Trust company

Sporting News, The, Oct 4, 1993 by Larry Wigge

If you had told me a little more than a year ago that the NHL's highest-ranking official and Bob Goodenow, executive director of the NHL Players Association, would be in the same room, I would have had security guards check for weapons before anyone entered the room.

That feeling of uneasiness permeated the game when John Ziegler was president and a skeptical group of owners sat across the table from Goodenow - before, during and after the league's first strike in March 1992.

But with Gary Bettman installed last February as the game's first commissioner, the idea of warfare between the owners and the players has been transformed into a feeling of partnership.

If anyone had wondered whether the partnership was just a facade, they should have been at the CBS studios in New York last Thursday when The Sporting News and Upper Deck brought Bettman and Goodenow together for a roundtable discussion - "The NHL: Faceoff with the Future" - that was moderated by Gary Thorne and included hockey analyst John Davidson, an NHL goalie for 10 years, and John Rawlings, editor of The Sporting News.

Rawlings didn't waste any time in asking Goodenow whether he trusted Bettman.

"Yes, I do," Goodenow said. "I have no reason not to trust Gary. We have worked closely on a couple of issues so far. And actually I think we'd have some real problems if we didn't trust one another."

Rawlings took the conversation one step further, asking Goodenow if he trusted the owners.

"Yes, on balance," he said. "We had some troubles the last time. I'd be less than candid if I said otherwise. But I think with the new environment we have, we are asking questions, and the information we are getting back from the owners is something we can rely on, and I think that builds a basis for the future and I think it's necessary."

Davidson asked the obvious question: Should the fans be nervous about the collective-bargaining agreement having expired September 15.

"No, I don't think so," Goodenow said. "It's our intent to reach a new agreement. Gary and I have spent a lot of hours this summer on various issues and were going to continue to wrestle with the issues that remain.

"To say there could never be a problem would not be appropriate, but Gary and I are committed to making sure that everything goes along without a hitch and put together a new agreement that's good for both sides."

In a slip of Bettman's tongue later in the program, he estimated that the first of the year might be a good target date for a new agreement.

The panel covered the gamut, from fighting and officiating to what Goofy, Mickey and Minnie and the rest of the Disney and Blockbuster Video marketing geniuses could do to show that what Mario Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky do on the ice is just as dynamic as what Michael Jordan does in the air.

Bettman, at one point, chided Davidson for saying it wasn't long ago that the owners couldn't agree on anything. And Goodenow accused Davidson of being biased in his complaint that the All-Star Game had become atypical of the game because he is still thinking like an old goaltender, worried about his contemporaries facing embarrassment at the hands of so many great shooters.

Goalies beware. There are no quick solutions to last season's 16-6 disaster. Keep looking for cover.

The discussion was not without more lively moments. Bettman, in fact, became rather animated when someone brought up the perception that he, a former high-ranking executive of the NBA, might double dribble one of the key issues in the game, such as whether the league needs two referees on the ice or one in the stands and one on the ice as it tested in an East Coast Hockey League game late last season.

"What I see is more experimentation until we come up with the system that we think works better and we can get he best possible officiating in our games," he said. "When we've figured out what the system is and we've tested it and we've trained the officials, then we'll implement it.

"But I'm not going to gimmick-up this game. People shouldn't be concerned, and I think there was a concern as it related to me coming in to be commissioner of this sport, about, |What is this basketball guy going to do to hockey?'

"Well, what he's going to do with hockey is covet it and protect it and make it the best it can be. But not gut it or do radical or crazy things. That's not the agenda and I haven't, I hope, done anything radical or crazy in the last 10 months."

Never one to be quiet on the subject of officiating and fighting, Davidson spoke for players, fans and owners when he talked about how the two tie together and that Bettman's recent appointment of Brian Burke, former Hartford Whalers general manager, as the league's executive director of hockey operations, will go a long way toward remedying those problems.

"I don't think right now we can take fighting out of the game," Davidson said. "I firmly believe that fighting is not good for the game, but I worry what would happen if fighting was gone, period.

"If the referees officiated the way the book says it should be, we wouldn't have nearly as many problems as we do. In fact, we wouldn't be sitting here talking about this issue.