On the Forecheck
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The Commish Goes Honky-Tonkin’
by Forechecker on 02/19/09 at 10:10 PM ET
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Prior to tonight’s Blues/Predators game here in Nashville, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman took questions from the local media, and your humble scribe got to sit in on the proceedings…
David Boclair of the Nashville City Paper did a better job writing it up than I ever would, though, so check out his summary. The AP writeup featured over at USA Today also gets into Bettman’s comments debunking the talk in the Canadian press about the Predators “papering the house” in order to hit the key figure of 14,000 average paid attendance.
I’ll add that I did ask a couple questions, although my most hard-hitting moment came before the session even started, when I almost wiped out the Commish as he walked up behind me towards the podium:
1. On whether the NHL would consider holding openers in North American non-NHL cities like Winnipeg, Kansas City, or Las Vegas. The answer there was that since fans in those markets have access to the NHL in nearby cities or on TV, it doesn’t hold the same appeal to do that as it does to reach out to European fans who are interested in the league, but can’t follow it so easily.
2. I asked whether Jim Balsillie’s recent sanctioning by the Ontario Securities Commission and the US SEC might inhibit his chances for NHL ownership, but he refused to bite the bait there, saying he had no reason to get into specifics about Balsillie at this time.
Filed in: Nashville Predators | On the Forecheck | Permalink
Tags: gary+bettman,
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About On the Forecheck
Dirk Hoag is the Forechecker, churner of NHL stats and analysis. Having started over 10 years ago writing for websites like In the Crease and e-Sports, Dirk launched On The Forecheck in 2005 to cover the Nashville Predators as well as apply statistical analysis to NHL hockey.
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