Jack Todd: Bettman is neighbourhood bully in NHL talks
by Jack Todd, The Gazette
You have to hand it to Gary Bettman – the man has all the animal bases covered.
Bettman has the cheek of a cat burglar, the determination of a pit bull and the stubbornness of a mule. He treats hockey fans like a bunch of monkeys and his latest offer to the NHLPA was pure, unadulterated horse patootie.
Bettman’s most recent stunt was so cute, it could have been a Kodak Moment. First, he hit the players with an “offer” that was more like a rollback to 1994. Then, when he softened that “offer” ever so slightly, he made like he had offered an enormous concession.
Bettman is like a bully neighbour who knocks on your door and says he’s going to be taking your house, your wife, your kids, your cars and your dog. You mutter something about places where the sun don’t shine and he leaves.
Two weeks later, the neighbour is back. Just to prove what a nice guy he is, he says, he’s willing to make concessions. He’s still going to take the house, the wife, the kids and the cars — but this time, he’s willing to let you keep the dog and live in the basement.
Mercifully, Donald Fehr is something less than a complete, unadulterated fool. He knows that with the league boasting about how revenue has increased from $2.1 billion to $3.3 billion since the last Bettman Lockout, there is no reason whatsoever for any of this.
All the NHL needs is some meaningful revenue sharing. It needs to tell Ed Snider to stop behaving like the biggest hog at the trough: Snider’s Flyers tried to wreck the small-market Nashville Predators with an absurd offer to restricted free-agent Shea Weber, which the Predators were forced to match.
But Snider is (with Boston’s Jeremy Jacobs) one of the two greedy, big-market owners who have Bettman’s ear. He’s one of those insisting that the system is broken. If that’s true, guys like Snider broke it. And Craig Leipold of the Minnesota Wild, who whines that the system is broken and the Wild aren’t making money because player salaries are too high. This, of course, was right before Leipold signed Zach Parise and Ryan Suter to ridiculous deals.
If the NHL owners have problems, they’re entirely of their own making. The league has never been healthier or richer. There is no reason for the absurd offers Bettman is making, no reason for a lockout, no reason to lose another season.
Except, that is, for the greed and stupidity of the owners. Next time Bettman comes calling, Fehr should tell him he can have the dog and the basement — and that’s it.
Dumbest fan comment on the pending lockout: “The players are a bunch of overpaid bums. I’d play for free.”
We must have seen that one in the comment strings 100 times already and the lockout hasn’t even started.
Truth is, guys, you wouldn’t play for free – even if you had the talent, which you don’t. You wouldn’t stand up to the stress of 100 brutally difficult games every year, you wouldn’t help earn $3.3 billion for the owners last year, you wouldn’t risk the dark underworld of concussions night after night, you wouldn’t put world-class skills on display for free.
All that is a lot of horse hockey and the guys who are saying it are a bunch of pathetic wannabes who haven’t done their homework. NHL players lay it on the line every night. Their seasons are like running a marathon and getting hit by 230-pound defencemen along the way.
I’d love to see some of these “I’d play for free” numskulls out on an NHL rink, night after night. Humiliating themselves in public, taking NHL hits, seeing how their bodies wear down after even two weeks at that pace. It’s a dumb thing to say, fellas — especially when you can’t back it up.
Once a fool, always a fool: No one, not even Bettman, has treated NHL players the way they were treated by Alan Eagleson.
While posing as their saviour, Eagleson was robbing the players blind. He was caught and sentenced to prison. If there were any justice in this world, he would still be there.
But Bobby Clarke is noisily insisting Eagleson should be part of the Summit Series reunion and Clarke, surprisingly, has the backing of the majority of the players. No wonder it was so easy for Eagleson to cheat the players: even after it has all come out in public, guys like Clarke still don’t get it.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/sports/Todd+Bettman+bully+talks/7181295/story.html
are telling me the Rangers have acquired winger Rick Nash from Columbus giving up forwards Brandon Dubinsky, Artem Anisimov, prospect Tim Erixon and a first-round pick.
