Some significant NHL news dropped on Thursday from Michael Russo and Chris Johnston at The Athletic: the NHL is preparing for the retirement of Commissioner Gary Bettman — although that won’t happen for a couple years.
According to the report, the NHL “has started the process of finding a successor for the longest-tenured commissioner in North American sports.”
From the story:
Bettman, 72, said he has not decided when to retire but did bring his eventual retirement up to the executive committee for the first time in advance of last month’s Board of Governors meeting in Manalapan, Fla.
“I raised the specter that at some point this is something the league is going to have to deal with because when you’re dealing with a CEO who has been doing this as long as I have, it’s a more complicated process,” Bettman said. “But the only discussion that was had was with three-plus decades at this job, at some point the league is going to have to deal with the reality that I can’t do this forever.”
The timing of this news is intriguing — the NHL and NHLPA will begin negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement soon, as the current deal expires following the 2025-26 season.
Since Bettman took over as the NHL’s commissioner on Feb. 1, 1993, the league has seen remarkable growth — and frustrating work stoppages. The league has grown from 24 to 32 teams and finally signed significant television deals in the US and Canada that have led to expectations of significant growth in the salary cap in the coming years.
That salary cap will be one of the defining pieces of Bettman’s legacy, as will the four times the league missed time because of a work stoppage. Most notable, the NHL lost the entire 2004-05 season as result of Bettman’s office pushing for the hard cap (and floor) structure the league has today. That has led to increased parity across the league, something we shouldn’t ignore as a biproduct of the cap.
Bettman will celebrate his 32nd anniversary in the job in the coming weeks, and has already passed Clarence Campbell for the longest tenure in leadership in league history.
Again, this isn’t happening tomorrow or before the new CBA is negotiated. But, as Bettman said, he put in on the radar of the executive committee of the NHL’s Board of Governors because it will be a reality at some point in the future.
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