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Saving Hockey
by Alanah McGinley on 05/23/08 at 03:39 PM ET
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From Matthew Futterman at the Wall Street Journal,
For National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman, rock bottom arrived long before he watched three of his teams go bankrupt and canceled the 2004-2005 season.
It came in 1999, when Mr. Bettman looked at his major moves during his first seven years heading the NHL and saw that they were going to wreck professional hockey in North America. For one thing, the gap was widening between rich and poor teams, especially those in smaller Canadian cities and in the Southern and Western U.S., where Mr. Bettman had pushed the league to expand. Salary growth was also out of control. Worst of all, a once lightning-fast game was slowly turning into a boring grind.
“I watch the game—70, 80 games a year,” Mr. Bettman, now in his 16th year heading the league, said last week. “You could see what was happening.”
continued... a very in-depth article on the mistakes and accomplishments of the NHL over recent years
Update 4:45pm ET: From CBC’s Playoff Blog, an article arguing that the darkest days of the NHL have since passed.
Filed in: NHL Talk, NHL Business of Hockey | KK Hockey | Permalink
Tags: gary+bettman,
Comments
Funny you say that—I’ve always thought that was weird, too.
It actually only occurred to me today for the first time that he’s probably only referring to games he sees in person at the arenas. And that would make 70-80 a fairly high number.
Posted by Alanah McGinley from British Columbia on 05/23/08 at 03:14 PM ET
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Does anyone else think it’s a little weird that he only watches “70, 80 games a year”?
With the Red Wings alone, I watch 82, and with games on twice a week on Versus, and two per week on HNIC, I probably watch at least one non-Wings game per week.
Posted by Nathan from Jonny Ericsson's ice cream truck on 05/23/08 at 03:11 PM ET