AFTER 100 YEARS, NHL STILL FREEZES UP IN THE LIMELIGHT
If the goal is to grow the game, end this chess match over the 2018 Olympics
There is always something that sounds a little off when Gary Bettman discusses NHL participation at the Olympics with what amounts to a giant verbal shrug. But it is all the more incongruous when the commissioner does it at an event that is a showcase event for hockey.
On Sunday afternoon in Toronto, the contradiction of the NHL trying to grow the sport and yet not trying too hard was on full display at the pre-game ceremonies for the Centennial Classic. Bettman sat at a podium next to the sport’s most famous player and outlined all the things the NHL is doing in its 100th year to highlight its past and look to its future: a touring exhibition that will visit every NHL market this season, another series of outdoor games, an all-star game in Los Angeles that will make good use of Wayne Gretzky and remind everyone of the impact No. 99 had on the NHL’s southern outposts, and the much ballyhooed 100 Greatest Players list, 33 of whom were unveiled Sunday with the rest to come all-star weekend.
All of it was the league wanting to put its best self on display. But when talk turned to the Olympics, and the as-yet-unresolved stalemate between the players very much interested in going to Pyeongchang in 2018 and the owners either not interested in the same or very much interested in bluffing about it, Bettman stayed on his recent course, which is to sound entirely unenthused about the whole deal.
There has been no change from early December, the commissioner said, back when the NHL Players’ Association passed on a league proposal that would have traded Olympic participation for a three-year extension of the collective bargaining agreement between the players and owners.
With that idea shot down, Bettman said, “Absent some compelling reason, I’m not sure there’s a whole lot of sentiment on the part of the clubs to go through the disruption of taking almost three weeks off in the middle of the season. We’ve been there, done that five times.”
As I say: stalemate. None of this is all that surprising since it’s a restatement of Bettman’s long-held position on the matter. But then, Bettman was speaking at the Centennial Classic, which wouldn’t exist other than for the marketing reasons that have caused the NHL to embrace outdoor games in a prolonged hug that long ago became awkward.
The sleepy-then-wild affair between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Detroit Red Wings at BMO Field was the 20th outdoor game in nine years, with the 21st to be played on Monday in St. Louis. There is a simple reason the league has revisited this well so often: These games, even though they aren’t as novel as they once were, are a marquee event for a league that has very few of them.
Bettman said Sunday he expects another three in-theelements games next season, regardless of the Olympic decision.
The NHL is never going to be the NFL, which needs only to put a good Dallas Cowboys team in prime time to make it a ratings bonanza, and its parity won’t allow it to turn a handful of elite matchups into the showcase the NBA has developed with its Christmas Day slate.
But outdoor games, with their weird stadiums and the weather and the eye black and the hats with pompoms, are a ready-made way for hockey to feel different and special, and a tour around the BMO Field grounds on Sunday was enough to make even an outdoor-game skeptic admit fans are still very excited about the concept — which is why they sell tickets to sporting events in the first place. The 5-4 overtime win for the Leafs, with eight goals after the first two periods, was the kind of fun game that works on hockey’s rare big stage. But you know where else hockey feels different and special? Yeah, you do. So do the players, clearly, since they want to be in South Korea — for free — despite the general inconvenience of it being located some distance from this continent. On Sunday, it fell to Donald Fehr of the NHLPA of all people to talk up the merits of growing the game internationally just minutes after the NHL commissioner had played down the idea.
Fehr said he was optimistic a deal to get the players to Pyeongchang could be reached, although he was vague about the reasons for such optimism. He said he didn’t think the Olympics needed to be tied to CBA talks, which makes sense since the current deal runs through 2022. He said ideally the league and the players could come up with some kind of long-term internationalplay deal that would incorporate World Cups and Olympics, all of which are just informal notions at this point, but he also didn’t rule out a one-off that resolved Pyeongchang 2018 and left the rest to be figured out later.
But most of all, he sounded utterly convinced that having NHL players at the Olympics was in the best interests of growing the sport.
Sure, an Olympics in Asia isn’t ideal for the NHL, for a host of reasons. But it is the Olympics on offer.
“You have to think long-term,” Fehr said, “even if everything isn’t perfect.”
This weekend, at an event held solely to grow the game, Fehr’s was a lonely voice.
Bettman stayed on his recent course, which is to sound entirely unenthused about the whole deal.