Commissioner Bettman addresses the media

[Rock]

http://www.nhl.com/nhl/app/?service=page&a...rticleid=364265

We would be remiss if we didn't once again thank our fans. We reached 21 million in attendance for the regular season for the first time ever. We averaged over 17,000 fans per game for the first time ever. And our fans, we believe, were treated to an exciting, entertaining and competitive regular season from Game No. 1 to Game 1,230. The regular season was incredibly competitive. It went down to the last day of the season to see how the playoffs were going to play out. And every game mattered. And that's the way we think it should be.

Revenues will exceed $2.5 billion this year. That, too, is a record. Our franchises are more stable than ever. And the relationship that we have with Paul Kelly and the Players' Association continues to grow, and it gives me hope for the future. With cooperation, I know we can explore many more upsides that are available for us to, together, grow this game.

We've done more player marketing this season than ever. And we look forward to doing a lot more. We're going to have a busy summer. We're going to take a long, good look at goaltending equipment. There's a committee that's been formed jointly with the Players' Association to do that. The Competition Committee will meet shortly after the Goaltender Committee meets and the Competition Committee will continue its work on monitoring the game.

(It's long and take whatever you want from it.)

[Don]

I think the increased revenue isn't because of anything that Gary or the NHL is doing.... the only reason the cap is going up is because of this:

This is the first NHL season since before Gretzky joined the league where the Canadian dollar averaged higher than the American dollar. I've seen multiple places where Gary has said that there was record revenues this year.. and while it is a statement of fact, it sounds like a boast. Should what is likely to happen in November come to pass, and the Canadian dollar goes back down to its traditional level, I doubt Gary is going to take the credit for the resulting loss of revenue.

[SueNJ97]

Here's something from the Wall Street Journal that just made me want to heave. It's from late last week so you should be able to access it as free content now, before, you would have needed a paying account. Let me know if you still need sign-on info. However, basically they are saying they've aceived the current results by forgetting about growing and concentrating on the 53 million people who currently define themselves as hockey fans. OK, I agree, they haven't moved into new markets. However, as far as I'm concerned, quite a bit of what they have done is a big "f*ck you" to those of us who have been watching for a long time and a continual attempt to get the 'causal', non-hockey fan to watch the game. And they don't.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1211504523...html?mod=sports