<strong style="font-weight: bold;">What the Puck?!: How Stern and Bettman Jewed Professional Hockey
"As I mentioned on this week's radio Istina, ESPN's 'Sports Guy," Bill
Simmons, has mentioned more than once his belief that jew Stern
deliberately sabotaged hockey by sending his least competent lackey,
Bettman, to run the NHL. Simmons is half-joking, but it's interesting
that someone totally innocent of the WN point of view would reach a
conclusion we might. NHL is nearly all White. For that reason alone,
jews would like to destroy it. And the writer in the article above says
there was a point when the all-white sport, hockey, threatened to draw
equal with the NBA. Very, very interesting. What this thread needs now
is the article that appeared on a WN site, possibly the late National
Vanguard, about the rules changes jew Bettman introduced. As I recall,
the changes were meant to end fighting, one of hockey's most popular
aspects, and paradoxically, a way to prevent injury to players." --- Alex Linder on vnnforum
http://www.vnnforum.com/showthread.php?t=82732
Unhappy anniversary
By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports
January 29, 2007
Dan Wetzel
Everyone has a favorite conspiracy theory about the NBA. Some like the
idea that David Stern fixed the 1984 draft lottery. Others favor his
supposed secret suspension of a star player for gambling problems.
Mine dates back to the early 1990s, when the NHL was white hot with
fans and never better on the ice. Wayne Gretzky was in Los Angeles.
Mark Messier was with the New York Rangers, who were on the verge of
ending their Stanley Cup drought. Mario Lemieux, Steve Yzerman, Ray
Bourque, Patrick Roy and many others were hitting their prime.
Anyone who doesn't think hockey can work in America is forgetting this
era. All of a sudden, hockey was challenging, if not beating, the NBA
in a number of major U.S. markets - including New York. It's almost
impossible to imagine now, but it happened.
As the conspiracy theory goes, Stern sensed the potential trouble in
1993 while the NHL was in search of a new commissioner. So he looked
around his own office for someone so incompetent that if they got the
job, the NHL would be marginalized by their mismanagement and never
again be a threat to the NBA.
Naturally, Stern recommended one of his assistants, Gary Bettman, for the job.
ADVERTISEMENT
True story or not, it worked.
Bettman is set to begin his 15th year as commissioner Thursday, and
like most hockey fans I feel the need to mark the occasion by popping a
bottle of champagne, chugging the entire thing in an effort to drown my
misery and then smashing the empty bottle over my temple to black out
the memories.
There has never been a commissioner of a major North American sports
league this inept, yet the league's board of governors keeps employing
him, keeps giving him another chance to sink this once-proud,
once-vibrant league to new depths.
Bettman is on a 14-year run of bad ideas. His latest was a classic,
moving the league's all-star game, which featured attention-grabbing
young megastars, to midweek on the Versus Network - as opposed to NBC
on a weekend. He claimed it would allow Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin
to own the sports landscape, unlike some crowded weekend.
The result was a catastrophic 0.7 rating. That's a meager 474,298
households in the States that bothered to watch, down 76 percent from
the last all-star game.
It is par for a season which has seen TV numbers plummet in both the
U.S. and Canada (down 20 percent by some reports), attendance drop and
media coverage dwindle.
Hockey fans would laugh if we weren't crying. We'd figure it would be
the last straw that would lead to his dismissal, but at this stage, we
know he's never going away. For those of us who grew up loving and
living this sport and this league, all of us who cared about the NHL
long before Bettman's slow, steady suicidal stewardship of it, it's
just the latest in a recurring nightmare.
The Bettman era has been an unmitigated disaster for the league in
virtually every possible way, one outrageously terrible initiative
after another.
I could write a book about Bettman's insulting and imbecilic moves
through the years (Chapter 9: "The Glowing Puck") but the main problem
has always been the same. He has shown no respect for the game, for its
history, for its fans, for its unique qualities.
Bettman might consider himself an astute sports marketer, but in
practice he is arguably the worst of all time. He has never figured out
how to change his marketing plans to fit the product of hockey.
Instead, he changed the product to fit his marketing plans.
The league is now overexpanded and overpriced, misplaced and
misdirected. It is less exciting, less interesting, less traditional
and more difficult to follow for the non-obsessive fan.
Yes, hockey fans remain. I'm one of them. But even we can't believe
what has happened here. It is bad enough a desperate, ill-advised grab
of supposed "new, emerging markets" have come at the expense of the old
fan base. It's dispiriting that the league chased the fickle corporate
dollar and priced out families. But what's worse is it just keeps going
and going, Bettman on the job for life.
Under Bettman's watch, the NHL's improvements are few. Certainly new
technologies such as the "Center Ice" package and the Internet have
been great. And there are far more highly skilled players than in 1993,
thanks to the influx of talent from Eastern Europe and the former
Soviet Union.
Of course, Bettman had nothing to do with these things occurring.
The elimination of the red line and the crackdown on obstruction are
positives. Some will argue that shootouts to decide regular-season
games and the severe curbing of fighting are positives, but that's a
matter of personal preference.
While some hail the salary cap that allows across-the-board
competitiveness, I think it suppresses the kind of elite play that
makes the game great. Hockey is the ultimate team pursuit - the need
for timing and teamwork is paramount. The individual star is utterly
worthless without strong teammates.
The great player needs other great players to be great. In the
mid-1980s, Gretzky needed Messier, Paul Coffey, Glenn Anderson, Jari
Kurri and others to maximize his abilities and thrill fans. A salary
cap prevents talent from flocking together like that, so we get
economic viability of the Atlanta Thrashers in exchange for
breathtaking teams such as the Edmonton Oilers of 1980s or the Detroit
Red Wings of the late 1990s.
The negatives are too numerous to list, but consider the league's
current uneven schedule which serves no purpose other than cutting
travel costs for a few cheapskate owners. Teams play eight games per
season against division foes, or 32 a year against just four teams.
Bettman claimed it would spawn "new" rivalries. Of course, old
rivalries such as Detroit-Toronto - two hockey-mad towns separated by a
single highway that actually has an exit for Wayne Gretzky Blvd. - no
longer play a home-and-home series each season. It's like killing Red
Sox-Yankees so Blue Jays-Diamondbacks might catch on.
And, since fighting has been curbed, the "new" rivalries haven't really
taken because a hockey rivalry without fighting is like non-alcoholic
beer.
Plus, not everyone gets to see young superstars such as Pittsburgh's Crosby or Washington's Ovechkin.
Last week, 22 franchises tried to bring the old schedule back, but
eight blocked the move in a vote while Bettman, predictably, did little
lobbying on behalf of the majority opinion.
This is Bettman's NHL. Fourteen years, four bankruptcies, three
franchise moves, two lockouts, one lost season and no effective
leadership. The business is so sick that the Pittsburgh Penguins,
despite a loyal fan base and the most promising talent since Gretzky,
are 50-50 to move to that noted hockey hotbed of Kansas City.
Bettman has his apologists who point out that he beat former NHLPA head
Bob Goodenow during the last lockout and got a salary cap installed.
Which is true, except it cost the NHL an entire season and an
incalculable number of fans. And the proposed cap for next season is
already creeping close to the average pre-lockout team salary. Wasn't
the new deal only needed because the old deal was so bad? And who
negotiated that one for the NHL in 1994? Oh yes, Gary Bettman, who
locked the players out and killed all momentum from the Rangers'
Stanley Cup championship to get that ill-fated deal done.
Lord knows what is next. Lord knows how he can make it worse. Lord
knows what prior screwups he'll try to solve now with fresh screwups.
You'd think a 0.7 was rock bottom, but then again, this is someone who
surveyed the burning wreckage of the NHL and decided that what would
really turn things around this time were sleek new uniforms from
Reebok, which were trotted out last week.
"This is an evolution of our uniform," Bettman proudly crowed.
Of course, already fans who are carrying even a few extra pounds report
that they look ridiculous in the new form fitting jerseys, which has
led to predictions of plummeting apparel sales and jokes about how
Bettman hatched the idea after watching George Costanza comically
change the New York Yankees' uniforms to cotton.
"This is a Seinfeld episode, isn't it?" wrote one fan on the San Jose Mercury News' hockey blog.
Yes, David Stern's bizarro world, now entering its 15th year and counting.
Dan Wetzel is Yahoo! Sports' national columnist and author of
"Resilience: Faith, Focus, Triumph" with the Miami Heat's Alonzo
Mourning. The book details Mourning's rise from foster care to NBA
stardom before kidney disease changed everything. Send Dan a question
or comment for potential use in a future column or webcast.
http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/news?slu...yhoo&type=lgns[/b]<strong style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">
[/b]Edited by: McKinley
"As I mentioned on this week's radio Istina, ESPN's 'Sports Guy," Bill
Simmons, has mentioned more than once his belief that jew Stern
deliberately sabotaged hockey by sending his least competent lackey,
Bettman, to run the NHL. Simmons is half-joking, but it's interesting
that someone totally innocent of the WN point of view would reach a
conclusion we might. NHL is nearly all White. For that reason alone,
jews would like to destroy it. And the writer in the article above says
there was a point when the all-white sport, hockey, threatened to draw
equal with the NBA. Very, very interesting. What this thread needs now
is the article that appeared on a WN site, possibly the late National
Vanguard, about the rules changes jew Bettman introduced. As I recall,
the changes were meant to end fighting, one of hockey's most popular
aspects, and paradoxically, a way to prevent injury to players." --- Alex Linder on vnnforum
http://www.vnnforum.com/showthread.php?t=82732
Unhappy anniversary
By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports
January 29, 2007
Dan Wetzel
Everyone has a favorite conspiracy theory about the NBA. Some like the
idea that David Stern fixed the 1984 draft lottery. Others favor his
supposed secret suspension of a star player for gambling problems.
Mine dates back to the early 1990s, when the NHL was white hot with
fans and never better on the ice. Wayne Gretzky was in Los Angeles.
Mark Messier was with the New York Rangers, who were on the verge of
ending their Stanley Cup drought. Mario Lemieux, Steve Yzerman, Ray
Bourque, Patrick Roy and many others were hitting their prime.
Anyone who doesn't think hockey can work in America is forgetting this
era. All of a sudden, hockey was challenging, if not beating, the NBA
in a number of major U.S. markets - including New York. It's almost
impossible to imagine now, but it happened.
As the conspiracy theory goes, Stern sensed the potential trouble in
1993 while the NHL was in search of a new commissioner. So he looked
around his own office for someone so incompetent that if they got the
job, the NHL would be marginalized by their mismanagement and never
again be a threat to the NBA.
Naturally, Stern recommended one of his assistants, Gary Bettman, for the job.
ADVERTISEMENT
True story or not, it worked.
Bettman is set to begin his 15th year as commissioner Thursday, and
like most hockey fans I feel the need to mark the occasion by popping a
bottle of champagne, chugging the entire thing in an effort to drown my
misery and then smashing the empty bottle over my temple to black out
the memories.
There has never been a commissioner of a major North American sports
league this inept, yet the league's board of governors keeps employing
him, keeps giving him another chance to sink this once-proud,
once-vibrant league to new depths.
Bettman is on a 14-year run of bad ideas. His latest was a classic,
moving the league's all-star game, which featured attention-grabbing
young megastars, to midweek on the Versus Network - as opposed to NBC
on a weekend. He claimed it would allow Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin
to own the sports landscape, unlike some crowded weekend.
The result was a catastrophic 0.7 rating. That's a meager 474,298
households in the States that bothered to watch, down 76 percent from
the last all-star game.
It is par for a season which has seen TV numbers plummet in both the
U.S. and Canada (down 20 percent by some reports), attendance drop and
media coverage dwindle.
Hockey fans would laugh if we weren't crying. We'd figure it would be
the last straw that would lead to his dismissal, but at this stage, we
know he's never going away. For those of us who grew up loving and
living this sport and this league, all of us who cared about the NHL
long before Bettman's slow, steady suicidal stewardship of it, it's
just the latest in a recurring nightmare.
The Bettman era has been an unmitigated disaster for the league in
virtually every possible way, one outrageously terrible initiative
after another.
I could write a book about Bettman's insulting and imbecilic moves
through the years (Chapter 9: "The Glowing Puck") but the main problem
has always been the same. He has shown no respect for the game, for its
history, for its fans, for its unique qualities.
Bettman might consider himself an astute sports marketer, but in
practice he is arguably the worst of all time. He has never figured out
how to change his marketing plans to fit the product of hockey.
Instead, he changed the product to fit his marketing plans.
The league is now overexpanded and overpriced, misplaced and
misdirected. It is less exciting, less interesting, less traditional
and more difficult to follow for the non-obsessive fan.
Yes, hockey fans remain. I'm one of them. But even we can't believe
what has happened here. It is bad enough a desperate, ill-advised grab
of supposed "new, emerging markets" have come at the expense of the old
fan base. It's dispiriting that the league chased the fickle corporate
dollar and priced out families. But what's worse is it just keeps going
and going, Bettman on the job for life.
Under Bettman's watch, the NHL's improvements are few. Certainly new
technologies such as the "Center Ice" package and the Internet have
been great. And there are far more highly skilled players than in 1993,
thanks to the influx of talent from Eastern Europe and the former
Soviet Union.
Of course, Bettman had nothing to do with these things occurring.
The elimination of the red line and the crackdown on obstruction are
positives. Some will argue that shootouts to decide regular-season
games and the severe curbing of fighting are positives, but that's a
matter of personal preference.
While some hail the salary cap that allows across-the-board
competitiveness, I think it suppresses the kind of elite play that
makes the game great. Hockey is the ultimate team pursuit - the need
for timing and teamwork is paramount. The individual star is utterly
worthless without strong teammates.
The great player needs other great players to be great. In the
mid-1980s, Gretzky needed Messier, Paul Coffey, Glenn Anderson, Jari
Kurri and others to maximize his abilities and thrill fans. A salary
cap prevents talent from flocking together like that, so we get
economic viability of the Atlanta Thrashers in exchange for
breathtaking teams such as the Edmonton Oilers of 1980s or the Detroit
Red Wings of the late 1990s.
The negatives are too numerous to list, but consider the league's
current uneven schedule which serves no purpose other than cutting
travel costs for a few cheapskate owners. Teams play eight games per
season against division foes, or 32 a year against just four teams.
Bettman claimed it would spawn "new" rivalries. Of course, old
rivalries such as Detroit-Toronto - two hockey-mad towns separated by a
single highway that actually has an exit for Wayne Gretzky Blvd. - no
longer play a home-and-home series each season. It's like killing Red
Sox-Yankees so Blue Jays-Diamondbacks might catch on.
And, since fighting has been curbed, the "new" rivalries haven't really
taken because a hockey rivalry without fighting is like non-alcoholic
beer.
Plus, not everyone gets to see young superstars such as Pittsburgh's Crosby or Washington's Ovechkin.
Last week, 22 franchises tried to bring the old schedule back, but
eight blocked the move in a vote while Bettman, predictably, did little
lobbying on behalf of the majority opinion.
This is Bettman's NHL. Fourteen years, four bankruptcies, three
franchise moves, two lockouts, one lost season and no effective
leadership. The business is so sick that the Pittsburgh Penguins,
despite a loyal fan base and the most promising talent since Gretzky,
are 50-50 to move to that noted hockey hotbed of Kansas City.
Bettman has his apologists who point out that he beat former NHLPA head
Bob Goodenow during the last lockout and got a salary cap installed.
Which is true, except it cost the NHL an entire season and an
incalculable number of fans. And the proposed cap for next season is
already creeping close to the average pre-lockout team salary. Wasn't
the new deal only needed because the old deal was so bad? And who
negotiated that one for the NHL in 1994? Oh yes, Gary Bettman, who
locked the players out and killed all momentum from the Rangers'
Stanley Cup championship to get that ill-fated deal done.
Lord knows what is next. Lord knows how he can make it worse. Lord
knows what prior screwups he'll try to solve now with fresh screwups.
You'd think a 0.7 was rock bottom, but then again, this is someone who
surveyed the burning wreckage of the NHL and decided that what would
really turn things around this time were sleek new uniforms from
Reebok, which were trotted out last week.
"This is an evolution of our uniform," Bettman proudly crowed.
Of course, already fans who are carrying even a few extra pounds report
that they look ridiculous in the new form fitting jerseys, which has
led to predictions of plummeting apparel sales and jokes about how
Bettman hatched the idea after watching George Costanza comically
change the New York Yankees' uniforms to cotton.
"This is a Seinfeld episode, isn't it?" wrote one fan on the San Jose Mercury News' hockey blog.
Yes, David Stern's bizarro world, now entering its 15th year and counting.
Dan Wetzel is Yahoo! Sports' national columnist and author of
"Resilience: Faith, Focus, Triumph" with the Miami Heat's Alonzo
Mourning. The book details Mourning's rise from foster care to NBA
stardom before kidney disease changed everything. Send Dan a question
or comment for potential use in a future column or webcast.
http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/news?slu...yhoo&type=lgns[/b]<strong style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">
[/b]Edited by: McKinley
