NHL Owners Eager To Discuss Further Ruining Of The League

Get the coffee and the donuts ready, there's gonna be a meetin'! The NHL owners will meet today in the NHL's Board Of Governors meeting in Chicago. What better place to discuss ruining the league even more than in a city that boasts a ruined hockey franchise? These metaphors write themselves, people.

The big topic on the agenda will be the ludicrous scheduling format the league has endured for two years and that will run its course again this season. Last year the move to drop the format lost by one vote, and Eastern Conference teams generally favor the division-heavy set up. Because they're incredibly selfless, those teams will likely vote in favor of keeping the format once again. The owners won't actually vote on it until December, though.

Also to be discussed: league expansion. Just when you thought things couldn't get any dumber in Nashville, just wait until the league sets up shop in Kansas City and Las Vegas. Even though other cities like Seattle and Winnipeg will also be brought up, my money is on Gary Bettman granting franchises in stupid places rather than smart places. That's just how he rolls, ya'll.

Maybe while they're at it, the owners could widen the goals, change the jerseys again and maybe strike a television rights deal with Versus for another decade. Why stop at expansion and bad scheduling?

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Will Bettman Bet It All On Las Vegas?

photo courtesy SharksPage.com
When I hear the name Las Vegas, the very first thought that comes to my mind is hockey. The hot weather, the complete lack of snowfall, the legalized and rampant gambling...how could a person NOT think about the National Hockey League when they think about Las Vegas?

In an effort to satisfy the panicked frenzy for hockey among local residents, Harrah's (the casino and hotel giant) is selflessly planning to construct a brand new arena just off the Vegas Strip by 2010. It's not about money. They just want the puck-crazed populace of Sin City to be happy.

What's curious about the stadium plan is where it will be located. Despite being only one block east of the Strip, the black heart and twisted soul of Las Vegas, it will actually be outside city limits, thus crushing the mayor's dreams of having a "downtown" arena. Like Vegas has a downtown anyway.

Gary Bettman's plans won't be crushed, though. He's no doubt happier than a pig in, well, you know what. After all, nothing could be more in line with his grand vision of never-ending NHL expansion than a major league ice hockey team based in a city that has no winter, no local water supply nor any significant precipitation at all, let alone snow. How could that possibly be a bad idea?

If they need a good name for the team, I have a suggestion: The Craps.

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Gary Bettman Is An Excellent Commissioner, Financial Advisor

Gary Bettman, the well-loved and vastly-respected commissioner of the National Hockey League, is known for making great decisions. He is also known for his leadership and vision.

In the vision category comes this little tidbit from ESPN.com's Scott Burnside:

Canadian billionaire Jim Balsillie has accused NHL commissioner Gary Bettman of forcing the owner of the Nashville Predators to break off discussions about the sale of the team to Balsillie...

According to the article, Bettman prefers the Predators be sold to a group interested in moving the team from Nashville to Kansas City, another hot bed of hockey interest just like Nashville.

While Balsillie already has a deal with Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, Ontario, not to mention 14 thousand deposits on season tickets, Bettman seems to prefer trading one lousy market for another. But of course he does! He's Gary Bettman! He never makes a decision that isn't absolutely perfect for the league!

Why waste time expanding the league back into Canada, a country that loves its hockey more than it loves its own children? Why waste time having financially successful teams?

I think Gary Bettman should be NHL commissioner forever. He's a genius.

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Secret Lovers: Leipold Cheats On Balsillie

The National Post (of Canada, of course) is now reporting that Predators owner Craig Leipold has dropped Blackberry tycoon Jim Balsillie's offer to buy the team in favor of a bid from William DelBiaggio. But the Predators will still be moving. Instead of going to Hamilton, Ontario like Balsillie wants, the team will likely find themselves next in the hockey hotbed of Kansas City, where "Boots" DelBiaggio seeks to bring them.

What a brilliant move by the NHL and Gary Bettman, who are obviously pulling Leipold's strings on this one. Why move a current NHL team from a weak market to an extremely strong one? Just send it to another unproven, non-traditional American hockey wasteland and hope for the best. That's a sure recipe for success!

However, that will stop plans to grant an expansion team to Kansas City, so Bettman will have to find another new market to plop a brand-new NHL team nobody really wants to see (other than Las Vegas, which is a sure bet---sorry). I suggest Nashville, which will obviously "need" a new team once the Predators ship off to the Great Plains.

Oh, and Hamilton ticket buyers, sorry about your luck. Good thing they're giving refunds.

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The Obvious Solution To Low-Scoring Hockey Games

As I've detailed (and lamented) before on the hallowed pages of this blog, many hockey columnists and NHL officials are convinced that goal-scoring is far too low and an increase in said goal-scoring would play a major role in attracting American fans to the league. More goals = more eyeballs, the theory goes.

With that premise firmly rooted in their minds, these columnists and officials see no better option than to simply increase the size of the nets, thus, theoretically, making it easier for shooters to get past the swollen goalies and score more goals. Which is a good thing, they say. The end-all, be-all of good things.

It's not a surprise that a league run by Gary Bettman, a former NBA executive, would favor such a scheme. In the NBA, goal-scoring is completely out of control. A typical final score for an NBA game is 129-109. Obviously, in professional basketball there are no goalies (goaltending is a foul play) and strong defense (and even the tiniest physical contact) is highly discouraged and/or penalized.

If Bettman really wants the NHL to mimic the NBA, there's really only one solution: ban goaltending. That's right, I said it. Quit screwing with the rules of the game, the lines on the ice and the size of the goals. Just ban goalies. No more Roberto Luongo, no more Martin Brodeur, no more Marty Turco. All teams would have to do is skate past the blue line, lob the puck at the net and hope no defensemen are in the way. Simple enough. We'd easily see final scores like 36-30 and 41-38, and the red light would constantly be flashing---which is a fail-safe recipe for league success, right?

Isn't that what everybody really wants?

As Greg at the Fanhouse pointed out, Martin Brodeur has quit the NHL Competition Committee out of frustration that nobody is listening to his concerns. The league should take this as an obvious sign that goalies are troublemakers and just do away with them altogether. We wouldn't have to worry about adding asterisks to the stats of any future goalies in a bigger-goal era---there wouldn't be any more goalie stats!

Dear Lord Stanley hereby officially endorses the banning of all goaltenders from the NHL, effective this coming season. There is no better way to ensure more goals scored, which is obviously an idea bigger than Jesus right now. Do it for Baby Jesus.

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Gary Bettman Receives Well-Deserved $2 Million Raise

For his tireless work to promote the National Hockey League and further solidify ice hockey as the number one professional sport in both Canada and the United States, for his efforts to make Sidney Crosby and other young NHL stars more popular than Peyton Manning and LeBron James among regular folk, and for his unending dedication to concentrating player talent in only the strongest markets with the best attendance, commissioner Gary Bettman received a $2 million raise.

Except that he hasn't done any of that. And he still gets the raise.

I would have made a post about this yesterday but I was busy screaming and throwing things around my house in outrage. Will someone please tell me why the hell he didn't get $6 million?!

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Hey Hockey Fans, Why The Long Face?

Great is the furor over NBC's decision to dump Saturday's matchup between the Senators and Sabres to Versus once the game went to overtime, in favor of their extended Preakness Stakes horse race coverage. While fans in Buffalo weren't effected, everyone else in the US was, including me. I didn't care too much since I have Versus and watch hockey on that channel all the time. Others, however, don't have it or can't remember what number it is on their TV menu and are understandably grumpy about it.

Why did NBC do it? Some smell a conspiracy between the NHL (specifically Fuhrer Bettman) and NBC, but I'm not buying it. What I am buying is what advertisers are buying---namely, time during a major horse race with at least some national appeal. NBC charged an arm and a leg for commercial space during their multi-hour coverage of a two-minute horse race, and they deferred to those advertisers when deciding which sports event to air. Simply put: there is more money in the Triple Crown of horse racing than there is the Eastern Conference Finals of the NHL playoffs. And I'm not the only one who realizes this.

Now, this isn't always the case for horses, because I remember several weeks ago when an OT game was shown in its entirety on NBC and a scheduled special ridiculously called "Barbaro: A Nation's Horse" (where are our royalty checks?) was dumped over to CNBC to make way. So it's not always the case that NBC has deferred to other programming when hockey games go long.

I don't believe that Gary Bettman specifically worked with NBC to dump the Sens/Sabres game as soon as it went to OT as a premeditated way to encourage shootouts in the post-season. After all, a shootout would have taken at least a half hour to complete, and NBC switched over to their Preakness coverage the second the game went to overtime. They wouldn't have covered a shootout either.

I do believe, however, that this incident will be used by pro-shootout factions to justify a switch in future playoffs. "See, if there were shootouts in the playoffs, networks like NBC wouldn't dump their coverage because OT takes too long." That's garbage, but I'm sure someone will say it.

At any rate, I got to see the game-winning goal by Alfredsson and the dejected look on the faces of all the Sabres, so it was worth it, even if it was on Versus...

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