Bettman sings "Blame Canada"

Gary Bettman, NHL Commissioner and Guiding Light For All Things Professional Hockey in North America, does not want his league’s players to play in the Olympics.

Depending on the weather, he says it’s because of money. Or he says it’s because the Olympics cause the regular season schedule to shut down. Or he says it’s because of the owners and empty arenas. Or because he's worried about players getting injured at the Olympics. Or he says it’s “about the competitiveness of the season.”

But I think the real reason is this…

It’s all about the NHL making in-roads into the United States.

Everything originates from that one key and essential goal: how can the NHL be more popular in America? How can the current teams survive? How can we get more teams? And how can the we get hockey onto a major American network?

But, much like I would love grow another three inches in height and be six feet tall, that new found American adoration of hockey is just not likely to happen.

There is a terrific article on gawker* about the Canadian/American hockey game.

The great quote is this: “Not caring about hockey is a cherished American tradition, up there with starting to follow baseball right before the playoffs and being vaguely aware of how your alma mater is doing in the NCAA tournament.”

Americans, on the whole, don’t like hockey. They don’t get it and, perhaps more important, they don’t want to get it. They like the fighting and the body checks, but the skating, the passing and the 'watching a bunch of guys chase around a little black disc' holds no appeal for them.

But somehow, Bettman is going to convince Americans to like hockey. It is his Holy Grail: the goal of creating awareness and hockey luv.

And so, his greatest fear has to be this: the final game for the gold medal is Canada versus the U.S. -- and the Canadians win!!

Regulation time, overtime, shoot-out – it doesn’t matter. Canada wins, we go crazy with a patriotic frenzy usually only reserved for European soccer, and then the Americans care even less than they did before.

The NHL is now stacked so that it’s incredibly unlikely that two Canadian teams will compete for the Stanley Cup.

But the Olympics could create a Canadian vs. American finale.

And Bettman certainly doesn’t want that to happen.

* Reference made to Gawker found at http://gawker.com/5476851/everyone-cares-about-hockey-all-of-a-sudden?skyline=true&s=i