from Larry Brooks of the NY Post,

Everyone on the ice gets it. If a player doesn’t, if he repeatedly errs, he is out of the league. It is impossible to win on a consistent basis or on a grand scale without respect for the risk and reward equation that serves as the fundamental principle in every winning NHL locker room.

Yet, they are unable to compute this elementary fact of life in the boardroom on Sixth Avenue that serves as headquarters for Canceler-in-Chief Gary Bettman and his scrambled vision of hockey, in which he is willing to throw the figurative puck up the middle over and over again with only the faintest hope of connecting.

Bettman is willing to take the monumental risk of canceling yet another season as opposed to the meager rewards of limiting players to seven-year contracts and refusing transition rules that might cost NHL owners comparative pennies weighed against the cost of the second canceled season in the last eight years of his regime.

This is a man, quite frankly, who would first be shown the bench by Rangers coach John Tortorella, then scratched, then placed on waivers by Blueshirts general manager Glen Sather for the purpose of a buyout.

For Bettman is not an individual with whom a team can achieve success. He is not an individual who can be relied upon to see the entire rink, to process the big picture, to recognize that the business of hockey is not personal.

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