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Back when the NHL hired Gary Bettman away from the NBA, Orlando Magic GM Pat Williams wondered how Bettman would fare as the head of the hockey league.
"I gave Gary a hockey puck once, and he spent the rest of the day trying to open it," Williams is quoted as saying.
Williams may have been joking, but it's a great quote and great fodder for all those who blame Bettman for most of what is said to be wrong with the National Hockey League these days.
If Gary Bettman is introduced at an NHL game or shown on the scoreboard, chances are you will hear a lot more boos than cheers. Search the internet and chances are you'll find him often being criticized on message boards, in hockey blogs and in newspaper columns.
Needless to say, the 51-year-old native New Yorker is not the most popular person associated with the National Hockey League.
Bettman was hired in 1992 as the NHL's first Commissioner and started on the job in 1993. He's credited with overseeing the NHL's expansion and modernization that has helped increase the league's visibility in the United States. He was able to get the league its first U.S. national TV deal in a couple of decades. In essence, Bettman helped a league suffering from low revenues and low visibility in the U.S.become a formidable business that pulls in around $2 billion in revenues annually.
But many argue those accomplishments came with a cost. Bettman gets ripped not just by fans, but by the media as well for the state of the game. The list of complaints is long.
The league expanded too fast and into many non-traditional hockey markets. There are too many teams and the season is too long. The games are boring because of the trap and clutching and grabbing. The low scoring defensive struggles are driving away fans and failing to attract new ones. Canada lost franchises in both Winnipeg and Quebec. The widening economic gap between big market teams and small market teams is growing and could signal a possible end for more Canadian franchises and some small market teams in the United States. Some say rules changes like moving the nets out from the end boards, eliminating the instigator rule and instituting the two-referee system have hurt the on ice product, not helped it.
Even the players have chimed in, although the criticism wasn't leveled at Bettman personally.
"It's a garage league," Mario Lemieux
said five years ago.
Or this from Brett Hull: "The game sucks. It's boring. I
would never pay to watch this."
And critics point to the television issue. Despite all the increased visibility for the league, the television ratings has remained flat or even fallen off. Many long time fans have been turned off by the quality of play and the increasing cost of the ticket to attend a game.
Most of the blame ends up going to Bettman. He is running the show after all. For his part, Bettman is aware of the criticism of the NHL. But he still feels it is unfair.
"I think the game is a terrific game," he said just before last season's Stanley Cup Finals between New Jersey and Anaheim. "It's a game that gets more than its fair share of criticism, most of it unfair.
"I don't think there's something fundamentally wrong. I think if you have an axe to grind on the game and you want to selectively quote people you can draw any conclusion you want. If your goal is to be controversial, difficult and critical, you can reach any conclusion you want. But, the fact remains that 20 million people come to see this game. People watch it on television in record numbers..."
Critics even criticize how Bettman handles criticism. They say he ignores facts and puts a positive spin on everything. Throw out a criticism of the game and Bettman will have an answer.
For example, low scoring games?
Bettman's response: "There's no magic about 8-1 games. The fact that 73 per cent of the time games are played within one or two goals or tied tells you that there's a level of excitement and commitment. And I'm not sure who on the politically correct police ever said that the number of goals you score translate into how exciting the game is. I don't buy into that."
It's the same approach he's been taking for years. A few years ago, one of Bettman's "the game is fine" speeches drew this response from Allan Maki of the Toronto Globe and Mail:
"In other words, hockey is fine. Things are good. You see clouds and the perfect analogy, Bettman sees only what he wants to see. It’s always a wonderful life in Bettman’s world. Present population: one."
So, just who is this population of one known as Gary Bettman? He's an Ivy League graduate, who went on to law school, landed a job at a top sports law firm, got a job with the NBA and then was tabbed as the first ever Commissioner of the NHL.
He's a savvy businessman and a smart lawyer. Like any good lawyer, he has a way with words. He's a public relations master who can be privately harsh with his critics within the league.
He was born in 1952 in Queens, New York and raised by his mother. He was a big sports fan as a child. He and his friends played baseball, basketball, football and roller hockey on the playgrounds and streets of Queens.
Despite being a New Yorker, Bettman wasn't a fan of the Yankees, Giants, Knicks and Rangers. He attributed that to the fact that he grew up with no father around.
"I didn't have a father to pass down the history of teams like the Rangers, Knicks, Yankees and Giants, so I rooted for the Islanders, Nets, Mets and Jets," Bettman once told told Dean Bonham of the Bonham Group, a sports marketing company. "They were all expansion franchises and that meant I could start from the beginning . . . no one knew more about my teams than I did."
If you asked Bettman back then what he wanted to be when he grew up, he would have told you that he wanted to pursue a career in the law.
"I wanted to be a lawyer when I was a kid," Bettman told Bonham. "If I told you anything else, I'd be making it up."
And that's what he did. He attended Cornell University, where he studied labor relations. After graduation from Cornell in 1974, it was on to law school at New York University.
Then it was on to joining the work force. He landed a job at Proskauer Rose, a prestigious sports law firm in New York. There he met David Stern, now the Commissioner of the National Basketball Association.
Stern would leave Proskauer Rose and head off to the NBA and Bettman would follow, joining the NBA in 1981. Back in those days, Bettman said, the NBA wasn't the big business it is today.
"There were only 25 people in the whole organization," he said. "There were virtually no sponsorships, licensing hadn't even been thought of and the playoffs were only available on tape delay. It was a different organization than it is today."
The timing was great for Bettman and the NBA. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird had just entered the league. Michael Jordan was not far behind. The NBA's great boom was underway.
During his stint in the NBA it was Bettman who came up with the idea for the NBA's salary cap, which was implemented during the 1984-85 season. It's impact has been hotly debated (more on that in a future report).
When the NHL, which was barely on the U.S. sports screen, was looking to move into the modern era, it turned to the NBA in its search for a new leader. The NBA, after all, was enjoying a big boom and had implemented a salary cap. The NHL Board of Governors saw the NBA as the model to follow.
Russ Granik, the NBA's Deputy Commissioner, was at the top of the NHL's list. Bettman was on the short list as well. Bettman apparently impressed the NHL's search committee during interviews and was given the job in 1992. He officially took over as the first ever NHL Commissioner on February 1, 1993.
Bettman began the process of turning the NHL into a major business. He brought in experts to run the various aspects of the business.
Under his leadership there has been a dramatic rise in sponsorships, which have increased by more than 1,300 percent during his tenure. The NHL has seen revenue from licensing grow by 700 percent. Today, the league's overall revenues are $2 billion annually.
He forged ahead with the NHL's expansion, which was already underway. And it was more than just expansion. He helped usher in relocations that would put the NHL in places like Denver, North Carolina and Phoenix.
Denver was one of his first targets. He knew Denver well from his NBA days. He thought Denver would be a great place for the NHL, even though it had failed in the 1980's. Denver was a growing sports market that had produced some great television ratings.
"He called us from the moment he began in the NHL," Charlie Lyons, chairmen of Ascent Entertainment (owners of the Denver Nuggets at the time), once said. "He said, 'Look, you guys have done a great job cleaning up a real mess with the Nuggets. Denver would be a great city for the league, and you're the right group if the NHL were to come to Denver.'"
Originally Denver was a possible target for expansion or a possible relocation for the Hartford Whalers. But when there were problems with the Quebec Nordiques, Bettman helped arrange a meeting between Ascent and the Nordiques ownership. One thing led to another and the Nordiques became the Colorado Avalanche.
Denver and cities like Dallas helped as he tried to land a contract with a U.S. network. He got one with the then upstart Fox Network. Later he would land the league its biggest deal ever, five years for $600 million with ABC/Disney.
There was more. The league implemented a program to take the game of hockey to more kids through programs like NHL Breakout, which features inline and street hockey tournaments. He embraced new technologies he thought could help promote the game.
But despite the great growth in the game, the criticism continues.
Sports Illustrated's Kostya Kennedy summed up the criticism when he wrote this a few years ago: "Bettman is a bottom-line commissioner. He's deeply concerned with generating revenue for his owner-employers, regardless of the cost to the product on the ice."
Or as former Sharks GM Dean Lombardi told Kennedy in that same column: "Of course it's a business but it's also a sport of passion, and we have to acknowledge that. The way this league has become all about selling, selling, selling has taken away some of the fire."
But there is a big fire looming on the NHL's horizon. It's the labor situation and the impending CBA negotiations. That's the main reason the NHL hired Bettman. He helped implement the NBA's salary cap. His educational background is in labor relations.
He already had his first test in the negotiations over the CBA that led to the 1994-95 lockout. Many would argue the NHLPA won that round because it was able to avoid a salary cap and salaries continued to rise dramatically.
At the time, the league and the owners still thought they had a deal that would help stem rapidly rising salaries. Even Bettman was optimistic less than a year after the deal had been reached.
"We didn't expect the collective-bargaining agreement to kick in overnight. It takes time for the market to readjust and for our teams to get used to the tools we now have," he said in December 1995. "We believe salaries will slow up to the increases in revenues and that the market will stabilize and that, long term, our objective is to have 26 successful, profitable or at least break-even teams."
It didn't happen. Teams say they are losing money. The league said recently that collectively NHL teams lost $300 million last season. And Bettman puts the blame on rising salaries.
"The problem is that our player salaries are higher than they should be," he said earlier this year. "This is purely a labor issue. If we fix that . . . I am confident in the future of this game. If we don't fix it, we will have severe, long-term problems."
And Bettman is hoping to fix that with the next CBA. He has said over and over the new agreement must contain "cost certainty" for the team. The question is just what does Bettman mean by "cost certainty?" Is it a salary cap, as the NHLPA claims, or could it be something else? A look at that issue in our next report.
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