If you are in a leadership position, it is virtually guaranteed that you will anger somebody with your decision making process at some point. Gary Bettman, Commissioner of the National Hockey League is quite familiar with doing so. As the NHL Commissioner he is required to answer to the thirty team owners work with the head of the NHL Players Association (the labor union for players) to come up with a collective bargaining agreement. While owners may be happy with the job Bettman has done ensuring their pockets are lined, the NHL has had three long labor disputes in Bettman’s tenure, including one that wiped out the entire 2004-2005 season, earning the NHL the inglorious distinction of being the only one of the major North American sports leagues to lose an entire season due to a labor dispute.
No group of people has a more antagonistic relationship with Gary Bettman than fans of the league. It’s normal for fans to criticize sports commissioners but Gary Bettman inspires such vitriol from me and millions of other fans that during the presentation of the Stanley Cup, which hockey fans hold in an almost messiac fashion, we will jeer him without mercy. This chorus of boos is to to the point where the boos at the rink are audible to the TV audience. Does Adam Silver get booed when he presents the Larry O’Brien trophy? Maybe by a couple of hecklers but nothing so egregious it ruins the moment. Gary Bettman is held in such low regard by hockey fans that one unfortunate Twitter user made a bet that if the Chicago Blackhawks and Los Angeles Kings lost in the first round of the 2016 Playoffs he would get a tattoo of Bettman’s likeness on his behind.
One of the biggest complaints that fans have about Bettman is his attempt to put teams in nontraditional markets at the expense of markets where ice hockey is already accepted and loved. For example Bettman authorized the creation of the Atlanta Thrashers in 1999 despite Atlanta having a hockey team in the 1970’s and 1980 that ha to relocate due to lack of interest (that team is now the Calgary Flames). This team failed and had to move to Winnipeg when no local ownership could be found and became the second iteration of the Winnipeg Jets. Speaking of Winnipeg, Bettman has also overseen the relocation of the original Winnipeg Jets to Phoenix Arizona.
That isn’t a typo, he put a hockey team in Phoenix, Arizona and made the league bend over backwards to protect it from relocating after it declared bankruptcy in 2010 even when the team could barely attract 60% capacity. So when Gary Bettman says the league will make an expansion decision I cringe at the thought rather than cheer. I am scared to think of an NHL team in Las Vegas which seems to be the preferred destination, not because of gambling but because the move to another non-traditional market even after the debacle of some of these non-traditional teams hemorrhaging money makes little sense.
What would make what I expect to be a bad decision worse is that Las Vegas is not the only candidate city with a sparkling new arena, Quebec City also has that and unlike Las Vegas, Quebec has had an NHL team before. The Quebec Nordiques played from 1972 to 1995 and left because of a bad Canadian economy and marketing issues. The world of 2016, is much more globalized than in 1995 which alleviates some of the francophone marketing pressures, Canada is in much better economic conditions, and the fan base for the Nordiques is as rabid as ever (they still travel to NHL games in other cities and make it known they want their team back.
When the NHL takes a vote on June 22nd I expect that Quebec City, because of its location in a traditional hockey hotbed, will be tossed aside in favor of unproven grounds in Las Vegas and the league under Bettman would rather have thirty-one teams than give Quebec a team, no matter the logistical sense it would make. I hope I am wrong but Gary Bettman has disappointed me so many ways and so many times I refuse to be optimistic about this. My Nordiques hat will remain a vintage item and a great opportunity to grow the game in traditional stronghold will be snapped up into oblivion, the same way a weak slap shot would be by a goaltender. Your NHL Commissioner, Gary Bettman.
