We're not anti-Olympics, we're anti-disruption to the season.
— Gary Bettman
If you're thin-skinned, you don't belong doing what I do for a living.
When you look at the team that Jimmy Rutherford has put together and the players that he has, this is just a great story of excellent in professional sports.
If you're a sports fan, it is really cool when you see the best-on-best for hockey at the Olympics.
I never rule anything in or out; life can surprise you.
I think the media world is adjusting to the digital age.
I couldn't do what I do day-in and day-out if I didn't love the game.
It's not about big markets or small markets. It's not about dominant teams or not. It's about the actual competition and how good the games are, how good the series turn out. That's what I think is the most important for fans.
Obviously, we're focused on the Winter Classic.
We did the World Cup to relaunch our international efforts, and that served as a foundation.
We're certainly not in position to expand into the East. We've been very candid and up front that if, in fact, we go through an expansion process, the world will know about it.
On the issue of behavioral health and the like, the program we have in place has always been available to former players as well.
We don't worry about the integrity of our game. I'm more focused on the atmosphere in the arena, and that's something we're comfortable with going forward.
While we know gambling is part of the industry in Las Vegas, we're not going to make it all that easy for you to pick up a ticket, a gambling ticket, on your way into the arena.
I don't worry about the integrity of the game. Our players are professionals.
We don't tell the officials to change the standard for the playoffs, but as we all know, time and space tends to evaporate very quickly in a playoff game; there tends to be a lot more physicality and a lot more adjustments in the course of a series.
We don't want our players getting hurt.
In '94, we made the deal during collective bargaining that wasn't the right deal, just to save the season. Allowing the 'in the crease' rule, the foot-in-the-crease rule, we should have not done.
The fact is, I view part of what I do is, if necessary, on difficult issues, be the lightning rod.
The Steelers run a great organization.
I'm not here to win a popularity contest.
Having to respond to things that are made up or untrue tends to be a waste of time.
There is less fighting in the game than we had years ago. I mean, we penalize it.
Our sport probably has the best history and tradition of being engaged in international competition.
We just want to see entertaining, exciting games, and we want the officials to do a good job.
While players say they like the five-day break, they're also saying they don't like the compression that goes along with it, and that's something that is of great concern to us as well.
I would hope there would be a greater appreciation by casual sports fans of the incredible skill and passion of our players.
Our franchises have never been healthier. Our league, in terms of its economic footing, has never been healthier.
I think there's always a line between what is parody in good fun in chanting and what is intended to belittle certain segments of society.
I think that when somebody loses a bet, they tend to sometimes confuse their motives in rooting and enjoying the game because if you lose your bet, even though the team you're rooting for wins, you have a potentially conflicted outcome.
Relatively, a very small percentage of betting takes place on hockey and even baseball because of the nature of the game and the scoring.
I'm having trouble understanding why there hasn't been further progress on CalgaryNext.
There are a couple people who have complained on other teams about some of the things that Pittsburgh players have done. Some of that goes in the category of gamesmanship. Some of that goes to the fact that we need to be vigilant as a league to make sure that players aren't unnecessarily and inappropriately hurt.
The good news for us is the NHL has never been stronger, never been more popular, and that, I guess, has led to a lot of interest being expressed from a number of places, an interest in getting an expansion team, and Las Vegas happens to be one of those places.
There are always going to be critics... and I have always had a rule: no matter how good the commentary is, or how bad the commentary is, it's more important that you do what you think is right.
What our fans want, what our fans believe, what our fans are interested in is why we are what we are. But, nevertheless, ultimately we have to do the things that we believe are essential for the long-term health of the game, of the league, and of all of our franchises.
I know when you're in the business of cover sports, you look for 60-minute games and a result. It's never that simple.
I view myself as a dealmaker.
We went from journalism, in newspapers that gets heavily edited, to blogs, where you can express your opinions, to tweeting, where you can say anything, and it gets repeated and becomes fact when it isn't. It's something the entire world is going to have to come to grips with.
I was always a fan of the game, and I wouldn't have taken this job if I wasn't a fan of the game.
When you're in other time zones in other places, you don't get quite as much attention; you don't get quite as much visibility for the game, and you give up a lot to do it.
None of our series are ever static in terms of the dates. We always have a range of flexibility to respond to whatever may or may not happen.
We'll have clinics and educational events and conferences to get more and more young players developing as hockey players.
Young people, particularly in their teens and 20s, are not consuming sports the way my generation did. They are doing lots of things; they are multitasking. They are getting downloads; they are getting alerts on their computers or on their cellphones, and they are consuming sports in a more real-time but less full-time basis.
We encourage the growth of women's hockey.
I don't think taunting chants at players on the other side of the ice is intended to be sexist in the slightest. It's like when you call a goaltender a sieve, they chant that. Is that now inappropriate also?
We're concerned how gambling and betting affects the NHL game and changes the perception of and challenges the integrity of the NHL game.
You don't want people rooting for anything other than the team that they love and the players that they think the world of to win. We don't want there to be another agenda.
All have used the economic opportunity of a new arena project to transform their cities into the future.
I think it's fair to say that all of the teams that have been in the playoffs have played very physically.
