So incase you’ve been living under a rock these past few months (I suppose even years with the Phoenix saga) you’re unaware that as of today a deal has been struck to relocate the current NHL franchise located in Atlanta to Winnipeg Manitoba. Big news to say the least as over 10 years ago Winnipeg lost their franchise to the southern United States and what many thought would be the last time the NHL would be played in the Peg

How times have changed. Today Twitter exploded with news from Winnipeg and shortly after all the major media in Canada broke the news that a deal had been reached after weeks of speculation that the Atlanta Thrashers would move north. Fans across the nation are all thrilled that Canada’s game is finally coming back to Canada, Winnipeg now has a team and rumors are still circulating that it wont be long before Quebec City follows whether by relocation or expansion.

Gary Bettman spoke today welcoming Winnipeg back and made it clear that it won’t work unless fans are willing to spend money on season tickets. Much like other smaller market teams in Edmonton and Calgary season tickets will be pivotal to Winnipeg’s success and nothing short of 13,000 will work. Yet despite the announcement and the extremely affordable ticket prices for the upcoming season I was met today with hundreds of people on my twitter and facebook feed complaining once again about Mr. Bettman’s apparent hate for Canada.

I once again shook my head and realized it was finally time to educate those people on the some of the facts. Thanks goes to Mayor Bee at HFBoards for some of the facts (because Im to lazy to rewrite it).

Belief

Gary Bettman put teams teams in places like Tampa Bay, Miami, and Anaheim. He even allowed Anaheim to name themselves after a Disney movie!

Facts:

Tampa Bay and Ottawa began play in the 1992-93 season; Bettman took office February 1, 1993. These two expansion teams were awarded on December 6, 1990, when John Ziegler was in office. Ziegler, by the way, was a native of Grosse Pointe, MI (just north of Detroit), so he wasn’t exactly from a “non-traditional area”.

Anaheim and Florida were awarded their teams on December 10, 1992. Gil Stein was then the interim league president, and apparently expansion was in the middle of enforcing suspensions for practices and stacking the deck to get himself put into the HHOF. Stein is also a native of Philadelphia, which also wouldn’t fall into “non-traditional” territory.

Belief:

Fine, but Gary Bettman gave a bunch of undeserving cities expansion teams in the late 1990s instead of Canadian cities.

Facts:

11 cities pitched NHL expansion locales in 1996 and 1997, and Hamilton was the only Canadian city. Quebec City didn’t have a bid, Winnipeg didn’t have a bid, Yellowknife didn’t have a bid….

Hamilton’s bid didn’t make the cut because of concerns over both Copps Coliseum and the historically-low exchange rate that was also sapping the coffers of the other Canadian teams. They also would have needed federal assistance to renovate Copps, and the Canadian government had already rejected several other federal aid package requests by the other teams, which leads into the next topic…

Belief:

Gary Bettman stood by and let Winnipeg go to Phoenix.

Facts:

There was no way that Winnipeg was going to retain an NHL team. Would it have made a difference if the Jets had gone to a more “acceptable” location like Minneapolis, which they almost did?

Winnipeg had a 40-year-old arena that had an ordinate number of obstructed-view seats and none of the revenue-generating luxury seating. A new arena was nowhere on the horizon, as both the city council and the various governments had refused numerous requests to help out.

Belief:

Gary Bettman stood by and let Quebec leave for Denver.

Facts:

There wasn’t a ton that could be done there, either. Marcel Aubut had made it clear that, without a new arena in Quebec, the team would hemorrhage money until it went under, and the various governments were unwilling to help. No fewer than seven different groups approached Aubut to buy the Nordiques, and apparently none came close to what Comset was willing to pay to bring the team to Denver.

At the time (1995), the NHL was beginning to put together packages for the possibility of expansion, and Denver and Phoenix were at the top of good bets to receive expansion teams. Both Quebec and Winnipeg, bereft of the NHL by June of 1996, had opportunities to put expansion bids together, and neither one did. Quebec still doesn’t have a new arena, and Winnipeg didn’t get one until late 2004.

Belief:

Gary Bettman stood by and let Hartford leave for Carolina.

Facts:

This one goes back to the legal precedent set in the various Art Modell lawsuits from the mid-1990s over the Cleveland Browns, which also drew from the Al Davis lawsuits of the 1980s over the Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders. Under certain conditions, team owners have the right to move their teams as they see fit. This can be done for any of a number of reasons (the Baltimore Colts did it to prevent seizure by the State of Maryland, to use one extreme example). Peter Karmanos made it clear that he had no interest in staying in the city of Hartford. Whether this was due to a personal spat with the mayor and the governor isn’t really the point. Unlike with Quebec and Winnipeg, ownership never changed hands; Karmanos remained as the primary owner.

Besides, this has no bearing on whether or not Gary Bettman hates Canada.

Belief:

The NHL did nothing for Canadian teams who were struggling.

Facts:

For those who don’t remember the 1990s, the NHL went through a period much like what MLB has had over the last 25 years. Small-market teams would draft a player, develop him into a quality NHLer, and then be forced to lose him because the market price would vastly outstrip what the team was able to pay. So they would be forced to lose him for nothing via UFA status, forced to take draft picks via RFA status, or trade him for more picks and prospects…and when they developed, the cycle would begin again. How out of skew was the salary scale? Bobby Holik made $9 million per year, Martin Lapointe signed a deal for $5 million per year…you get the idea.

When the Canadian dollar went in the toilet, it did a huge amount of damage to the Canadian teams. League transactions are totaled in American dollars, which meant that Canadian teams were paying out in American dollars while taking in revenues that were Canadian dollars (and substantially less valuable). The NHL owners, looking to aid the four smaller Canadian franchises, agreed to basically subsidize the difference via the Canadian Assistance Program. This program lasted for eight years. In 2000, the Canadian government agreed to take over part of it. They scrapped that agreement less than a week later, when PUBLIC backlash forced them to reconsider.

Belief:

Gary Bettman has destroyed NHL tradition.

Facts:

Outside of where teams are located, the only basis for making this claim is the fact that divisions aren’t named after anyone any more. Since the NHL’s division names had lasted less than 20 years, I can’t fathom how that had become “tradition” by that point. In addition, the damage done to the NHL by some of the men who had divisions named after them hardly makes them positive candidates for such an honor.

Belief:

Gary Bettman has never managed that huge TV contract.

Facts:

The gold standard is the NFL TV contracts, which are absolutely massive and net each team something like $130 million per year.

When Bettman took office, the NHL’s American TV revenues totaled something like $5.5 million per year and was easily the most lucrative it had ever been. One year after taking office, the NHL had a TV deal with Fox that was worth $31 million per year, then $120 million per year with ESPN/ABC five years later. No, it’s not the NFL, but it’s a hell of a lot more than the NHL had previously managed.

The NFL is not a good comp for several reasons. One is the proliferation of fantasy football, one is how frequently the games are played, one is the ability to attract enormous numbers of casual fans. It’s like saying that because the Stanley Cup Final isn’t as popular as the Super Bowl, it’s because Gary Bettman doesn’t know what he’s doing. Obviously such a statement would be completely asinine and without merit.

It’s become fashionable over the recent years to demand to know why the NHL never went back onto ESPN. There are two reasons. The first is that ESPN offered literally no money and no scheduling priority. The second is that ESPN, which previously had had an NHL contract, continued to treat the NHL as a second-class citizen. One theory says that ESPN, having realized that they paid more than they wanted to in order to get the NHL, basically buried the product in order to damage ratings so that they could have more leverage when a new contract was being discussed.

Belief:

Gary Bettman led two NHL lockouts, including a season-killing one.

Facts:

This would be true. Naturally, as is anything involving labor relations, it’s a heck of a lot more complicated than that. The NHLPA head was Bob Goodenow, who made his name by orchestrating a players’ strike in 1992 that nearly wiped out the playoffs. (Date that it started: April 1. Can’t act like it wasn’t planned that way). The major issue there had to do with player licensing and image fees; essentially, the sticking point had to do with hockey cards.

Goodenow’s preferred method was this. Make a couple of token initial offers, wait until the lockout begins, make a couple more token offers, grandstand for the public about how the rich men are preventing players from doing what they love, and make an offer via public that would be considered token grandstanding. Then sit around and do nothing until about three days before a drop-dead date, then furiously try to get the best possible package out of it. The NHL blinked in 1995, and didn’t blink in 2005. In 1994 and 1995, the NHLPA (players and leadership alike) had a certain awe about Goodenow; he had led a strike two years prior knowing that it might mean no playoffs. By 2004, that awe was no longer there, and a coup led by Trevor Linden and Ted Saskin basically led to Goodenow’s ouster. With him out of the picture, a deal was done fairly quickly, and all parties have benefited from the new CBA.

Belief:

The NHL has taken a step backwards under Gary Bettman; in the absence of TV contracts, the league is no better than when he took office.

Facts:

The NHL’s revenues have skyrocketed, from roughly $400 million in 1992 to over $2 billion today. TV contract terms are listed above.

Belief:

Gary Bettman lets Colin Campbell do a terrible job.

Facts:

Can’t deny this one. The maddening inconsistency in regards to supplemental discipline is what torments every fan of hockey. I’ve pitched a simplified system that would basically serve to castrate Campbell’s (and Mike Murphy’s) power; it would involve classifying offenses into one of three different categories, with a clear punishment guideline based on repeat offenses and also the flexibility to accelerate a particularly egregious act into a higher level. Under this, Trevor Gillies would have gotten 10 games for his hit on Eric Tangradi and an automatic 20 games for his forearm to Cal Clutterbuck.

Belief:

Gary Bettman is going to bat for Phoenix like he never did for a Canadian or “traditional” team.

Facts:

Ottawa declared bankruptcy and missed their payroll (which would allow all of their players to become UFAs immediately). They didn’t move and didn’t lose any of their players.

Buffalo went through a federal indictment of their owners and bankruptcy; they didn’t move.

Pittsburgh had financial problems for years, and when Jim Balsillie wanted to buy the team (conditional upon moving them to Hamilton), he was shown the door. Pittsburgh now has a new arena and several shiny toys on the ice.

Edmonton was within hours of being sold to Houston billionaire Les Alexander, who would have moved the team. Bettman and the NHL set aside their own ownership rules and allowed a massive conglomerate of local businessmen to step in and keep the Oilers in Edmonton.

In addition, the NHL (led by who?) went back and forth with the Canadian governments (federal and local) over a number of years over the issues of taxes. In any given year in the 1990s, any single Canadian team paid more in property taxes than all American teams combined. When added to the weak Canadian dollar, all teams north of the 49th parallel were facing an uphill climb to stay above water. The CAP provided assistance up through the rebounding of the Canadian dollar, and the salary cap has strengthened Canadian teams substantially.

Belief:

Gary Bettman bowled over Canadians in an attempt to get “his” “Southern expansion”

Facts:

No Canadian owners stood up and actually objected to Quebec and Winnipeg leaving. Moving a team still requires a vote of the Board of Governors, and since the moves were approved, what’s that say?

Belief:

American expansion/relocation has been a complete disaster; there is no tangible proof that the game is any more popular in those areas than it was before.

Facts:

Look up the USA Hockey registration numbers, particularly those by region . In addition, it was during Bettman’s tenure that USA Hockey started the National Team Development Program, which stocks colleges and NHL teams with top-level talent.

In the last 13 years, the USNTDP has gone from drawing exclusively from Minnesota, Michigan, and Massachusetts to getting a number of players from southern California, Arizona, Texas, and various other regions that never would have happened if not for expansion/relocation. A great deal more kids are exposed to hockey than ever were before, and this has led to the further tapping of a previously entirely untapped market. Rink construction has taken off; Columbus, which has had professional hockey for a number of years before the NHL, has gone from two sheets of ice to eleven. A Nashville high school is building an on-campus rink, and ice times have been booked faster than they can be made available.

Is Gary Bettman Perfect? No, no one is. No matter what he does he will always be criticized for the job he has done but some of the blame he has been facing from the less knowledgeable needs to stop.

Especially as an Oiler fan you should be extremely grateful for the things he did to keep the Oilers from leaving Edmonton. Because of that the team is set to build a brand new arena which will keep them in Edmonton for 35 years…something that was a mere dream in the late 90′s.

Sure hockey is struggling in some markets but a weak American economy has a lot to do with it much like it did years ago with a weak Canadian dollar. I for one have never had a complaint about having teams in Phoenix, Florida, Nashville etc, as they were moved there to serve a purpose…expand the game we all know and love as Canadians. Things like that don’t happen over night, parents become fans, there kids become fans, and eventually their kids kids become fans. Growing the game takes time and stretches generations and just because a team is in an area where it doesn’t snow don’t mean it makes the game less “Canadian”.

It’s still played with a puck, sticks, skates, and of course on ice.

Regardless congratulations to fans of Winnipeg and of course the city, I hope with all the new changes to our dollar and the NHL system it keeps your team there for a long while, now the media can complain about how brutal Winnipeg is and give Edmonton a break.

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