Gary Bettman really screwed up this whole Olympics hockey thing
Gary Bettman blew another opportunity to grow the NHL on a global stage, but no one should be surprised by his lack of awareness.
He did it again.
Gary Bettman, like always, found a way to screw a good thing up and this time his mistake is on an Olympic sized scale.
When the 2018 Winter Olympics kicked off their Men’s Ice Hockey competition on Wednesday there was be a huge gaping void at the Gangneung Hockey Center and Kwandong Hockey Center. You did not see Sidney Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin, Patrick Kane or even Connor McDavid.
Last year, Gary Bettman made it official: NHL players would not be participating in the 2018 Winter Olympics and considered the case closed.
Bettman has been wrong on many things, so this is not new territory for fans of the sport. This will be the first time in five Winter Olympic cycles that we will not see pros from the NHL take to the ice and represent their countries. The reasons and there are many do not carry much weight when it comes to the larger picture of growing the league and the sport of hockey.
Bettman decided that he did not want to interrupt the NHL hockey schedule to give players a chance to represent their countries. Although players have done this since the 1970s with the legendary Summit Series in 1972 and all the way up to the World Cup of Hockey in 2016. We see professionals in other sports play for their countries all the time and it’s done nothing but to help create stars and help expand the brand of the sport.
I think you can take two to four weeks out of the schedule to expand the sport and your brand.
Another one of the mistakes that Bettman and the NHL brass has made is they will not be able to broadcast regular season games on the NBC/Universal family of networks (NBC, NBCSN, USA, and CNBC) during the Olympics. When you think about the free advertising that could come during the Olympics and the post-Olympics rating boost, this is very silly.
For example, you could have a Canada-Sweden Gold Medal Game and then feature Conor McDavid, Sidney Crosby and others in an Edmonton Oilers-Pittsburgh Penguins game five days later to kick off the second half of the season.
We don’t get logic from Gary Bettman. If logic moved next door to Gary Bettman, he would find a way to move across town by the end of the day.
Maybe if the idea of having the games outside would have appealed to Bettman, who can’t stop scheduling Winter Classics as his idea of prime exposure. Does Gary Bettman hate fun? Why should we have to settle for Brian Gionta representing our country when we could have Auston Matthews? Nothing against Gionta but there is a golden opportunity to help usher in the next generation of American hockey stars rather than showcase players past their prime or amateurs fans won’t care about until (or if) they’re called up in March.
Next: Best Olympian from each state
Leave it to Bettman to see a golden opportunity and roll with the worst possible option for no good reason at all.