Gary Bettman Needs to Go

I’ve had enough of Mr. Gary Bettman, and if you love hockey in Canada, or the National Hockey League in general, you should be angry too. It’s not that Bettman is directly or intentionally hurting the game, but he is smothering it, he’s holding it back from its true potential.

To me, Bettman seems like the little, sniveling evil genius who sits in the corner of a room in a big leather chair tapping his fingers together, with a malicious grin on his face. Recently, my confidence in Bettman, which was weak to start, has shrunk to an all new low.

First and foremost, we have the Pheonix situation. This was Bettman’s pet project and all of Canada’s pet peeve. It just isn’t working Gary, get it through your thick skull. My own parents went to a game in Pheonix this winter and called to report that the arena was half full, if that. They said partway through the game they announced that any fan in the upper deck wishing to move down closer to the ice could do so.

What a kind and thoughtful move? Wrong. What a ploy to make it look for the television camera’s that there were more people in the stands. Bettman believes the NHL will work in the desert, but the thing is, no one in Pheonix thinks it will work. Everyone involved is losing money hand over fist, and the Canadian population is steaming mad. Remember Jim Balsille who offered more than Pheonix was worth to move them to Canada? Remember the group of buyers who proposed to move the team to Winnipeg and renovate their arena to NHL standards?

Bettman is blaming the Goldwater Institute, an independant policy watchdog agency, questioned the validity of what is occuring in Pheonix. The consistent in this inconsistent situation has been the ineptitude and blame throwing of Bettman.

I’m sure many of you reading this are asking, “what does this guy have against Bettman?” Well, nothing. But I love hockey, I’m Canadian, and I can see that what he is doing is not in the best interest of the league. He’s trying to save face, and save his own reputation.

The frightening thing in this all, is that during this fiasco Gary Bettman resigned his contract for 5 more years. Who made that decision?

Then we have the head checking debate which has been raging on. Bettman onveiled a plan to curb concussions at the annual GM meeting in Florida recently, but here’s my concern. Gary Bettman is not a hockey man, he’s a businessman. If anything, you could classify him as a basketball man. He’s never played or coached, he knows nothing of what happens on the ice. He’s a mere spectator.

Luckily his “plan” involved passing the buck to a number of highly capable individuals including Steve Yzerman, Brendon Shanahan, Rob Blake, and Joe Nieuwendyk.

I’m afraid to see what the landscape of the NHL will look like after 5 more year’s under Bettman’s reign. To me the answer is clear, Gary Bettman needs to go. He needs to go because he can’t let go of his own beliefs for the good of the game, he needs to go because he honestly thinks taking care of southern markets who aren’t interested in the game is more important than taking care of true fans, and he needs to go because from Pheonix, to head checks, to the NHL lockout, he has proven that his poor decisions are in fact hurting the NHL and hockey in general.

Let the games begin.