Feel free to dislike him, but Gary Bettman is damn good at his job

One day, not too long from now, Gary Bettman will be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.

The fans will boo, roll their eyes, shake their fists, and remember the multiple lockouts endured under his tenure, the questionable southern expansion movement that put hockey franchises in sunbelt cities where they didn’t belong, and the awkward social graces of a basketball man who invaded the league with an anti-Canadian agenda.

And then they’ll boo some more. Just like they’ve been doing for as long as just about any hockey fan can remember. Everybody hates Gary Bettman. Most people don’t even know why. They just do.

When it comes time to award the Stanley Cup to the victorious team, the fans boo. When he gets up on the podium to begin the NHL Draft, the fans boo. When it was announced last weekend that he was given a seven-year extension to remain commissioner of the National Hockey League well into next decade, the fans booed (on social media).

What they forget, though, is that he’s really good at his job. It may not make him popular among the fans, but he’s made the league more profitable, saved the existence of small market franchises, and helped create a greater competitive balance within the league than ever before. He does what he’s paid to do.

The biggest reason Bettman is regarded as a villain is the three lockouts that have robbed loyal fans of hundreds of hockey games under his watch.

First, there was the 1994 lockout, in which half of the 1994-95 season was lost to disagreement over the implementation of a salary cap or luxury tax that would limit rapidly escalating salaries among players. Eventually, a deal was settled and the league resumed play on Jan. 11, 1995 without any new measures to control salaries. This was really just a precursor to the massive battle that would unfold a decade later.

In 2005, the NHL became the first major North American professional sports league to cancel an entire season due to a labour strike. The issues were largely the same as before. The league was ruled by a handful of rich teams — Toronto, Philadelphia, Detroit, New York — that could dominate the league with their financial power, and in order to maintain some level of competitive balance, something radical needed to be done.

Following junior leagues or minor league affiliates and watching random Euroleague games on TV was a numb substitute for fans that were starving for hockey. It was a painful time to be a fan, but it was also necessary for the survival of the league. I mean, just two years earlier, the New York Rangers signed Bobby Holik to a five-year deal worth $45 million. Bobby fucking Holik. A good checking line centre who in no way deserved to be paid in 2003 what Alex Ovechkin was paid in 2013.

The system had clearly run amok, and change was needed. The NHL was going to have open heart surgery and the fans were just going to have to embrace it and pace around patiently in the waiting room until it was over.

When a deal was struck in July of 2005, the NHL was completely flipped on its head. Bettman made three promises for the league’s new era: economic stability for the existing franchises, heightened competitive balance for teams and players, and unparalleled excitement and entertainment for fans. And for the most part, he delivered.

There’s no doubt that the league has become more economically stable since the 2004-05 lockout, as only the Atlanta Thrashers have packed up and moved shop since the new agreement was reached, in contrast to the 90s when four different franchises relocated, and others (Ottawa, Edmonton) were on the verge of folding.

The salary cap made it possible for teams like the lunchpail Edmonton Oilers to compete with the white collar Toronto Maple Leafs, as large market franchises with deep-pocketed owners no longer had the ability to throw money around without any repercussions. As a result, we’ve seen a more balanced and competitive league. Obviously the cap ceiling has risen higher than most would have expected, but still, the prospect of being a small market team is much more attractive now than it was a few years ago when the same collection of bourgeoise teams took turns buying the most expensive free agents and plowing their way to victory. 

So Bettman deserves a checkmark for both of those first two promises, but the third is up in the air. I don’t think we can say that the NHL has entered some era of unprecedented excitement and entertainment, but rule changes like abandoning the two-line pass offside and axing the possibility of having a tie if the game isn’t settled through five minutes of overtime make the game somewhat better than it was in the early 2000s.

The lockout to end all lockouts was necessary, and it arguably saved the league from teetering off and collapsing inwards, but unfortunately, it didn’t actually put an end to all lockouts. Just seven years after the 2004-05 season was cancelled, the NHL and the Players’ Association failed yet again to come to a collective bargaining agreement, and half of the 2012-13 season was lost.

I’m guessing when 2020 rolls around and both sides are allowed to opt out of the current CBA, there’s going to be another lockout. And seven years after that, if the system is still structured in the same way, there’s going to be another.

It’s not because Gary Bettman wants to sit on his throne atop spiral mountain and cackle at the thought of Canadians huddling together during cold, dark nights without the embrace of a hockey game to keep them warm. It’s because the owners want to milk every single penny out of their investment as they can (duh), the players want to be compensated for essentially being the ones who make the league what it is (duh), and it’s his job to find a middle ground in which both sides can coexist and the league can move forward and continue to grow.

Aside from the lockouts, Bettman is also despised for a variety of different reasons. Some of them are valid, some of them aren’t.

He’s responsible for the league’s rapid expansion into the southern United States, which has become the punchline of a joke as stadiums in Sunrise and Glendale are consistently half empty. Not true. The NHL’s Board of Governors decided in its 1989 “Vision for the Nineties” that it would expand into at least seven new markets over the decade, and the league already had roots in San Jose, Anaheim, Tampa Bay, and Florida before he assumed office. Under Bettman, only the Minnesota Wild, Nashville Predators, Columbus Blue Jackets, and Atlanta Thrashers were added to the league.

He’s responsible for dragging the Phoenix Coyotes through the mud and refusing to move them to a more suitable market despite the fact that they bleed money year in, year out. This is true. Much to the surprise of many, he’s put a tremendous amount of effort into keeping the corpse of a franchise alive when it would be much better off in Quebec City or southern Ontario.

He’s got an anti-Canadian agenda because he allowed the Quebec Nordiques and Winnipeg Jets to die and hasn’t been as supportive of the Canadian teams as he has been of the American teams. Not true. There weren’t any suitable buyers willing to keep the Jets and Nordiques up north, so they were relocated when purchased by American-based ownership groups. Also, he’s lobbied in favour of tax-breaks for struggling Canadian franchises, implemented revenue sharing to assist those same struggling teams, and it can be argued that his staunch negotiations and rigorous pursuit of a salary cap in 2004-05 directly resulted in the continued existence of the Ottawa Senators, Calgary Flames, and Edmonton Oilers. And, of course, he gave the thumbs up when True North Sports and Entertainment purchased the Atlanta Thrashers and relocated them to Winnipeg.

He doesn’t handle public relations particularly well. This is definitely true. There are a myriad of examples of Bettman making an ass of himself while dealing with fans and the media. Like the whole John Scott situation. Scott, an enforcer with five career NHL goals, was voted by the fans to be the captain of the Pacific Division All-Star team. After trying their best to pressure Scott out of participating in the game and essentially making a joke of the whole ordeal, they jumped on the bandwagon when he turned into a cult hero on social media. It was fake, petty, easy to see through, and is just one of many PR nightmares led by Bettman during his time in the spotlight.

And finally, he botched the handling of the NHL’s relationship with ESPN, effectively gutting the relevance of hockey in the American sports scene. Not true. In 2005, ESPN lowballed the NHL with its new TV deal, offering them less than what they had in the past to broadcast games. Bettman ultimately took the better bid from Outdoor Life Network, which was owned by Comcast (who also owns the Philadelphia Flyers). OLN eventually rebranded itself to Versus, and hockey coverage in the United States struggled to pick up steam.

In 2011, Comcast bought NBC Universal and rebranded Versus to NBC Sports Network. This is when things started to turn for the NHL. NBC Sports Network offered far and away the best American hockey coverage ever seen before, as the entirety of the 2012 playoffs were broadcast nationally for the first time in the United States. So rather than accepting a garbage offer for lazy, mediocre coverage from ESPN, Bettman saw that OLN, owned by Comcast, had a vested interest in the success of the league, and as a result, the relationship has flourished and hockey is finally making some inroads in the United States.

Under his watch, attendance and TV viewership has risen across the board, and along with it, so has league revenue. And ultimately, that’s his job. He’s paid by the owners to ensure that the league makes as much money as possible, which isn’t a simple task. Strong foresight and hard negotiations may have lost the fans many games due to lockouts, but the league is better off now than it was in the pre-salary cap era. Also, creativity and out-of-the-box thinking has led to innovations like the Winter Classic, stronger marketing campaigns, and a TV deal that doesn’t have epic playoff games shoved off the air to make room for the World Series of Poker.

You can hate him as much as you want, but there’s no denying he’s revolutionized the business of hockey and he’s done a damn good job at putting the game on the map.