Bettman is the owner’s perfect little tool. Think about it. Owners have been making money for years and years as the league over expanded into ridiculously NON hockey markets like Nashville, Tampa, Miami ...
Well now that house of cards might be collapsing. Teams in these non hockey markets are failing bad, and with the new league revenue sharing it's only a matter of time before more and more owners realize they are basically paying for a welfare hockey system. Why should the Detroits, Phillys, New York, Leafs of the league have to subsidize crappy teams like the Phoenix's, Nashville's, etc ...
Bettman basically blocking the purchase and moving of the Coyotes is a joke. Here is a team that is losing $40 million dollars a year and has a value of $140 million (according to Forbes) and Bettman would rather fund the team through the league welfare system then take an off of $212 million from Jim Balsillie.
It's clear that Bettman is HATED by diehard fans throughout the hockey world. The post lockout flavor of hockey is ridiculous. Instead of truly fixing obstruction the league destroyed the passion and flow of the sport. Lifting your stick off the ice is NOT hooking. Placing your blade into someone's mid section and TUGGING is hooking. Just look at the instigator rule (which doesn’t appear to apply to certain players). Without teams living in fear of McCarty or Probert the new way to “enforce†in the league is through one-sided bias suspensions or cheap stick work. Could you imagine if Crosby or Malkin played in the early 90's or 80's?
The Penguins were having their lunch handed to them and what do they do? They slash and fill the game with all kinds of sissy stick work instead of manning up and dropping the gloves. Why? Because this what Bettman and Colon Campbell want. Bettman clearly never played hockey and Campbell spent his playing days living in fear of tough hockey players. I always remember a perfect example of how dropping the gloves CAN change a series. In the 2000 playoffs the Penguins had taken games #1 and #2 in Philly. They were in total control of the series and heading home. As game #2 wound down and the Penguins were lining up for a faceoff after an empty net goal Rick Tocchet and the whole line dropped their gloves and a huge brawl ensued. It was the wakeup call a veteran like Tocchet knew the team needed. The Flyers never lost another game that series.
How in the work can the league “mandate†no message sending on the eve of the playoffs? Isn’t there a competition committee that needs to vote on rule changes?
Then you suspend Carcillo for one game but apply a different set of rules to other “special†players because they don’t have a pattern of that behavior? So if I hit someone with my car but it’s not my pattern does that law not apply to me? How about just enforcing the rule based on what the player did and not the name or logo on the players jersey?
Until this brass of this league realize that “real†hockey fans do not want to see teams standing in a box swinging their sticks like wind-shield wipers killing off penalty after penalty they never will get it. Fighting and the flow of this game are what made it great. If you remove either then the game dies.
