Bettman Is Holding Hockey Season in the Penalty Box

Gary Bettman stood in there Friday, unflinching, and explained to millions of hockey fans across the continent that he was not postponing the start of the NHL season, or locking out the players at the start of the NHL season, or automatically invalidating the 200,000 tickets sold in advance for this weekend’s openers.

No, Bettman said, he was simply “going to reconfigure” the schedule of the NHL season.

This was particularly brave of the commissioner, considering that some 48 hours earlier, Chicago Blackhawks defenseman and aspiring Goodfella Chris Chelios wondered about the possibility of “some crazed fan or player”--anyone you might know, Chris?--setting out to reconfigure Bettman’s face.

What does that mean--reconfigure the schedule?

Push the openers back to Oct. 15 and cross your fingers that between now and then the heavens breach, lightning bolts crackle and a stone tablet is dropped from the sky, bearing the inscription, “THOU SHALT DROP THE PUCK ALREADY”?

Or push the openers back to Oct. 15, get to Oct. 15, see that Bettman and union chief Bob Goodenow are still gritting their teeth and making animal noises at one another, announce you’re pushing the openers back to Oct. 30, get to Oct. 30, announce you’re pushing the openers back to Nov. 15, and so on, and so on, until it’s February and time to announce that “pitchers and catchers report on the 16th, along with forwards and defensemen”?

According to Boston Bruins’ owner Jeremy Jacobs, Friday’s announcement “gives us the next two weeks to work toward achieving our goal--labor peace.” And if you believe that, I have a fantasy hockey pool you might be interested in joining. Entry fee: $1,000, non-refundable, payable up front.

This new Oct. 15 deadline is no different than the old Oct. 1 deadline. Both were made to be broken, as will future deadlines--or, to cop the owners’ spin on the term, “ever valuable and beneficial extensions for further negotiation.”

Wayne Gretzky says he believes the hockey stalemate will drag on until Christmas. Great. Now kids in Canada, and maybe some players, too, will be singing, “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth and a new collective bargaining agreement.” It should be a joy to behold.

Most other pre-work stoppage buzz holds that the first NHL games of the 1994-1995 season will be played some time in January, 1995, just as soon as the new Fox television contract kicks in.

And Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals? July 4, anyone? Bastille Day? Or maybe the night traditionally reserved for baseball’s all-star game. Good chance baseball won’t be needing it next year.

Friday was Fan Appeasement Day, no question about it. Thursday, Goodenow scored a public relations hat trick with his offer to start the season immediately with a no-strike pledge through the playoffs by the union. It was a brilliant stroke, and it forced Bettman to respond in kind, meaning with tact, which is not his nature.

Had Bettman countered according to form, he would have told Goodenow where to stick it, pronounced the season postponed until “I’m damn good and ready,” and, probably, declared martial law.

The Chelios Cretins would have been marching on Toronto by the morning, and the league wanted no part of that. You know the NHL credo: All major acts of violence accepted, but only on the ice.

So Bettman tried to placate the fans, best he could, by holding out hope that in two weeks’ time, Hockey Night In North America will be back on the air. Fat chance of that, of course, but the owners are scrambling here, desperate to find a way to prevent mass revolt by advance ticket buyers now demanding refunds. This is the best they could come up with.

The gesture is as cynical as it is empty. Friday, Bettman said he didn’t believe the players were forthright in their no-strike offer, claiming that “there is some question of their bargaining in good faith.” Goodenow, in turn, said he didn’t believe the owners’ assertion that the league is on the brink of economic disaster, noting the recent franchise purchases by Disney, Blockbuster and ITT Cablevision. Mutual distrust is at a fever pitch and the two sides are more polarized today than they were a week ago.

Fifteen more days are going to make everything swell again?

After Wednesday night’s Kings-Sharks exhibition at the Forum, which very likely could end up being the last NHL played in California in 1994, Kings winger Tony Granato said he and his colleagues were digging in for the long term, preparing themselves for the absolute worst.

“We know the owners have drawn up a 50-game schedule,” Granato said. “We know teams are renting ice time into the summer. They think the players are going to buckle. They think the players will come crawling back. There’s just no way.”

Bettman won his current position as NHL commissioner largely on his reputation as NBA salary-cap wonder boy, the man who helped create the financial structure that helped usher in the golden age of professional hoops in the early 80s.

Granato disputed the concept, saying that “it was Magic and Jordan and Bird and Barkley who were responsible for the growth of the NBA, not some salary structure or anything like that. It’s the players.”

Right now, Granato said, the NHL has those kind of players. Gretzky. Bure. Messier. Fedorov. Kariya, if and when.

Of course, the continued growth of the NHL is contingent on those players being on the ice. But at the moment, only the season is on ice, and no magic number pulled out of a top hat is likely to change that. Especially not Oct. 15.