Kukla's Korner Hockey

Kukla's Korner Hockey

The Bettman Book

10/01/2012 at 3:45pm EDT

from Luke Fox of Sportsnet,

The release of Jonathon Gatehouse’s new book, The Instigator: How Gary Bettman Remade the League and Changed the Game Forever(Penguin), could perhaps only be better timed if it had hit shelves on the day of the NHL commissioner’s retirement.

No figure is more central to the frustrating tale of the NHL’s current lockout or the league’s remarkable rebound from the last lockout eight years ago, when an entire season was scrapped.

We caught up with Gatehouse, a senior correspondent for Maclean’smagazine, to find out what he learned about Bettman and gather his thoughts on how the current NHL impasse will play out.

You write about the 1994 lockout, when Wayne Gretzky called out Bettman as the one man to blame and Mathieu Schneider wore a "Bettman Sucks" sticker on his helmet. Why do so many players focus their anger and frustration on Bettman when they know he's just doing the owners' bidding?

It’s pretty simple: he’s the guy on the other side of the table, and they’re heartily sick of him. They get to see all those character traits that the fans despise, up close and personal. In the book, I’ve got a section about the heated relationship between Marty McSorley, when he was on the NHLPA bargaining committee during the ’94 lockout, and Bettman. To this day, McSorley still gets worked up when he talks about it—the perceived disdain and arrogance.

more and the book can be purchased at Amazon.com (affiliate link and hardcover only) if you are interested.

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Paul Kukla founded Kukla’s Korner in 2005 and the site has since become the must-read site on the ‘net for all the latest happenings around the NHL.

From breaking news to in-depth stories around the league, KK Hockey is updated with fresh stories all day long and will bring you the latest news as quickly as possible.

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