NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman was interviewed by ESPN's
Steve Levy on "SportsCenter." Levy asked Bettman about
various topics, including Olympic participation, fighting,
the drop in scoring and potential rule changes. Bettman,
asked if he was concerned about any negative repercussions
from having NHL players at the Olympics: "Obviously, when
you go into something like this you understand that there
can be negatives that fall from it. But we think on balance
the exposure that our best-on-best hockey is going to get at
the Olympics ... is worth the risk of losing a little bit of
momentum which we think we'll get back. ... All in all, we
think we're going to come out of the Olympics strong, people
are going to get turned on by what they see, and we're going
to finish strong going into the Stanley Cup, which is really
what it's all about." Bettman, asked his opinion on
fighting in the NHL: "We don't encourage and we don't like
and we frequently penalize fights that start on the drop of
the puck. A spontaneous altercation in a game where players
are encouraged to physically check each other moving at 30
miles an hour carrying a stick is something that requires a
fine balance in terms of how you deal with fighting in the
game. The fact is, it's been deemphasized, it is penalized,
you don't see bench-clearing brawls in our game. ... It's
something that periodically happens. It happens less on
average than once a game." Bettman dismissed rumors of the
NHL extending the game to four quarters instead of three
periods: "There's nothing wrong with thinking, testing,
proposing. But four quarters is not a front-burner issue by
any stretch of the imagination, and I really don't know
where that came from" ("SportsCenter," ESPN, 1/27).
