[Gotham Dark Knight]

Originally Posted by ThePundit

Bettman was supposed to be a marketing guru. After all, he was a direct disciple of David Stern.

Can't tell by the mess he made...maybe he thought he had a better product then he does have...

[WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot]

What about Vince McMahon?

Yeah, the XFL flopped... but c'mon, NHL needs SOMETHING.

[ThePundit]

I really think the first step is to make the wearing of helmets optional. Remember, people relate to personalities. So many women of my generation know who Ron Dugay, Bobby Nystrom and Clark Gillies are, but they wouldn't know a hockey player now if they fell over them.

[EmpireWF]

Originally Posted by ThePundit

I really think the first step is to make the wearing of helmets optional. Remember, people relate to personalities. So many women of my generation know who Ron Dugay, Bobby Nystrom and Clark Gillies are, but they wouldn't know a hockey player now if they fell over them.

I've head this argument but I'm against making helmets optional. You gotta increase the awareness of the sport and players but why at the risk of the health of the players?

[Nuke]

Originally Posted by Gotham Dark Knight

Bettman has gone a long way to destroying hockey

You can say that again. Most folks in the US would rather be raped by a wild mountain gorilla than watch an NHL game on TV.

[ThePundit]

I wonder if Dan Wetzel has been reading our boards?

There has never been a commissioner of a major North American sports league this inept, yet the league's board of governors keeps employing him, keeps giving him another chance to sink this once-proud, once-vibrant league to new depths. Bettman is on a 14-year run of bad ideas. His latest was a classic, moving the league's all-star game, which featured attention-grabbing young megastars, to midweek on the Versus Network – as opposed to NBC on a weekend. He claimed it would allow Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin to own the sports landscape, unlike some crowded weekend.

The result was a catastrophic 0.7 rating. That's a meager 474,298 households in the States that bothered to watch, down 76 percent from the last all-star game.

Unhappy anniversary - NHL - Yahoo! Sports

[Gotham Dark Knight]

Originally Posted by WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot

What about Vince McMahon?

Yeah, the XFL flopped... but c'mon, NHL needs SOMETHING.

McMahon knows how to make money...but I don't think having strippers posing as cheerleaders following a script etc...is what the NHL needs...

[WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot]

Well, it would certainly help ratings. The XHL could also implement all kinds of crazy rules. Imagine the possibilities.

Seriously, though, what about going to a 3-on-3 format? I guess it would probably turn hockey upside-down as we know it, but it seems to me (in all my superiorly lacking hockey knowledge) that the game would be a lot more exciting to watch.