{"id":795482,"date":"2019-05-05T17:04:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-05T23:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/news\/2019-nhl-playoffs-showcase-bettmans-vision\/"},"modified":"2019-05-05T17:04:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-05T23:04:00","slug":"2019-nhl-playoffs-showcase-bettmans-vision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/2019-nhl-playoffs-showcase-bettmans-vision\/","title":{"rendered":"2019 NHL playoffs showcase Bettman\u2019s vision"},"content":{"rendered":"
FILE – In this Feb. 26, 2019, file photo, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman talks to the media before a game between the Carolina Hurricanes and the Los Angeles Kings, in Raleigh, N.C. This has been the postseason of parity with all four division champions gone and the potential that the seventh- and eighth-seeded teams meet in each conference final. This is the world Commissioner Gary Bettman envisioned when the NHL instituted a salary cap in 2005 after a year-long lockout. Bettman prefers to call it \u201ccompetitive balance,\u201d and it\u2019s the thing he trumpets the most about the state of the league where almost anyone can win the Stanley Cup in a given season. (AP Photo\/Chris Seward, File)<\/strong>
AP | FR27582 AP<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NEW YORK \u2014 There\u2019s a P-word on players\u2019 and coaches lips this playoffs, and it has nothing to do with getting pucks in deep.<\/p>\n

\u201cParity in the league, it\u2019s insanely tight,\u201d Colorado coach Jared Bednar said.<\/p>\n

This has been the postseason of parity with all four division champions gone and the potential that the seventh- and eighth-seeded teams on each side meet in the conference finals. This is the world Commissioner Gary Bettman envisioned when the NHL instituted a salary cap in 2005 after a yearlong lockout.<\/p>\n

Bettman prefers to call it \u201ccompetitive balance,\u201d and it\u2019s the thing he trumpets the most about the state of the league where almost anyone can contend for the Stanley Cup in a given season.<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s ever a time to showcase competitive balance, it\u2019s now, with Carolina already into the East final, Dallas on the verge of reaching the West final and top-shelf hockey almost every night, even if many big markets are gone.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything starts with the game, what takes place on the ice,\u201d Bettman told The Associated Press on Tuesday. \u201cYou can\u2019t market and promote around a product that is inferior.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the game is good, authentic, entertaining, then you can market it and promote it and reach out to new people. Frankly it comes down to story lines, to player performance and that is as important, if not more so, than what cities are being represented.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s not a lot of national buzz if teams from Raleigh, North Carolina, and Columbus, Ohio, meet in the third round of the playoffs. But when the Cinderella Hurricanes face the Blue Jackets or Boston Bruins, it should be a continuation of one of the wackiest, wildest postseasons in recent history.<\/p>\n

Carolina in the conference final would\u2019ve been difficult to imagine in the late 1990s when big-market teams spent like crazy and could tilt the ice against those from smaller markets. It\u2019s referred to now as the \u201cDead Puck Era\u201d because scoring was repressed, and Bettman remembers the conversations he\u2019d have with coaches of some of those lower-revenue clubs back then.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018What\u2019s your strategy going into a game?\u2019 And they would say, \u2018We clutch, we grab, we hook and hold \u2014 we neutralize skill for 50 minutes and then we try and steal the game,\u2019\u201d Bettman recalled.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that\u2019s why the game looked the way it did, and many people weren\u2019t happy with it and many teams knew at the start of the season, (and) fans knew, they couldn\u2019t compete.\u201d<\/p>\n

The hard salary cap that started at $39 million and has reached $79.5 million still has its flaws, particularly the consequence of squeezing out the middle class of players with a bigger portion going to highly paid stars and more reliance on youth because of fixed entry-level contracts.<\/p>\n

From a collective bargaining standpoint, it has also created problems for players paying varying escrow rates to even out the revenue split with owners, and that\u2019s an issue that will fill up plenty of time in meeting rooms in the coming months.<\/p>\n

Inside arenas this spring is the positive side of parity. The Hurricanes ended the league\u2019s longest playoff drought after a decade, the Blue Jackets won their first series in franchise history and the Avalanche and Stars are able to go punch-for-punch with the best in the West.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just a testament to how close our clubs are competitively,\u201d Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said. \u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s a problem with the system. I think that\u2019s a unique aspect to the system. I think it\u2019s worked well. I don\u2019t think you\u2019ll see it every year. But you won\u2019t be surprised when it happens again.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no longer surprising when teams make the playoffs after being out of the picture around Thanksgiving or when there\u2019s a significant turnover from year to year. Four of the 16 playoff teams didn\u2019t make it last year, and of the eight to reach the second round, only the Bruins and Sharks got that far last season.<\/p>\n

Absent a potential Boston-San Jose Cup Final that would showcase a tradition-filled Original Six organization with one that made the Bay Area into a modern hockey market, there are some combinations that don\u2019t exactly sizzle for those who aren\u2019t avid fans.<\/p>\n

The league had a run of Tampa Bay-Calgary, Carolina-Edmonton and Ottawa-Anaheim finals in the first three seasons of the salary-cap era, a stretch of three Chicago Blackhawks titles in six years and only one back-to-back champion in Pittsburgh in 2016 and 2017.<\/p>\n

Bettman said nothing in sports is better than the first round of the NHL\u2019s playoffs, and NBC Sports reported the highest first-round ratings in the network\u2019s history. If more big markets go out, that picture could change and interest could wane, but Bettman believes it all evens out over time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWill ratings vary from year to year? Yes. And that is one of the results of this type of system. Some would say one of the consequences,\u201d Bettman said.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously if you take two big-market teams and they\u2019re in the Stanley Cup Final, your ratings are likelier to be higher than if you have two small markets. And over time that can change, and the NFL\u2019s a good example of that. The Super Bowl it doesn\u2019t matter who\u2019s playing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parity is of course more fun for those caring about teams that didn\u2019t have dominant regular seasons only to lose early \u2014 sorry, Tampa Bay \u2014 but the league this way is able to engage more fan bases. A couple of years ago it was Nashville and the outdoor parties on Broadway, last season it was Washington and this time it\u2019s Columbus and Carolina and even San Jose.<\/p>\n

Bettman pointed out this is the first time in the NHL\u2019s 102-year history that every playoff game is on national television in the U.S., with the lack of that in past decades a cause of some of the sport\u2019s regionalization. He hopes that can change over the next 20 years as fans of all kinds of teams experience the rush of playoff hockey.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce you make the playoffs, anything can happen,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd it does.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FILE – In this Feb. 26, 2019, file photo, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman talks to the media before a game between the Carolina Hurricanes and the Los Angeles Kings, in Raleigh, N.C. This has been the postseason of parity with all four division champions gone and the potential that the seventh- and eighth-seeded teams meet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-795482","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-15 06:27:00","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=795482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795482\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}