In their book The Death of Hockey, Jeff Klein and Karl-Eric Reif offer their take on what plagues the NHL. Though their diagnosis is a decade old, I think it still speaks to today’s game.
For whatever reasons—a total ignorance of the game’s history and traditions, a complete inability to identify with the fans, a thoroughgoing lack of understanding of what constitutes good hockey, or the misguided interpretations of marketing research focus groups—Bettman’s administration jumped to the conclusion that there was something inherently unsound in the game itself, that the game we’ve all loved for better, for worse, for richer or poorer, through all these years, was profoundly lacking in innate worth. (page 129)
Tags: Gary Bettman, hockey history, NHL Board of Governors, or how a bunch of guys with too much money and too little sense are killing the greatest game on earth, The Death of Hockey
