WASHINGTON, DC - I’m not a Gary Bettman fan. Really, really not. I think he’s made more poor decisions than Robert Downey, Jr. and the Los Angeles Clippers’ front office combined. But for a few moments at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, last Friday, I was cordial and professional to him during our brief chat following the commissioner’s "state of the NHL" speech.

That’s not an easy task, balancing the line between journalistic responsibility and fan indignation. I joked with a few colleagues after the event that there are just some questions you wished you had the balls to ask, despite being in a restrained and mannered setting like the Press Club. For instance, why does Bettman get all the credit for getting a CBA that will "save" hockey, but none of the blame for mismanaging and mis-marketing the NHL for the decade leading up to it; a sport that, in 1994, didn’t need much saving, either fiscally or competitively? But like I said: a few minutes of interview time after a glorified PR schmooze-fest wasn’t the right time for that line of questioning.

Before we get to what I did ask Gary, here are some of the more interesting points from Bettman’s presentation to the National Press Club:

 

• Scoring is up 30 percent thus far this season under the new rules.
  
• His managerial philosophy, especially in regards to the lockout: "You must begin with a vision. Everything else will fall in place from that conviction."
  
• He claims the NHL did not lose a single business partner because of the work stoppage. Not sure if ESPN counts/Disney counts, but that would be a pretty big one, wouldn’t it?
  
• He reported and raved about local TV ratings and TV ratings in Canada, but failed to provide any hard numbers when he praised OLN’s efforts thus far this season. That network has seen ratings fall each week, and the last broadcast was rated at 230,382 viewers nationally.
  
• Bettman ruled out expansion "right now," and basically said he expected the NHL’s current slate of teams to remain in their geographic areas for the foreseeable future.
  
• At one point, he actually used the dreaded Vince McMahon buzz-word "sports entertainment" to define the NHL. Well, that explains the shootout...
  
• He said there was a fan outcry to have teams wear their dark jerseys at home, and that he didn’t expect that new tradition to be reversed any time soon.
  
• On a question about the shootout (asked by yours truly -- a glorious jerk-off of a question that basically praised the shootout, which I loathe, to high Heaven just to get the question asked), Bettman reinforced that the gimmick is strictly for the regular season and we won’t see it in the postseason. He mentioned travel concerns as a reason for not having a traditional overtime in the regular season.
  
• He mentioned only about three players prominently: Sidney Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin and Ilya Kovalchuk. Atlanta was in town to play the Capitals that night.
  
• He said the digital delivery of hockey games on television will one day feature on-the-fly stats that will tell the viewer how hard shots and passes are, and offer a real-time scoring summary.
  
• He was genuinely excited about the upcoming Reebok jerseys that promise to be sleeker and form-fitting. I guess someone needs to be...
  
• Bettman had a wonderful Freudian slip when talking about fighting, saying it was a "bonus" if a player could play as well as fight. "I don’t mean it’s a bonus in the global sense," he said over laughter from the crowd. Could Gary be a closet Hanson Bros. fan?
  
• On steroids, he was clear that the NHL isn’t in the same boat as other leagues when it comes to its athletes abusing the stuff. He cited the low number of positive tests around the world before world championship events. He also said that lifetime bans are too harsh for professional athletes because amateur athletes are simply playing a sport while the pros are having their livelihoods taken away from them. A bizarre opinion, in my own frequently bizarre opinion…

Like I said, it was a few interesting nuggets here and there, but mostly a chance for the NHL’s boss to spread good cheer to the suits and media in the crowd.
After the event, I grabbed Bettman for a few additional questions about NHL media:

SFM: I did not realize that XM satellite radio came to the NHL during the lockout.
NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman: We had a non-exclusive deal with Sirius, so XM said they wanted a piece of the action. It’s great, and we’re thrilled to have it happen.
SFM: And a question about the NBC deal...
Bettman: Starts in January.
SFM: ...do you know yet if they’re going to implement some of the technology we saw — specifically the rail cam, which we saw in the Heritage Classic?
Bettman: They’re now preparing. We had a year off, and things were in a hiatus. But they’re no preparing to do what NBC does best, which is great coverage and great storytelling. Dick Ebersol and Ken Schanzer [president of NBC Sports] ... that’s the hallmark of NBC Sports.
SFM: So you think the extra run-up time they’ve had that OLN didn’t have will make the difference?
Bettman: OLN was, you know, a scramble. The other thing to remember about OLN is that we haven’t given them the schedule that we planned on doing. They’re going to have exclusive Monday nights — the only game in the United States next season. And then they’re going to have a less-limited package of games on Tuesday nights. We had done the schedule, as we had to, before we had a deal [with OLN]. So they had to just cherry-pick games.
SFM: Next year, is there going to be an effort to get more West Coast teams on OLN?
Bettman: Yes, because all we’re doing now is picking from what’s there, as opposed to what all leagues do, which is try to take into account national broadcasting obligations.

-SFM-
Greg Wyshynski is the senior editor for SportsFan Magazine.