from Bruce Arthur of the National Post,

Once you got past the burbling emotion of Gary Bettman’s aria in New York last week, which deputy commissioner Bill Daly occasionally turned into a duet, it was a rich tale in more ways than one. It was a tale of deceit and disingenuousness, of betrayal and intransigence, of villains and the gracious barons who are trying to reform them. Oh, what a story.

It wasn’t all true, of course, because most stories never are. But it was, like many stories, revealing.

Bettman spoke after NHL Players’ Association executive director Don Fehr had met with deputy commissioner Bill Daly and legal heavy Bob Batterman, after which Fehr delivered a carefully disingenuous speech aimed squarely at his own constituents saying the two sides were so close they could practically smell the hockey gloves. None of these things were a coincidence.

And then came Gary, raging like Lear. For something delivered from behind a worn faux-wood podium at the Westin Times Square, it sounded apocalyptic. And on further reflection, the story should probably be annotated.

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