 Million to $2.2 Billion. Pretty impressive. What's not so impressive is that he has ruined the game that I have come to love over the last 30 some odd years. He knows as much about Hockey as Sarah Palin knows about the Middle East. (Which isn't much in case you thought I might be a Republican.)
Since he became Commissioner the league has added 6 new teams, all of them in the South. He's also taken teams out of Winnipeg and Quebec City and moved them to Phoenix and Colorado. All of this was done for the sole purpose of getting a major American tv contract. So now we have teams in places like Carolina and Nashville where most people don't care about Hockey, and because they went from 24 teams to 30 teams, they've now watered down what was a great product. I still think I could've made the Columbus team in it's first year if I'd tried out and I can barely skate backwards. None of this mattered to Bettman. Money, money, money.
Of course he insists he has nothing against Canada, and that may well be true. He's the type of person that would sell his Grandmother a Toyota. Canada already has tremendous support from a huge majority of the population and so they don't matter to Bettman. He's much more interested in the people of Dallas and Tampa who've never seen a sheet of ice and don't particularly want to. The fact that no Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup since Montreal in 1993 (the year Bettman got the job) and since then both Carolina and Tampa have won Stanley Cups makes me sick to my stomach.
One thing that I discovered in my countless hours (kidding) of research, is that the year after Bettman took the NHL job the average ticket price in the US was $35.07. The average ticket price for Canadian teams was $29.93. This year the average for US teams was $46.57 for an increase of $11.50, and the average for Canadian teams was $70.66 for an increase of an incredible $40.73! Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. It's important to remember that we the fans are the reason that the NHL exists and that Bettman even has his job. Without us shelling out the big bucks for a ticket in the nosebleeds, a crappy hot dog and an overpriced jersey made in China, not to mention an overpriced program and $30 for parking, there is no money to pay the players.
This brings me to the topic of the day, the dreaded conspiracy theory. I love conspiracies. W. Bush was behind 911, Nixon was set up and Elvis is a soccer ref somewhere in South America. Ray Ferraro says it is absolutely not possible for a conspiracy to exist in the NHL and he says that it's an insult to every player who's ever played the game. Since he is a former player, I don't think he really is being objective about the whole issue. If there is a conspiracy, I don't think players and coaches would be involved. It's not like Bettman would be talking to the refs before each game to influence the outcome, but there are many many questionable incidents since Bettman took office. The facts don't lie. I don't think there's any question that the NHL wants Chicago, Washington, Phoenix and LA to win and I have no problem with that. As long as they don't try to influence the outcome. If I'm not mistaken, Bettman has admitted in the past that an NHL final involving two Canadian teams would mean financial disaster for the league. It appears to me that the only way a Canadian team will ever win a Stanley Cup is if two Canadian teams make the final.
If you look at the Vancouver-LA series for example, in game two in overtime the Canucks are called for too many men when Kevin Bieksa gets hit with the puck as he's going off the ice. In the rule book that is clearly not a penalty, yet a linesman makes the call. Normally in overtime, even if he played the puck they would overlook it. They don't want to determine the outcome of a game with a call like that. Very questionable. LA by the way scored on the power play to win the game. In the following game the puck goes off of Daniel Sedin's skate as he was stopping in front of goalie Jonathon Quick. Clearly there was no kicking motion. Distinct or otherwise. Clearly, under the rules that is a goal. The refs on the ice called it a goal. Yet it went back to Toronto for them to review. Eight minutes went by and they overturned the call. First of all if you have to look at that play for eight long minutes to see if it was a distinct kicking motion, there was nothing 'distinct' about it. Second, Sedin had less than a half a second to react to the puck coming across while a guy is pushing him towards the net and he is trying to stop. It's simply not possible to kick it in intentionally. The fact that Sedin wasn't even looking at the puck doesn't seem to have any relevance. What pisses me off is the Bettman press conference the following day. He insists the puck was kicked in and they made the right call. He says what Sedin did was dangerous and somebody could have been hurt. I would suggest to Daniel Sedin that next time he's flying towards the net and being pushed from behind that he doesn't turn his skates to stop because that's dangerous. And when he runs the goalie into the net and through the end boards I hope that Bettman will help the LA goalie with his rehabilitation whenever he comes out of his coma. I mean really. Does he think we're all stupid? He also points to this DVD that was sent out to all the clubs that clears up any confusion on the rules. Rule 49.2 deals with kicked in goals. He claims this DVD will prove that the Sedin goal should not have counted. So I watched it. And it made me even angrier. Three of the goals that they say should count involved more of a kicking motion than the disallowed Sedin goal. Bettman, in typical lawyer fashion, is just trying to save his own ass and hope that this all blows away. He says if there was a mistake on the play (which he's quick to say there wasn't) everyone just needs to move on. Mistakes happen. I disagree. A ref will make a mistake on the ice during a game. Hockey is easily the toughest sport to officiate. But the point of video review is to overturn bad calls and get it right. This did the opposite. When you look at numerous angles of a play for eight long minutes, there should be no mistakes.
The only hockey person I've heard that thought it was kicked in was Kelly Hrudey, but then he's a former goalie and thinks that no goal should count. Even Scotty Bowman said they got it wrong, but of course Gary Bettman knows more about hockey than Scotty Bowman. I mean, what has Bowman ever done? Besides winning eleven Stanley Cups I mean.
Apparently I'm not the only one that thinks Gary Bettman is a waste of space. Just go to Garybettmansucks.com , Firebettman.com or Firegarybettman.com for more information. It must be nice to be so popular.
What the team owners have done is sold their souls to the Devil (Bettman, in case you haven't been paying attention) for the almighty Dollar and screwed it's most dedicated fans. I don't know if they could get rid of Bettman if they tried to. He's here to stay. I wouldn't be surprised if he moved the Oilers to Albequerque and the Flames to New Orleans. Hey, why don't we move the Canucks to San Diego? They already have an Orca in the logo, they could be sponsored by Sea World.
Maybe it's time for us Canadian fans to take back the game that we love. I say let's form our own league and put teams in Victoria, Kelowna, Saskatoon, and Halifax. Maybe even Winnipeg, Hamilton and Quebec City. Go a little smaller. Lower salaries and ticket prices. Probably not possible, but I'd be all for it. Even if it meant that Andrew Alberts was quartebacking the point on the power play.
A conspiracy? You be the judge. It wouldn't shock me but I'm not completely convinced just yet. Just keep an eye on the big market American teams and see for yourself. Especially in game sevens. Are they getting the favorable calls? All I can say is that if Nashville or Phoenix wins the Stanley Cup this year, I'm going to start watching Figure Skating.
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