The Boston Sports Party

I'll start this post by addressing a comment that was left before I even wrote this blog...yes, we give up. We stop what we are doing and we corner Gary Bettman and end his life by stoning him and beating him with blunt objects. There is no other exit-plan! The worst executive in the history of professional sports continues to find ways to get WORSE! It's incredible how incompetent Gary Bettman is. I love the NHL for what it is. They fucked up huge in 2004 and let a whole season slip away, and they brought the league back up to speed under new "pussified" rules. Why was the lockout necessary? Bettman and his cohorts blamed it on the Players union and the owners for not being able to agree immediately to the boundaries of a salary cap. But now, half-a-decade later, the NHL has the salary cap in place, and yet they've put themselves in a sour spot by giving teams an obvious loophole.

After taking over a year to iron out the parameters for the CBA that cost the league an entire season, Bettman and company still managed to fuck things up beyond belief. You would think that taking that much time and putting the league in the MLS-category would lead to a strict and thorough CBA...not so much. In implementing a "hard cap," the NHL has left a loophole to make it more flexible and bendable to smart NHL teams. Don't get me wrong, I think the salary cap is a great thing for the competitiveness of the league. But, leave it to the NHL to put implement a system so easy to exploit that the Bruins even managed to do it (with the Savard contract). With the current rules, the cap-hit that a player presents for any given season is the average value per season of the deal he signed. So, despite the fact that Marc Savard will make $7 million next season, his cap-hit will stand at $4 million...doesn't make much sense does it? Well, too bad, it's the system that the NHL spent month after month ironing out as to make certain that there were no obvious "loopholes" to the first salary cap system for the league.

Well, teams noticed that loophole immediately. It wasn't exactly a tough thing to figure out. The Red Wings are the genius' of this whole thing, signing Johan Franzen and Henrik Zetterberg to front-loaded deals that put their cap-hit at a significantly lower figure than what they are making during their "prime years." But until now, the NHL didn't seem to mind. I'm guessing that it was mainly because they were incredibly embarrassed about their mistake. They fucked things up. But more importantly...teams were NOT breaking the rules established in the CBA. They were adhering to the rules! The NHL had done a good job until now in realizing that teams were simply taking advantage of the pathetic loophole that their league execs had left them to exploit. Yea, it seemed to be somewhat unfair at times. Marian Hossa and Chris Pronger signed contracts that nobody thought they could play-out, and it saved their respective teams a hell of a lot of trouble against the cap situation. But, what the NHL realized then, and doesn't realize now, is that the Flyers, Red Wings, Hawks, Bruins, and whoever else weren't breaking the god damn fucking rules. They simply exploited a kindergarten mistake that the NHL made during their painful CBA blueprinting.

And then today, I wake up to find that the NHL had "put their foot down" and rejected Ilya Kovalchuk's 17-year deal with the New Jersey Devils (actually a lucky occurrence for the Dev's if you ask me). I was too tired at the time (roughly 6:30 AM), and just stumbled my way to take a shower...and then I realized how absolutely ludicrous it was that the NHL was intervening on this! When they were hammering out the CBA, they were losing fans and losing an entire season...hardly professional thinking on their part. But what Bettman and the Board attributed it to was the stubbornness of the NHLPA and the owners. Those two groups seemingly were at a "stalemate" throughout the process that prevented anything from moving forward. Now, lets move forward to today. The NHL's pathetic mistake (I don't know how many times I can say the word loophole without being arrested) has led to this deal between the Devils and Kovy. But, what happened here was bliss between player and team. The owners and the players are fine with the system in place (or else the CBA would have never been established). But, when the NHL intervened and rejected this deal, they blamed A.) Kovalchuk and B.) the Devils for "circumventing" the salary cap as established in the CBA. Wait, back up. So you're saying that you wish to place blame on the players and the owners for adhering the rules you put in place back in 2004? Yea, that makes sense. Go fuck yourself Bettman.

But that's hardly the worst part. Every hockey fan who has a pulse knows about the KHL's relevance. Bettman didn't want to step-in on any other deal, he let Pronger, Hossa, Franzen...the whole fucking lot...get away with their front-loaded deals and play for a cap-figure far below market-value. But now, he has a player who has a legitimate chance to ditch the NHL altogether and head back to his native Russia to play in their Superleague. Finally, the Devils came to an agreement that put all speculation of Kovy heading to Russia to bed. Kovalchuk staying here and signing in NJ was a small victory for the NHL (because they are by far the superior league), but it was a MASSIVE hit for the KHL. Just when you thought the NHL had escaped their KHL-scare with Kovalchuk, Bettman decides to step right in and say "here you go Russia, have another whack at the now-irritated Ilya Kovalchuk...he'll probably be too pissed to stay in the NHL, so take him." NICE FUCKING WORK BETTMAN. He already had irritated Ovechkin, Datsyuk, Kovalchuk, and a handful of other Russians by "threatening" to not allow them to play for their country in the next Olympics, but he had to go to a new level of fucking stupidity. Kovalchuk was all smiles after realizing he'd make about $100 million over 11 years (then $2 million over the next 6, which he won't play anyways). But before Kovalchuk could spend any of that cash on fine Russian Vodka or crazy Yugoslavian strippers, Bettman said "nah, can't do that, fuck you you fucking asshole Russian for obeying the rules and accepting that deal. I'm nixing that." <
It baffles me how this man is still in charge of a professional sports operation. He lacks any sense of marketing knowledge (nice job taking an extra $600,000 a few years ago to broadcast on Versus instead of ESPN...yes, ESPN had an offer in '05 for that much less that Versus, yet Bettman felt compelled to take the extra cash. Oh, and Versus has since been removed from Direct TV, so that panned out well. Now, with Bettman's shitty sense of marketing, the NHL has very little appeal to casual fans, and ESPN and NBC's offers for full-season coverage of the NHL have sunk to incredible lows. Yes, NBC does late-season games on weekends, covers the Winter Classic, and does some Playoffs, but it's hardly enough. But now Bettman has to add to his idiotic legacy. He put in place an easily exploitable CBA, and he won't take responsibility for it any longer. He let other teams get away with it for years, and he thinks he's done the league a favor this time by "putting his foot down." Well, Gary, you've actually just taken a huge chunk of legitimacy away from the league, and you've probably sent the league's most coveted free agent of the last half-decade to Russia because of your incompetence.

The worst part of it all...he has now, in making this single maneuver, damaged the league's relationship with the NHLPA and the owners enough to make the 2012 negotiations for a new CBA even more strenuous and painful than they were back in 2004. What I'm getting at here, is that Bettman, in making this lone-action, has just put the NHL on a collision course with yet another full-season lockout...or more. So, Gary, congratulations, you are now, have always been, and will always be...the "Worst Executive" award winner in professional sports......Go fuck yourself up your fucking ass you stupid mother fucker.

By the way, if the Bruins happen to win the Cup in the coming few years...I'm going to the clinching game and bringing a gun. When Bettman steps on the ice to praise both teams for their hard work, I'm giving the gun to the kid next to me and telling him to shoot Bettman. That way, I don't go to jail and Bettman still dies...