Around the NHL 2019-20

[shrader]

6 minutes ago, Zamboni said:

Like everything else… Everyone has their opinion. My opinion is that Bettman doesn’t really deserve the Booing when he’s presenting the Stanley Cup to the winners. I find those fans immature obnoxious and rude. 
Some fans find it funny, cutting edge, and acceptable groupthink. I couldn’t possibly care less that they think that. Just like some fans couldn’t possibly care less that I think that Bettman shouldn’t get booed. End of story. 

Even Bettman enjoys the booing.  It was edgy at one point, but that day is long gone.

[That Aud Smell]

1 hour ago, Zamboni said:

Like everything else… Everyone has their opinion. My opinion is that Bettman doesn’t really deserve the Booing when he’s presenting the Stanley Cup to the winners. I find those fans immature obnoxious and rude. 
Some fans find it funny, cutting edge, and acceptable groupthink. I couldn’t possibly care less that they think that. Just like some fans couldn’t possibly care less that I think that Bettman shouldn’t get booed. End of story. 

Hey - thanks - it's nice and cool here where all that shade got thrown.

It's also good to know that your post is the final word on the matter.

[dudacek]

Bettman saved the Sabres from the Golisanos and rigged the lottery to give us Dahlin.

I don't know how any Sabre fan could possibly hate the man.

[MakeSabresGrr8Again]

3 minutes ago, dudacek said:

Bettman saved the Sabres from the Golisanos and rigged the lottery to give us Dahlin.

I don't know how any Sabre fan could possibly hate the man.

Maybe because he also rigged the "no goal".

[Zamboni]

1 hour ago, That Aud Smell said:

Hey - thanks - it's nice and cool here where all that shade got thrown.

It's also good to know that your post is the final word on the matter.

And that’s why people can’t have conversations. Everything is a battle.

The End of Story... is how I see it. Not how you or anyone else sees it. You can’t with a straight face tell me that I’m wrong when I say you couldn’t possibly care less about my opinion about booing Bettman. You have your opinion and you aren’t wavering from it. Same with me.... Those two facts, (for me at least) is the “End of the Story”. No need to debate me and try to get me to think like you. And I won’t waste my time trying to do that to you. That’s all I meant by End of Story. If you feel the need to continue a back n forth about booing Bettman, go ahead. I’ve said my peace on the matter. I wasn’t expecting a back n forth. Nor am I interested in that futile effort. 
I’d like to move on...

Edited July 7, 2020 by Zamboni

[Weave]

Remind me again, why does the league fans hate Bettman?

(I know why WE hate him.  Him, and Brett Hull)

[PromoTheRobot]

2 hours ago, shrader said:

Even Bettman enjoys the booing.  It was edgy at one point, but that day is long gone.

 

I think the booing is like WWE at this point. He plays along.

[IKnowPhysics]

[trigger warning: this will make you mad, one way or another, and it's too heavy of a post for the "Around the NHL" thread]

My .02.  Gary Bettman is a coward and a liar, who held bias at a critical moment when courage and objectivity was needed, damaging the sport and effectively making him a cheat.  I will hate him until he admits and apologizes for "No Goal," which I do not expect he will ever do.  I will never forget Jim Kelley's recollection of his experience that night.  An excerpt:

Quote

I learned that Ruff, after seeing the tape of Hull's foot fully in Dominik Hasek's goalcrease, had come out of the coaches' office and was searching for NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman.

He found him and confronted him with the "no-goal" argument but the Commissioner reportedly turned away and immediately left the building. I had learned that then Director of Officiating Bryan Lewis had left the video replay booth immediately after Hull scored and there was some question as to whether or not the goal had been reviewed. (I later saw that Lewis, who resigned his position shortly after the incident for reasons the league insisted had to do with a family illness, was confronted in the basement of the arena by Jean Knox, the wife of deceased owner Seymour Knox and was in tears while she asked how and why the league could make a ruling so contrary to the rules at that time.) The rule at that time was that no opposing player could enter the crease or have any part of his equipment in the crease including the airspace above the crease once the puck had entered that zone. It was put in to protect goaltenders who were regularly being run by opposing players (as they are once again). It had been enforced regularly with near constant video reviews and many a night a goal was recalled, sometimes simply because a player's stick was in the air above the goalcrease or his toe was on the crease line.

But not on this night. On this night the NHL eventually said that the goal was legitimate because the league had issued a memo (and they had) defining and, according to them, somewhat changing the rule. It became the" law of continuous possession" that Lewis and the league clung to throughout a controversy that has never really gone away.

The league ruled that Hull had continuous possession of the puck even though it had come out of the crease off Hasek's pad and that Hull pulled it back in and over the goal line with his offending foot in the crease. Lewis ruled that was a legitimate possession claiming that the puck going off Hasek didn't constitute possession and so Hull was ruled to have had continuous possession and was within his rights to continue the play even though his foot was in the crease.

A great many media people bought that argument even though the News eventually obtained a copy of the memo (which I still have) and that in one of the points just past the one Lewis relied on it clearly stated gave a scenario in which the goal should have been disallowed.

Regards the matter of a review, both Lewis and Bettman said the goal, as all goals were at that time, was reviewed. That was true to a point, but they never said when that took place, leading credence to the argument that the play was not immediately reviewed and that the league was caught in the exact predicament that everyone in hockey feared might happen, a controversial goal that decided the Cup.

The fallout of that night stretched on for months, if not years.  Bettman's character was exposed in the weeks after that night.  From a Jim Kelley article:

Quote

Gary Bettman, the commissioner of the National Hockey League, was so upset that Sabres coach Lindy Ruff confronted him and demanded an explanation of the goal that ended Game Six and the Stanley Cup finals that he demanded Sabres ownership issue him an apology.

Sources told The News that to the contrary, Sabres owner John Rigas said he would not apologize and then told Bettman that the commissioner owed his team an apology.  Repeated attempts to reach Rigas have been unsuccessful, but according to several sources, Rigas stunned the commissioner with his remark.

Bob Swados intimated in his book that Bettman, driven by television ratings, never wanted the Sabres to win that series.  A published review of that book:

Quote

The Buffalo Sabres had just "stolen" the first game of the Stanley Cup finals, skating into Dallas and surprising the Dallas Stars in overtime. The date was June 8, 1999.  The referee had called a disproportionate number of penalties on the Sabres, at one point sending seven straight Buffalo players to the penalty box.  When Robert O. Swados, longtime Sabres counsel and secretary of the NHL Board of Governors, reached for a congratulatory handshake from the top NHL brass afterward, all he got was stony silence.

"Well, I guess justice triumphed over adversity," Swados quipped to NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman.

Without cracking a smile, Bettman responded like a stern judge: "Adversity justified."

Swados understood the icy response, writing that it was clear the Sabres' win "had injected an unpleasant ghost into the league's TV plans and projected ratings."

Of course, Swados remembered that exchange when the Sabres lost the Stanley Cup a few nights later on the infamous Brett Hull "No Goal." An experienced high-stakes attorney, Swados questions whether proper procedures were followed for the disputed goal: "Did the referee ask for review? Was (Sabres coach Lindy) Ruff prevented from seeking it? Did Bettman turn his back on the coach? Did the gatekeeper open the Zamboni entrance prematurely? Did a league official order him to do so?"

The evidence might be circumstantial, but Swados concludes his argument here with a comment from longtime NHL coach Pat Quinn, who greeted him later by saying, "You got screwed, Bob."

The closest Gary Bettman ever got to apologizing was in 2012, on an episode of "Costas Tonight," when he admitted that the rule (but not the incident) was one of the worst mistakes of his career.

Quote

COSTAS: "Worst mistake you ever made?"

BETTMAN: "I don't think you can pinpoint it on one, so I'll give you a couple.  In '94, we made the deal during collective bargaining that wasn't the right deal, just to save the season. Allowing the 'in the crease' rule, the foot-in-the-crease rule, we should have not done.  And, uh, we once had a prospective owner defraud us, under crazy circumstances. So I'll give you a hat trick."

Some say that the league assuming control of the franchise operation after the Rigases until finding a new owner was Gary Bettman's penance for No Goal, but I think it was his penance for John Spano, the would-be Islanders owner who swindled Bettman just five years before.  Just as in Long Island, Bettman needed to find an owner that would revitalize the Sabres and he personally needed to oversee a heightened level of due diligence investigation into potential buyers to avoid another Spano- especially with the mess left by the Rigases and the money owed to Adelphia.  This was mostly to protect his own employment and to protect the league from massive financial loss.  To do otherwise would have resulted in enormous disaster as a lose-lose-lose for the fans, the league, and his career.  And he still bungled it somewhat.  The league turned down Golisano's initial bid, then entertained Mark Hamister's bid that needed $40M in public funds, only for those funds to be rejected, causing Hamister's creditors to pull out, and Golisano successfully submitting a revised lower, but realistic, bid.  Golisano protected the Sabres.  Bettman protected the league.

Some other fan bases have rational reasons to hate Gary Bettman too, and I support them.  He's been booed since the '94 lockout.  I've booed him several times.  In the recent years, he seems to revel in the booing, like a cartoon supervillain gloating about his misdoings.

[LabattBlue]

5 hours ago, shrader said:

Even Bettman enjoys the booing.  It was edgy at one point, but that day is long gone.

He's just riding on Goodell's coat tails.  Roger embraced it, and seems to enjoy it.  Bettman just being a phony imitating Goodell.

[Stoner]

Wonderful.

[shrader]

31 minutes ago, LabattBlue said:

He's just riding on Goodell's coat tails.  Roger embraced it, and seems to enjoy it.  Bettman just being a phony imitating Goodell.

Bettman has embraced the boos for probably as long as Roger has been on the job. Roger is still way too stiff with his boos and I’m pretty sure Gary loves it. 

[thewookie1]

1 hour ago, IKnowPhysics said:

[trigger warning: this will make you mad, one way or another, and it's too heavy of a post for the "Around the NHL" thread]

My .02.  Gary Bettman is a coward and a liar, who held bias at a critical moment when courage and objectivity was needed, damaging the sport and effectively making him a cheat.  I will hate him until he admits and apologizes for "No Goal," which I do not expect he will ever do.  I will never forget Jim Kelley's recollection of his experience that night.  An excerpt:

The fallout of that night stretched on for months, if not years.  Bettman's character was exposed in the weeks after that night.  From a Jim Kelley article:

Bob Swados intimated in his book that Bettman, driven by television ratings, never wanted the Sabres to win that series.  A published review of that book:

The closest Gary Bettman ever got to apologizing was in 2012, on an episode of "Costas Tonight," when he admitted that the rule (but not the incident) was one of the worst mistakes of his career.

Some say that the league assuming control of the franchise operation after the Rigases until finding a new owner was Gary Bettman's penance for No Goal, but I think it was his penance for John Spano, the would-be Islanders owner who swindled Bettman just five years before.  Just as in Long Island, Bettman needed to find an owner that would revitalize the Sabres and he personally needed to oversee a heightened level of due diligence investigation into potential buyers to avoid another Spano- especially with the mess left by the Rigases and the money owed to Adelphia.  This was mostly to protect his own employment and to protect the league from massive financial loss.  To do otherwise would have resulted in enormous disaster as a lose-lose-lose for the fans, the league, and his career.  And he still bungled it somewhat.  The league turned down Golisano's initial bid, then entertained Mark Hamister's bid that needed $40M in public funds, only for those funds to be rejected, causing Hamister's creditors to pull out, and Golisano successfully submitting a revised lower, but realistic, bid.  Golisano protected the Sabres.  Bettman protected the league.

Some other fan bases have rational reasons to hate Gary Bettman too, and I support them.  He's been booed since the '94 lockout.  I've booed him several times.  In the recent years, he seems to revel in the booing, like a cartoon supervillain gloating about his misdoings.

Sounds legit, I do think Bettman may regret it a little nowadays since it never really fixed Dallas's fan problem but I don't doubt the league wanted Dallas to end up winning.

[Thorner]

6 hours ago, dudacek said:

Bettman saved the Sabres from the Golisanos and rigged the lottery to give us Dahlin.

I don't know how any Sabre fan could possibly hate the man.

I've liked him since, after being boo'd at the draft, said "you're gonna wanna hear this!" to the fans. It was so funny. 

5 hours ago, PromoTheRobot said:

 

I think the booing is like WWE at this point. He plays along.

This is exactly it. He's a heel and he knows it. 

[SwampD]

4 hours ago, IKnowPhysics said:

[trigger warning: this will make you mad, one way or another, and it's too heavy of a post for the "Around the NHL" thread]

My .02.  Gary Bettman is a coward and a liar, who held bias at a critical moment when courage and objectivity was needed, damaging the sport and effectively making him a cheat.  I will hate him until he admits and apologizes for "No Goal," which I do not expect he will ever do.  I will never forget Jim Kelley's recollection of his experience that night.  An excerpt:

The fallout of that night stretched on for months, if not years.  Bettman's character was exposed in the weeks after that night.  From a Jim Kelley article:

Bob Swados intimated in his book that Bettman, driven by television ratings, never wanted the Sabres to win that series.  A published review of that book:

The closest Gary Bettman ever got to apologizing was in 2012, on an episode of "Costas Tonight," when he admitted that the rule (but not the incident) was one of the worst mistakes of his career.

Some say that the league assuming control of the franchise operation after the Rigases until finding a new owner was Gary Bettman's penance for No Goal, but I think it was his penance for John Spano, the would-be Islanders owner who swindled Bettman just five years before.  Just as in Long Island, Bettman needed to find an owner that would revitalize the Sabres and he personally needed to oversee a heightened level of due diligence investigation into potential buyers to avoid another Spano- especially with the mess left by the Rigases and the money owed to Adelphia.  This was mostly to protect his own employment and to protect the league from massive financial loss.  To do otherwise would have resulted in enormous disaster as a lose-lose-lose for the fans, the league, and his career.  And he still bungled it somewhat.  The league turned down Golisano's initial bid, then entertained Mark Hamister's bid that needed $40M in public funds, only for those funds to be rejected, causing Hamister's creditors to pull out, and Golisano successfully submitting a revised lower, but realistic, bid.  Golisano protected the Sabres.  Bettman protected the league.

Some other fan bases have rational reasons to hate Gary Bettman too, and I support them.  He's been booed since the '94 lockout.  I've booed him several times.  In the recent years, he seems to revel in the booing, like a cartoon supervillain gloating about his misdoings.

This is fantastic.

Dallas had an entire period of extra man advantage In that game 2. Bettman, inexplicably (according to Rob Ray) was talking to an official at ice level. He would absolutely have no reason to do that other than the NHL could not afford another sweep.

I’ve said it before, for Buffalo to win a championship at anything, just being the best will not be enough. Someone is going to have to be transcendent.

Bettman can go ***** himself.

 

cue the nfreeman post that claims all games in all sports are called the exact same and are completely unbiased in 3, 2, 1...

love you, free.

Edited July 8, 2020 by SwampD

[That Aud Smell]

12 hours ago, Zamboni said:

And that’s why people can’t have conversations. Everything is a battle.

The End of Story... is how I see it. Not how you or anyone else sees it. You can’t with a straight face tell me that I’m wrong when I say you couldn’t possibly care less about my opinion about booing Bettman. You have your opinion and you aren’t wavering from it. Same with me.... Those two facts, (for me at least) is the “End of the Story”. No need to debate me and try to get me to think like you. And I won’t waste my time trying to do that to you. That’s all I meant by End of Story. If you feel the need to continue a back n forth about booing Bettman, go ahead. I’ve said my peace on the matter. I wasn’t expecting a back n forth. Nor am I interested in that futile effort. 
I’d like to move on...

That’s fairly rich - the part about battles - since you were the one to scorch and scold when I replied saying that booing Bettman is a fun thing for fans to do.

And I’m not sure where you come off presuming that I don’t GAF about your take on Bettman and booing. I’m here to listen (read) and engage.

At least we got it cleared up that your post was the sum of your thoughts on the matter, not the end of all valid discussion thereon.

12 hours ago, Weave said:

Remind me again, why does the league fans hate Bettman?

(I know why WE hate him.  Him, and Brett Hull)

Not sure - but the enemy of my enemy is my — something.

[Zamboni]

1 hour ago, That Aud Smell said:

That’s fairly rich - the part about battles - since you were the one to scorch and scold when I replied saying that booing Bettman is a fun thing for fans to do.

And I’m not sure where you come off presuming that I don’t GAF about your take on Bettman and booing. I’m here to listen (read) and engage.

At least we got it cleared up that your post was the sum of your thoughts on the matter, not the end of all valid discussion thereon.

Not sure - but the enemy of my enemy is my — something.

Scorch and scold? Now that ... is rich ?

 

[That Aud Smell]

1 hour ago, Zamboni said:

Scorch and scold? Now that ... is rich ?

What can I say. I'm good with a turn of phrase.

I reckon I was prompted by the use of the terms immature, obnoxious, rude, and group think. So, maybe that was not quite scorching. Singeing, maybe. But definitely scolding.

[Doohicksie]

On 6/19/2020 at 2:13 PM, PromoTheRobot said:

Likely another spike in a few weeks from the protests.

That didn't happen.

[Stoner]

Serenity now.

[Sabres Fan in NS]

Bettman is a crook and a cheat.  End of story.

[PromoTheRobot]

1 hour ago, Doohickie said:

That didn't happen.

Oddly that seems to be true. Though it had to have some impact, just based on numbers. But I guess that shows what wearing masks can do to control infection.

[IKnowPhysics]

In happier(?) news, the NHL is attempting to schedule three games per day in the two hub cities, at 12pm, 4:30pm, and 9pm local time.  This means that if you're on the east coast, you could be seeing games nonstop from noon to 2am, as Edmonton is 2 hours behind.  TBD how many games will be nationally broadcast.

If you were jonesing for hockey and you wanted to get your hockey fix, that would do it.

https://www.espn.com/espn/now?nowId=21-41095824-4

[Sabres Fan in NS]

47 minutes ago, IKnowPhysics said:

In happier(?) news, the NHL is attempting to schedule three games per day in the two hub cities, at 12pm, 4:30pm, and 9pm local time.  This means that if you're on the east coast, you could be seeing games nonstop from noon to 2am, as Edmonton is 2 hours behind.  TBD how many games will be nationally broadcast.

If you were jonesing for hockey and you wanted to get your hockey fix, that would do it.

https://www.espn.com/espn/now?nowId=21-41095824-4

Edmonton is 3 hours behind the real east coast ...

This has been a public service announcement brought to yous by that pain in the ass NS.

[Thorner]

3 hours ago, IKnowPhysics said:

In happier(?) news, the NHL is attempting to schedule three games per day in the two hub cities, at 12pm, 4:30pm, and 9pm local time.  This means that if you're on the east coast, you could be seeing games nonstop from noon to 2am, as Edmonton is 2 hours behind.  TBD how many games will be nationally broadcast.

If you were jonesing for hockey and you wanted to get your hockey fix, that would do it.

https://www.espn.com/espn/now?nowId=21-41095824-4

Admittedly I'm getting a little more interested as it gets closer...If we got a nice rainy day and I didn't feel guilty about staying inside the whole time, a couple all-day playoff marathons with a few visual aids does seem pretty appealing..

[MakeSabresGrr8Again]

3 hours ago, New Scotland (NS) said:

Edmonton is 3 hours behind the real east coast ...

This has been a public service announcement brought to yous by that pain in the ass NS.

I don't mind the pain in the a** so much, it's that annoying loud beeeeeeeeeeeep that comes with the public service announcement that irritates me.