Gary Bettman Visiting Cornell

From the event profile...

"On November 10th, the ILR Sports Management Club will host NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman. Come watch Commissioner Bettman speak on his path to the top of the National Hockey League, and participate in the Q&A session afterwards. Hope to see you there!"

Date: Saturday, November 10, 2007
Time: 10:00am - 11:00am
Location: 305 Ives Hall

That q&a session could go poorly if some of the people on here show up

I was thinking the same thing...I might just go.

agreed. The man is a buffoon.

Rich S
agreed. The man is a buffoon.

Easy, Rich - some people on here may disagree with how he leads the NHL, but I doubt you'll see too many personal insults like that one.

I hope someone asks him why he is still considering expansion with so many teams running at a loss, and the talent already spread so thin.

Perhaps there is some Cornell Hockey story I've never heard about Bettman, other than that he is an alumnus of the best of the seven schools, ILR, but I don't understand what your complaints are about.

I follow pro hockey very closely, granted the AHL more so than the NHL, but in my opinion Bettman's hard line on the salary cap and revenue sharing was one of the best moves the NHL has ever seen. To quote Luke DeCock, thanks to him "a new competitive balance exists in a league once dominated by a handful of powerful franchises." With double-digit revenue growth the league is making more money. Perhaps the second best outcome, next to the cap, was the elimination of clutching and grabbing that was so prevalent in the league, and was arguably the only reason the Devils won the cup in 1995.

He came upon a league with a difficult future ahead of it, and has done more for the NHL in a country that draws 100,000 fans to watch cars go in a circle than any of us can complain about.

Yeah, there have been bankruptcies and the two work stoppages and hockey depends on gate revenue as opposed to TV revenue, but you don't see anybody putting an * on Wayne Gretzky's pucks or half the Columbus Blue Jacket team being arrested (Bengals) or players entering the stands to fight fans or referees accepting bribes from the mob.

you don't get praised for digging yourself halfway out of the hole that you dug yourself. The lockout was necessitated by the 90's expansion that left the league spread too thin. The clutching and grabbing that was curtailed post-lockout happened under Gary's watch. Not to mention that many of us have never gotten over the fact that he's David Stern's man, and has never been a 'hockey guy.'

Don’t forget about how much of the recent revenue growth is due to the strengthening of the Canadian Dollar. Every Canadian team's revenue could be up 16-17% over the past year simply because the loonie is that much stronger.

Bettman didn't drive expansion; he was hired by the owners to implement it. They saw the NBA model and wanted to duplicate it, so naturally they hired Stern's heir.

The failure to capture significant long-term nationwide media dollars was the biggest reason for the economic problems that the league faced. How many of the expansion/relocated teams could be considered failures? San Jose has frequently fielded Cup-contending teams; Anaheim reached the finals twice and won it once; Tampa Bay has won a cup as has Dallas, and Carolina. Even Florida reached the finals. Minnesota has an annually strong team.

I don't know the hard annual attendance figures at the expansion/relocation sites, but I think most have done pretty well in that regard.

Since the owners wanted to capture big media dollars, it seemed logical to them that expansion was necessary -- would people in Dallas or Tampa or Phoenix be likely to watch the NHL if they didn't have a local team to follow?

Not having a salary cap at the same time that free agency took off was a big problem, since teams in big cities with long-time fan bases were able to capture more local media and advertising dollars than others, allowing them to pay more for good and marginal players and therefore hurt the finances of the other teams who were competing for players. But not having the cap or full revenue sharing in place is not Bettman's fault -- the players were not willing to agree to such a thing, until a hard line was taken recently (and Bettman kept the owners on a tight leash during those negotiations and lockout).

The fault that can be found lies not with expansion, but rather with the implementation of the strategy for capturing nationwide media money (or at least the results of the strategy). I'm no marketing expert, so I can't say what should have been done differently. Whether it was the decision to go with FOX for the over-the-air contract, or a failure to recognize when rule changes would have helped the excitement factor, or something else, I don't know.

BTW, I always find it interesting when people claim expansion left the talent spread too thin -- wasn't it during this time that Canadians were complaining that too many Europeans were coming over and taking away Canadian hockey jobs?

Beeeej

Rich S
agreed. The man is a buffoon.

Easy, Rich - some people on here may disagree with how he leads the NHL, but I doubt you'll see too many personal insults like that one.

Really? I expected many personal insults worse than that.

amerks127
"On November 10th, the ILR Sports Management Club will host NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman.

Well, this will fill the time between now and Saturday nicely.

I have many thoughts and opinions on this topic, but since I'm low on time now I'll say this for now:

One of the best things that Bettman did early in his NHL tenure was to finally get the game on national TV outlets. Fast forward to now, and the game is now considered to be media poison and a national punchline. How we got from point A to point B will be the subject of this thread, and it's incredibly interesting (if not depressing) to fill in the blanks.

You can't blame it on the work stoppage, the popularity was hemmorhaging beforehand, and baseball has not only survived numerous work stoppages, but thrived coming out of them.

evilnaturedrobot
The clutching and grabbing that was curtailed post-lockout happened under Gary's watch. Not to mention that many of us have never gotten over the fact that he's David Stern's man, and has never been a 'hockey guy.'

Gary Bettman may be responsible for many things, but not "clutching and grabbing" in hockey, college, minor league or major league. Go get a tape of any Islanders playoff game during the five Cup run or after. Start with the 7th game of the 1985 Caps series, three overtimes of the Islanders hauling them down in the slot: it looked like the Islanders had more Caps jersey fabric in their grasp than the Caps had on the backs.

Josh '99

Beeeej

Rich S
agreed. The man is a buffoon.

Easy, Rich - some people on here may disagree with how he leads the NHL, but I doubt you'll see too many personal insults like that one.

Really? I expected many personal insults worse than that.

That's only because you smell bad and dress funny.

Old Red

evilnaturedrobot
The clutching and grabbing that was curtailed post-lockout happened under Gary's watch. Not to mention that many of us have never gotten over the fact that he's David Stern's man, and has never been a 'hockey guy.'

Gary Bettman may be responsible for many things, but not "clutching and grabbing" in hockey, college, minor league or major league. Go get a tape of any Islanders playoff game during the five Cup run or after. Start with the 7th game of the 1985 Caps series, three overtimes of the Islanders hauling them down in the slot: it looked like the Islanders had more Caps jersey fabric in their grasp than the Caps had on the backs.

Is he respobcible for it. Of course not. Was it already happening before he got involved? yes. Did he sit back and do nothing about it for nine years as scoring numbers continued to fall? absolutely. It took the work stoppage for the league to finally do something about the deminishing spectacle that they had ignored for years.