Why do canadians hate gary bettman

One can point to the new hockey team in Las Vegas, a city whose temperature can reach above forty degrees Celsius on a normal summer day. In , Bettman was appointed as the commissioner of the National Hockey League NHL by the owners of the league based on a mandate of expansion. Ever since the beginning of his tenure he has pursued an aggressive often misguided expansion into non-traditional hockey markets.

These aggressive moves also come at the expense of the traditional, loyal Canadian markets. The latest expansion to Las Vegas is another example of his stubborn refusal to give the majority of fans what they want.

In , he refused to allow a sale that would have moved the Nashville Team to Hamilton. The aggressive expansion into the sunbelt affects not only the Canadian cities without teams but also the seven Canadian teams currently in the NHL.

This means that Canadian teams are often unable to compete with the higher salaries and bigger TV audiences of their American counterparts. While Bettman was primarily brought on to expand the game to US markets, he was also given the mandate of ending labour unrest within the league, something he has failed miserably to accomplish.

Placing teams in non-traditional hockey markets, especially in the Sun Belt, was controversial and has had mixed results. There were casualties. Winnipeg was transferred to Phoenix, where hockey is still struggling. Quebec City lost its beloved Nordiques to Colorado. Minnesota moved to Dallas and Hartford went to Raleigh, N. A big part of expanding the league's geography was trying to capture the elusive national U.

TV deal. It was slow in coming. Bettman has been vilified in Canada, not only for overseeing the Winnipeg and Quebec moves. His mandate from the team owners was to grow the league in the U. At times he appeared to take the Canadian clubs and the country's rabid fan base for granted, while concentrating his energies on markets where few care about hockey.

But Bettman seemed genuinely concerned when Canada was down to six teams and enthusiastically backed the league's return to Winnipeg, where for once Jets fans didn't boo him. Canada does, after all, contribute well over its share of league revenues. Since the court-mandated release of the notorious NHL e-mails have been published, more and more discoveries are being made by those parsing through them.

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