from Bruce Arthur of the Toronto Star,

Everything’s great. Hear that, hockey fans? Everything is great, and more, it is not an accident that it is great. Sure, some people complain about the National Hockey League, but people can complain about anything. Some people complain when it’s too sunny! Some, when it rains. What a world, am I right?

A couple hours before the Stanley Cup final opened, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman performed his annual state-of-the-league address, in which he spent rather a long time detailing how everything was indeed great. Who saw that coming? In fairness, goals are slightly up, there is an NBC darling in the final (Pittsburgh) against a vibrant Sun Belt market that the league championed, and whose sale to an eventually convicted fraudster named Boots was only approved by the league once, way back when. Boots wanted to move the team to Kansas City, before the bottom fell out and he went to jail. Anyway, it all worked out fine, though not for him.

So yes, Gary was riding high. And time after time, when the familiar issues that bedevil the league propped up, a theme emerged: this isn’t an accident. The offside reviews, which drag the game to a halt and in some cases actually drag it backwards in time in order to make a call which might be correct by millimetres? The review of goaltender interference, which is the closest thing in sports to interpretive modern art?

“They are working exactly as they are intended to,” said Bettman. “We hear the commentary ... but the fact is it’s our job to make sure the rules are complied with, and the video replay, through the coach’s challenge on offsides, has worked exactly as we hoped it would.”

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