Gerry Bettman: A Bad Person(?)

I would like, if I may, to take you on a journey back in time to a special year they saw fit to call 1993. Snow and Meatloaf had hit albums, Bill Clinton brought sexy back to the white house, and the NBA snuck a trojan horse monkey wrench into the works of a surging National Hockey League in the personage of one Gerry B. Bettman.

The NHL at the time was indeed surging; Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky shared time on Prostars, they were superhero teammates, equal and awesome. In fact, between the Mighty Ducks movie popularizing the hash-mark "triple deke" and league wide roster of arguably the best players ever (Lemieux, Roy, Gretzky, Hull (uggh), Messier, Gilmore, Fleury and on and on), the NHL was looking to take a real big space at the American sport table. North of the border the news was already out, it was getting less and less okay to make fun of "Rabid Canadian Hockey fans" and lo and behold, the with the playoff quarterfinals underway all signs pointed to Lord Stanley's Cup being decided between the two Canadian original six franchises. At that point in time no one I knew could give a flying fuck whether the league's new position of commissioner was occupied by Lucifer himself.

Then it happened, the high stick heard round the world. I'm not going to pretend that I can prove it, but my gut tells me Kerry Fraser got a talking to before hand from the new boss about his plans for California and Lord Stanley and I'm as sure of chicanery now as I was when I was thirteen. The rest is bizarre history; two work stoppages and a lost season, two great Canadian cities stripped of their franchises, and half a league's worth of failing teams a spitting distance from the Tropic of Cancer. And of course we have this summer's desert Blackberry clusterfuck.

Even putting all that aside, the real point is the NHL has underachieved. Tickets are just not selling in a bunch of key markets, various TV deals have left networks with shitty ratings shaking their heads and placing hockey somewhere between woman's basketball and elephant polo. Under Bettman the league has made lots more money, but opportunity for the sort of breakthrough everybody was expecting has come and gone.

I know there was a plan, and I'll even admit that a lot of the teams sputtering now could have been successful with less boneheaded management, and I'd be willing to let it slide if it wasn't for that smugness. That shit-eating grin, the way he's always touching Ron MacLean, the way he can just deny deny deny ever making mistakes in his long tenure.

Okay, maybe hockey fans are just disposed to dislike him. The guy is a politician, he's a businessman, and he sports a naturally sleazy disposition. His public character could possibly consciously channel Vince MacMahon because that fills a role and takes heat off the club owners for unpopular decisions. You tell all that to the tourists. Take a look into this man's eyes. This is a man who just plain doesn't like hockey. He likes money and he likes cameras and he likes power, but he just doesn't get it and worse, he doesn't care that he doesn't get it. For those of us that have genuine devotion to the game and it's place in our national identity, who equate Bettman's entire career with the worst sorts of treason, to have a fella who just doesn't care calling so many of the shots makes for a frustrating eighteen seasons. But brothers and sisters, there ain't no hero waiting in the wings to right all his wrongs, the new boss will more than likely be same as the old boss, but hope springs eternal, and just maybe...