Bettman shows typical guile with Olympic plan
Surrounded by the bright lights and velvet tables of the so-called gambling capital of the world, Gary Bettman will be in Sin City Tuesday for the ballyhooed unveiling of the team name of the NHL’s Las Vegas expansion franchise.
The perfect place for The Man with The Poker Face.
When Bettman sits down at the table — negotiating table, not card table — he is lethal when it comes to not showing his hand. At least in public anyway. But you know something is there. You know something is coming. You know something is up his sleeve.
And so, realistically, was anyone really surprised at the news that Bettman seems to have finally put his cards on the table when it comes to the participation of NHLers in the 2018 Olympics? If so, shame on you. Because history shows something like this was inevitable.
Because that’s Gary Bettman’s modus operandi.
It’s no secret the NHL owners don’t want their 2017-18 season interrupted for three-plus weeks so that their most valuable commodities — their players — can go to the Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Not only does it put a temporary pause on the influx of revenues being brought in by their respective NHL teams, there is always the threat of injury — something the New York Islanders discovered firsthand when star forward John Tavares shredded his knee during the 2014 Sochi Games, ending his season in the process.
There is much more appetite among the owners for participation for the 2022 Games in Beijing, thanks to the untapped potential of cash influx involved in spreading the game in China. But when it comes to Pyeongchang, their biggest issue would seem to be: “What’s in it for us?” Here’s where Bettman steps in. The Commish is well aware of the landscape, one in which the players want to go, the owners don’t. So it appears the league’s hook to the NHLPA is this: Agree to extend the existing collective bargaining agreement and we’ll give you the green light. There it is. For months now, Bettman and deputy commissioner Bill Daly have insisted the biggest roadblock in having NHLers in a sixth consecutive Winter Games was the refusal of the International Olympic Committee to pick up transportation, accommodation and insurance costs. At first blush, International Ice Hockey Federation president Rene Fasel appeared to appease those concerns when he announced this week he had accrued the finances to meet the estimated $10 million to $20 million required to cover off those items on the league’s checklist.
But Bettman is not in line with any financing setup that sees moneys siphoned from the various hockey federations of individual countries, a stance he reaffirmed during a meeting in New York on Wednesday involving the league, NHLPA and IIHF.
Reports did come out of Manhattan, however, that the NHL might back off on its refusal to budge if labour peace was allowed to go on, perhaps for as much as three extra years.
While pushing back the possibility of a work stoppage would benefit both sides for obvious reasons, the players are disenchanted with the current setup that requires 16 per cent of their salaries to be set aside in escrow to ensure a proper 50/50 revenue split with the owners.
“That’s definitely an issue,” an Eastern Conference player representative told Postmedia on Thursday morning.
Let’s play the hypothetical game here. If the players say yes, Bettman and the owners get to maintain for a longer period a CBA they obviously like. And if they give the thumbs down, the owners avoid the disruption of the season.
Either way, the owners get something. And either way, the driving force behind it is Bettman. That’s why they like and trust The Commish so much, even if you might not.
Under Bettman’s watch, the NHL has expanded from 24 to 30 teams and has slogged through three lockouts, including the ugly work stoppage of 2004-05 which wiped out the entire season and kept the Stanley Cup from being awarded. Yet, through all the rhetoric, the name calling, the damage to the game’s image that goes hand-in-hand with labour disputes, the bottom line for the owners is this: In Bettman’s 23 years as commissioner, the NHL has gone from a $400 million per year industry to more than $4 billion. Enough said. Gleefully satisfied with the manner in which Bettman keeps finding avenues with which to stuff wads of cash into their pockets, the owners presented Bettman with a new contract 14 months ago. Interestingly, Bettman’s extension will expire in 2022, the same year the current CBA ends. The NHL can exercise its option to end that CBA on Sept. 1, 2019. If it doesn’t, the NHLPA can pull the plug on it two weeks later. If either of those two possibilities come to fruition, a work stoppage could take place as soon as 2020-21.
Of course, if the players were to agree to the league’s Olympic proposal involving a three-year CBA extension, that opt-out date would be pushed back to Sept. 15, 2022 — the same time Bettman could opt to hang up his commissioner’s tie for good.
And who knows? Maybe, in retirement, whenever that may come, there will be a spot at the card table for him opposite Daniel Negreanu. He certainly has the poker face for it.