Gary Bettman talks Southern California hockey

Opening Remarks:

Good afternoon everyone. It’s good to see you all here. This is a pretty exciting time for hockey in Southern California, obviously. If you’re looking at one of the byproducts of the realignment and the change in playoff format and we’re seeing it in this series – the first time that these two teams have actually faced off against each other in a playoff series. What better way to extend the rivalry than having a terrific playoff series? It’s also worth noting, in terms of what we’ve seen from the change in formatting, in the second round there isn’t a team or series that travels 400 miles. Obviously this is the closest in proximity, but if you look at all the others there is no travel that extends to 400 miles. Looking at this series and looking at hockey in Southern California, it’s just fun to be here and it’s fun to watch what happened. Think about the outdoor at Dodger Stadium just a few months ago with over 50-thousand people. Look at the fact that the Ducks involvement in high school hockey in six years has gone from one high school team competing to 35 I think this year. Look at the fact that there is a player on the Ducks roster from who was drafted in the first round from Long Beach, California. These are pretty heady, exciting, fun times and it’s great to see everybody excited about Stanley Cup playoff hockey here in Southern California, and you’ve got two teams that have each recently on the Stanley Cup. So it’s a great mix. It’s a great time and it shows how much the game has grown and, has importantly perhaps, what these two clubs have meant and that start with ownership – whether its Phil Anschutz or here Henry Samueli – their commitment to hockey, to the community and to their clubs has brought us to the point where we are and we couldn’t be more delighted. One last note… The completion, the competitiveness of these playoffs has been breathtaking. You can think about the last game in this series, the Ducks probably wish we played eight-and-a-half seconds shorter games, but more importantly if you look at the number of overtime games or if you look at the fact that I believe in 18 games so far, while not necessarily resulting in a victory, but a team has overcome a two-goal or greater deficit. The game has never been more competitive and we’ve never been more excited about that.

Reporter: Commissioner, obviously Southern California is thrilled about the Freeway Faceoff, but what does it mean to the league itself from your perspective?

GB: What it means to the league is when our franchises are doing well, the league is doing well. And when you’re looking at California, you can go back to the first round between San Jose and the Kings and even the exciting series that the Ducks had with Dallas, it comes down to how good and how strong the game is. We’ve never doubted that Southern California would be great for NHL hockey, or hockey at all levels and you’re seeing it. And that’s great for the teams and that’s great for the league, but we want all of our teams to do well. They just can’t all win all the time.

Reporter: Notably in the last couple of years the league has been able to get all of its games on every night during the playoffs. Everyone who grew up in a time when it was hard to find the games or you couldn’t get it consistently. Can you talk about how that is all going? Is it successful ratings-wise? How is that whole thing with NBC going?

GB: It’s going great. The last deal we made with NBC – with NBC, the NBC Sports Network, with games during the playoffs as well on CNBC and even a handful on the NHL Network – I believe has been transformational. Because as you said, there was a point in time where if you were a hockey fan, an NHL fan and your team either didn’t make the playoffs or got eliminated, you were done. You couldn’t even watch the Stanley Cup final. We’re now at a point where every game of the Stanley Cup playoffs is on national TV and that’s something that was very important to us. It was an essential ingredient to the last deal. We spent a lot of years going through a variety of forms to get to this point… NBC is extraordinarily pleased and so are we, both at the scheduling and our treatment, production, promotion and the like. So like I said, this agreement for us in the United States has been transformational. Obviously in Canada, Hockey Night in Canada is the longest running series of any programming. It wasn’t the same issue. It’s always been wall-to-wall coverage. But there is now this big event feel nationally and I think fans, hockey fans and general sports fans, are reacting to it.

Reporter: Obviously the outdoor game at Dodger Stadium was a huge success. What’s on the horizon, any thoughts about playing another outdoor game in the state of California close by down the line?

GB: Lots of thoughts. Nothing I’m prepared to give you is breaking news tonight, but the fact of the matter is we had a great series of games this year starting with the Big House on New Year’s Day and then the Stadium Series and then the Heritage Game in Vancouver. We had six games this season in five locations, that was due to the uniqueness of the New York-New Jersey market. All the games were successful. I think we played to about 350-thousand fans. Our teams are telling us that they can’t get enough of these. We won’t do as many this coming year as we did this prior season. I don’t have an exact number to give you or tell you what the matchups are yet, but it’s something that we’re working on. There will be more than one game and there will be less than six.

Reporter: Gary, what was your reaction to what happened with the Clippers ownership situation and how Adam Silver handled that banning Donald Sterling?

GB: Well, we’re all about inclusiveness and diversity. And those sentiments that were expressed by Mr. Sterling have no place – not just in the NBA or in sports or in this world. Commissioner Silver stepped up and did what he had to do under the circumstances.

Reporter: You see what the Ducks have done with the rinks program here and you see its expansion and you see the Kings brand new rinks develop. It leads me to think about warm weather markets that have new ownership like in Florida and in Phoenix you have a new opportunity there. Is there a similar movement afoot in either of those markets to do something similar?

GB: We’re looking at both the club level and at the national level at making sure we’re doing as much possible at the grass roots level. We think that’s a great way to grow the game, but as importantly we think that hockey serves as a great model for young people when it comes to team work and hard work and diligence and making sure you get an education, which is why you see lots of school programs coming into play from our clubs – either what the Ducks are doing or Snider hockey or Ice Hockey in Harlem. We think it’s very important. It’s a way for us to give back to the community and at the same time grow the game and it comes in two forms. One is from an education standpoint and life lessons, the other from the physical fitness standpoint, making sure that kids are getting enough physical activity. So we’re focused on it as are our clubs and it’s something we’re going to continue to do. What the Ducks and Kings have done is something, particularly the Ducks school program, is something that a number of other clubs are looking at as a model.

Reporter: In terms of your own profile, you’ve been less visible recently it seems lately. I would assume that’s a product of everything going really well and that probably is good, but one question about player safety.

GB: Before you do that, let me respond to that statement. I continue to do what I’ve always done. You may not be as interested in what I’m doing, but I can’t help that. I’m around as much. I’ve gone to as many games as I typically do. And when needed, I make whatever statements are appropriate and take whatever actions are appropriate. Maybe you just haven’t been paying attention to me as much, but that’s OK. I don’t mind.

Reporter: I didn’t mean that at all as a criticism. In terms of player safety, the concussion issue and the lawsuit that came out – you know the other night a referee got hit and I saw him on television a few nights later working again still no visor and the chin strap way down below the chin. That’s not going to hold a helmet on well and I know there’s a culture, because I was hockey player, that says you do things this way. At what point is the league going to step in and say both players and officials if you work in our sport we’re going to mandate how you wear the safety equipment.

GB: Well you know it only took me 15 years to convince the players association to agree to phasing in visors. When either officials or players are represented by a union they negotiate over terms and conditions of employment. We have taken the issue of player safety very seriously and we’ve worked very hard on the concussion issue going back to 1997 with the players association. But there are some changes that require the players or the officials to agree. If I could wave a wand, and I used to say this all the time about visors, and just make everyone into wearing a visor I would have done that but that’s not the way it works. The players have had a lot to say about what it is they’re going to be accountable for on the ice. Whether it’s equipment changes that we may want to make, but the fact of the matter is we have worked together on things like baseline testing, of the protocols we have with respects to diagnosis and return to play decisions, the fact that a player is supposed to come off the ice if he has a head incident and be evaluated. These are things that we were leaders on in all of sports and we’re continuing to work on it.