Leftovers from Friday’s second session of the NHL board of governors at Pebble Beach, Calif., which was over by 11:30 a.m. local time. If you need to know why, you just had to look at the parting gifts for board members - golf towels, with an NHL logo embossed on them.
As the governors made their way to the exits, a few dropped a couple of interesting tidbits.
There was Edmonton Oilers president Cal Nichols, who appeared to question commissioner Gary Bettman’s leadership on the scheduling issue back in June at the entry draft in Columbus. This time around, Nichols thought Bettman handled the matter pretty well.
Nichols described the new/old schedule adopted Thursday night as “probably an interim step. It’s a democracy. We’re part of the same business — we have to figure out how to co-exist.”
Maple Leafs general manager John Ferguson said that both he and Tom Anselmi, COO of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, raised the idea of a slightly wider ice surface that could be adopted in any new buildings coming on stream. They thought it was an interesting idea – but when I floated it past Bettman, he shot it right down.
Steve Yzerman, the Red Wings’ recently retired star, articulated the view from ice level, saying he wasn’t at all concerned that goal scoring was down in the early stages of the new season.
“Regardless of whether it's 1-0 or 5-4, you can have exciting hockey games,” said Yzerman. “We made dramatic changes to the game coming out of the lockout and some of them have been very positive and some of them have had a negative effect on the game. I wasn't really in favour of making dramatic changes three or four years ago and I'm certainly not in favour in making any changes at the time being. Let's just play the game and continue to develop good young players from all over the world. We cannot keep tinkering.''
If there was one overriding sentiment that emerged Friday, it was a consensus on Yzerman’s final point – there had been so much tinkering with the game lately, maybe the best thing to do is just leave it alone for a while.
