Gary BUTTman

            I just couldn’t resist throwing that juvenile (and strangely satisfying) insult to NHL commissioner Gary Bettman in my title. Anyway, I’m going to use this blog post to vent my frustrations about the current NHL lockout (because there’s lots of manipulation going on!). Perhaps it’s karma for laughing at the NBA last year, but nonetheless I’m sure any other hockey fans out there feel my pain.

            Basically the National Hockey League (NHL), led by Gary Bettman, and the National Hockey League Players’ Association (NHLPA), led by Donald Fehr, can’t agree on new terms since the last collective bargaining agreement expired. Many issues are being negotiated, including the players’ share of revenue, term limits, salary caps, and free agency.

            Manipulation is rampant in this whole mess. I’m sure plenty of manipulation is going on in the negotiations, with each side trying to manipulate the other to agree to their respective offers. Somehow Bettman and his cronies have to try to make getting less than 50% of the revenue seem appealing to the players. I think the main manipulation, however, is the way blame is being thrown around and everybody’s trying to convince the fans of who’s at fault.

            The fans tend to want to blame the owners, and of course Bettman, instead of tarnishing the superstar players’ reputations. With all the hate directed towards him, Bettman tried to redirect it back in October. He tried to make himself look like the good guy by putting up an offer that seemed perfect on the surface, “in the spirit of getting things done” [x]. The fine print of this offer (unknown to many fans) was very disadvantageous for the players. When the NHLPA rejected the offer, they looked like the bad guys (at least for a little while). Now the NHL is blaming Fehr for the deal not being made.

            The media covering the lockout is full of manipulation as well. I haven’t found a single unbiased article on the issue. Many take the natural route blaming Bettman (“Bettman could get a five-year-old girl to hate her favorite doll. He could even get the doll to hate the girl.” [x]) They play off many fans’ predisposed dislike of the man for his unpopular redistribution of teams and the past two lockouts since he’s been commissioner. It’s easy for these writers to manipulate people in to hating someone even more when they already don’t like him.

            Other articles, though not many, rebel against this traditional view and put the blame on a variety of other sources: the owners' greed [x], the player's greed [x], Donald Fehr’s greed [x], and even the fans [x] (I don’t fully understand the logic behind this one). Without actual games to write on, sports journalists are going crazy for a scapegoat. As an innocent hockey fan, I just want to know what’s actually going on in the negotiations, but I have to filter through loads of biased crap. And although I’m very aware of the manipulation going on, I’m clearly not unaffected. I hate Gary Buttman as much as then next fan, but the greed on all sides needs to end so I can watch some hockey.

(I had to throw in this picture too. [x])