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Old October 30th, 2008 #1
Alex Linder
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Default What the Puck?!: How Stern and Bettman Jewed Professional Hockey

Unhappy anniversary
By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports
January 29, 2007

Dan Wetzel

Everyone has a favorite conspiracy theory about the NBA. Some like the idea that David Stern fixed the 1984 draft lottery. Others favor his supposed secret suspension of a star player for gambling problems.

Mine dates back to the early 1990s, when the NHL was white hot with fans and never better on the ice. Wayne Gretzky was in Los Angeles. Mark Messier was with the New York Rangers, who were on the verge of ending their Stanley Cup drought. Mario Lemieux, Steve Yzerman, Ray Bourque, Patrick Roy and many others were hitting their prime.

Anyone who doesn't think hockey can work in America is forgetting this era. All of a sudden, hockey was challenging, if not beating, the NBA in a number of major U.S. markets – including New York. It's almost impossible to imagine now, but it happened.

As the conspiracy theory goes, Stern sensed the potential trouble in 1993 while the NHL was in search of a new commissioner. So he looked around his own office for someone so incompetent that if they got the job, the NHL would be marginalized by their mismanagement and never again be a threat to the NBA.

Naturally, Stern recommended one of his assistants, Gary Bettman, for the job.

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True story or not, it worked.

Bettman is set to begin his 15th year as commissioner Thursday, and like most hockey fans I feel the need to mark the occasion by popping a bottle of champagne, chugging the entire thing in an effort to drown my misery and then smashing the empty bottle over my temple to black out the memories.

There has never been a commissioner of a major North American sports league this inept, yet the league's board of governors keeps employing him, keeps giving him another chance to sink this once-proud, once-vibrant league to new depths.

Bettman is on a 14-year run of bad ideas. His latest was a classic, moving the league's all-star game, which featured attention-grabbing young megastars, to midweek on the Versus Network – as opposed to NBC on a weekend. He claimed it would allow Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin to own the sports landscape, unlike some crowded weekend.

The result was a catastrophic 0.7 rating. That's a meager 474,298 households in the States that bothered to watch, down 76 percent from the last all-star game.

It is par for a season which has seen TV numbers plummet in both the U.S. and Canada (down 20 percent by some reports), attendance drop and media coverage dwindle.

Hockey fans would laugh if we weren't crying. We'd figure it would be the last straw that would lead to his dismissal, but at this stage, we know he's never going away. For those of us who grew up loving and living this sport and this league, all of us who cared about the NHL long before Bettman's slow, steady suicidal stewardship of it, it's just the latest in a recurring nightmare.

The Bettman era has been an unmitigated disaster for the league in virtually every possible way, one outrageously terrible initiative after another.

I could write a book about Bettman's insulting and imbecilic moves through the years (Chapter 9: "The Glowing Puck") but the main problem has always been the same. He has shown no respect for the game, for its history, for its fans, for its unique qualities.

Bettman might consider himself an astute sports marketer, but in practice he is arguably the worst of all time. He has never figured out how to change his marketing plans to fit the product of hockey. Instead, he changed the product to fit his marketing plans.

The league is now overexpanded and overpriced, misplaced and misdirected. It is less exciting, less interesting, less traditional and more difficult to follow for the non-obsessive fan.

Yes, hockey fans remain. I'm one of them. But even we can't believe what has happened here. It is bad enough a desperate, ill-advised grab of supposed "new, emerging markets" have come at the expense of the old fan base. It's dispiriting that the league chased the fickle corporate dollar and priced out families. But what's worse is it just keeps going and going, Bettman on the job for life.

Under Bettman's watch, the NHL's improvements are few. Certainly new technologies such as the "Center Ice" package and the Internet have been great. And there are far more highly skilled players than in 1993, thanks to the influx of talent from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Of course, Bettman had nothing to do with these things occurring.

The elimination of the red line and the crackdown on obstruction are positives. Some will argue that shootouts to decide regular-season games and the severe curbing of fighting are positives, but that's a matter of personal preference.

While some hail the salary cap that allows across-the-board competitiveness, I think it suppresses the kind of elite play that makes the game great. Hockey is the ultimate team pursuit – the need for timing and teamwork is paramount. The individual star is utterly worthless without strong teammates.

The great player needs other great players to be great. In the mid-1980s, Gretzky needed Messier, Paul Coffey, Glenn Anderson, Jari Kurri and others to maximize his abilities and thrill fans. A salary cap prevents talent from flocking together like that, so we get economic viability of the Atlanta Thrashers in exchange for breathtaking teams such as the Edmonton Oilers of 1980s or the Detroit Red Wings of the late 1990s.

The negatives are too numerous to list, but consider the league's current uneven schedule which serves no purpose other than cutting travel costs for a few cheapskate owners. Teams play eight games per season against division foes, or 32 a year against just four teams.

Bettman claimed it would spawn "new" rivalries. Of course, old rivalries such as Detroit-Toronto – two hockey-mad towns separated by a single highway that actually has an exit for Wayne Gretzky Blvd. – no longer play a home-and-home series each season. It's like killing Red Sox-Yankees so Blue Jays-Diamondbacks might catch on.

And, since fighting has been curbed, the "new" rivalries haven't really taken because a hockey rivalry without fighting is like non-alcoholic beer.

Plus, not everyone gets to see young superstars such as Pittsburgh's Crosby or Washington's Ovechkin.

Last week, 22 franchises tried to bring the old schedule back, but eight blocked the move in a vote while Bettman, predictably, did little lobbying on behalf of the majority opinion.

This is Bettman's NHL. Fourteen years, four bankruptcies, three franchise moves, two lockouts, one lost season and no effective leadership. The business is so sick that the Pittsburgh Penguins, despite a loyal fan base and the most promising talent since Gretzky, are 50-50 to move to that noted hockey hotbed of Kansas City.

Bettman has his apologists who point out that he beat former NHLPA head Bob Goodenow during the last lockout and got a salary cap installed.

Which is true, except it cost the NHL an entire season and an incalculable number of fans. And the proposed cap for next season is already creeping close to the average pre-lockout team salary. Wasn't the new deal only needed because the old deal was so bad? And who negotiated that one for the NHL in 1994? Oh yes, Gary Bettman, who locked the players out and killed all momentum from the Rangers' Stanley Cup championship to get that ill-fated deal done.

Lord knows what is next. Lord knows how he can make it worse. Lord knows what prior screwups he'll try to solve now with fresh screwups.

You'd think a 0.7 was rock bottom, but then again, this is someone who surveyed the burning wreckage of the NHL and decided that what would really turn things around this time were sleek new uniforms from Reebok, which were trotted out last week.

"This is an evolution of our uniform," Bettman proudly crowed.

Of course, already fans who are carrying even a few extra pounds report that they look ridiculous in the new form fitting jerseys, which has led to predictions of plummeting apparel sales and jokes about how Bettman hatched the idea after watching George Costanza comically change the New York Yankees' uniforms to cotton.

"This is a Seinfeld episode, isn't it?" wrote one fan on the San Jose Mercury News' hockey blog.

Yes, David Stern's bizarro world, now entering its 15th year and counting.

Dan Wetzel is Yahoo! Sports' national columnist and author of "Resilience: Faith, Focus, Triumph" with the Miami Heat's Alonzo Mourning. The book details Mourning's rise from foster care to NBA stardom before kidney disease changed everything. Send Dan a question or comment for potential use in a future column or webcast.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/news?slu...yhoo&type=lgns
 
Old October 30th, 2008 #2
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I knew that Buttman was a Stern protege. Every time that jew got on radio to talk about the lockout, I wanted to tie his lips together.

The NHL needs a hockey guy to run the show: like "Mad Mike" Millbury or Scott Stevens.

I nominate Millbury because I don't want him anywhere near the Islanders anymore - he's traded away Jason Spezza, Ollie Jokinen, Zdeno Chara, Wade Redden, Roberto Luongo, and Todd Bertuzzi (all Isles draft picks)
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Old October 30th, 2008 #3
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That would be a good article for this forum http://www.castefootball.us/forum/fo...762&PN=1&TPN=2

I just signed up there a few minutes ago. Here is their home page http://www.castefootball.us/index.asp
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Last edited by McKinley; October 30th, 2008 at 06:46 AM.
 
Old October 30th, 2008 #4
Alex Linder
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As I mentioned on this week's radio Istina, ESPN's 'Sports Guy," Bill Simmons, has mentioned more than once his belief that jew Stern deliberately sabotaged hockey by sending his least competent lackey, Bettman, to run the NHL. Simmons is half-joking, but it's interesting that someone totally innocent of the WN point of view would reach a conclusion we might. NHL is nearly all White. For that reason alone, jews would like to destroy it. And the writer in the article above says there was a point when the all-white sport, hockey, threatened to draw equal with the NBA. Very, very interesting. What this thread needs now is the article that appeared on a WN site, possibly the late National Vanguard, about the rules changes jew Bettman introduced. As I recall, the changes were meant to end fighting, one of hockey's most popular aspects, and paradoxically, a way to prevent injury to players.
 
Old October 30th, 2008 #5
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I posted this article and thread over at http://www.castefootball.us/forum/fo...836&PN=1&TPN=1
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Old October 30th, 2008 #6
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Hockey tickets are significantly more expensive than niggerball tickets and despite this hockey games still attract more fans (see below).

The Kikes are aiming to destroy the NHL by bankrupting middle class White America.


Quote:
http://forum.ebaumsworld.com/showthread.php?t=231958

I've noticed a significant drop in NBA attendance, and despite NBA games hold more fans and ticket prices are alot cheaper, the attendance is still become alarming.

Only reason i'am posting this is because you will see that ESPN will not make this public, like they did when they dissed Detroit and Colorado hockey markets after the sellout streak stopped this year, like it was really a big deal

NBA - 4 teams under 13,000, only 5 teams 100% or better
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/attendance

NHL - 11 teams 100% or better(Edmonton is 100%, just not updated on the right capacity numbers). No team under 13,000
http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/attendance?year=2008

So when someone on ESPN or wherever tries dissing on NHL TV ratings, pay no mind cause the core(dedicated) fanbase is one of the strongest in all of sports.

15 years ago Detroit used to have one of the best teams and crowds in the league. Now it's a ghost town -- ahem, a nigger town.
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Old October 30th, 2008 #7
Mike Jahn
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Default Hockey isn't the same, Bettman ruined it.

I had a friend in High School who grew up in Alberta, Canada and he told me that there was nothing more exciting than the NHL in the 1980's, the Edmonton/Calgary rivalry was legendary.

 
Old October 30th, 2008 #9
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Cool Why I Like Hockey

Barry Melrose said this was one of the best goals he's ever seen!
(and he's seen a lot!)

He Shoots!
He SCOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
RICK NASH of the CBJ's
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Old October 31st, 2008 #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bassanio View Post
15 years ago Detroit used to have one of the best teams and crowds in the league. Now it's a ghost town -- ahem, a nigger town.
Don't you mean a "spook town?"
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Old November 1st, 2008 #11
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I used to be a huge hockey fan following different teams for long amounts of time. Buffalo Sabres, New York Islanders, New York Rangers and now Boston Bruins. I became disillusioned and perturbed when teams were being pulled, salaries grossly expanded and trades were too frequents. When it became more about the money than the sport, I jumped ship.
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Old November 3rd, 2008 #12
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My husband wrote an extensively investigated article about the Jewing of Hockey a few years ago for NV news. It was too "hot" for a few sites but they evidently rewrote it to make it a bit more mild and then put their names on it.....Whatever, I guess imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.
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Old November 3rd, 2008 #13
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Quote:
Originally Posted by April Gaede View Post
My husband wrote an extensively investigated article about the Jewing of Hockey a few years ago for NV news. It was too "hot" for a few sites but they evidently rewrote it to make it a bit more mild and then put their names on it.....Whatever, I guess imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.
Could you post his original, April?
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Old November 4th, 2008 #14
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Default Origional article w/ bibliography

The NHL is on Thin Ice
Will the Great White Game of Ice Hockey Survive Jewish Meddling?


The National Hockey League (NHL) season reached the quarter pole and already there are rumblings of an attendance crises. Some teams are reporting attendance figures as low as 8,000 for games in state-of-the-art arenas that seat capacity crowds of more than 20,000. Chicago, Long Island, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Colorado, and Phoenix have all seen precipitous declines in attendance, some as low as 22% below last season’s figures.

Overall the league has seen average attendance dip from 17, 285 a year ago to 16,743 this season. A decline that Hockey News reporter, Ken Campbell, warned was a “slippery slope,” pointing out that “players receive 54 per cent of revenues up to $2.2 billion, but if the decline in attendance continues, there’s a very good chance they could be giving money back to the league this season.”
http://www.thehockeynews.com/en/colu...?columnist=186
http://www.cbc.ca/sports/columns/morrison/061018.html

Some observers charge that league attendance is actually much worse than is being reported. Detroit News hockey correspondent, Ted Kulfan, found 13,000 fans in attendance at a game where the Detroit Red Wings announced 20,066. Former Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reporter, Jamie Fitzpatrick, asked “if Hockeytown can pad its numbers by about 30 percent, what kind of lies are they telling at other NHL arenas? How many real people showed up for Wednesday’s games in Florida (which reported 14,312 loyal customers), Atlanta (12,579) or Anaheim (12,394)?”
http://proicehockey.about.com/b/a/255966.htm

League officials had high hopes that a new collective bargaining agreement between the league and the players, coupled with rule changes designed to speed-up the game, would bring the fans back after a year-long lockout in 2005. But, what the evidence seems to indicate is that the league’s attendance problems began much earlier and can be traced to sweeping changes instituted by a racially-conscious Jewish executive, his Jewish staff, and Jewish network television executives who demanded changes to the game that reflected their own interests and came at the expense of fans of the game.
http://www.nhl.com/nhlhq/cba/cba_ratified072205.html

Knowledgeable fans and hockey journalists point to the reign of NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman- a prominent Jewish activist, and former executive in the National Basketball Association- as the beginning of the current disconnect between the league and ticket buyers. Though he grew-up on Long Island New York-where hockey is a very popular sport- and claimed he was a fan of the game, he never actually played the game as a youth. Bettman was the first commissioner in league history to not have ties to the game.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Bettman
http://www.garybettmansucks.com/


Upon assuming the commissionership, Bettman immediately surrounded himself with a coterie of corporate, media-savvy Jews. Steve Solomon (ABC), Arthur Pincus (Washington Post) , and Bermandette Mansur (Reebok) were tasked with securing a network television contract for the league. Bettman’s staff was so top-heavy with Jews that a host of hockey columnists, including the Toronto Sun’s Al Strachen began euphemistically referring to the league brass as the “New York lawyers, ” and complaining that (they) “didn’t understand the game.” Bettman’s ruling clique was so out-of-touch with the rest of the hockey world that the phrase stuck and Strachen was forced to defend himself from charges of “anti-Semitism” leveled by Jewish hockey writer, Stan Fischler, on Hockey Night in Canada.

In return for the proposed network television contract, media executives demanded their pound of flesh from the game. Every aspect of league operations were exposed to a relentless critique. The game was too White, too rural and too violent for television consumption warned the suits.

To understand why Gary Bettman and his staff made such drastic changes to the game of hockey, a brief understanding of Jewish evolutionary strategy is necessary. Professor Kevin McDonald has identified key elements of this strategy in studies of Jewish behavior. McDonald’s research revealed that Diaspora Jews felt most threatened by “anti-Semitism”-both real and imagined-in countries where cultural and racial homogeneity was the norm. In response to the perceived threat of “anti-Semitism”, influential Jews have responded by forming communities of criticism which served as the intellectual basis to challenge the fundamental assumptions of the leading institutions of their host countries and ultimately to end homogeneity and assume control of those institutions for themselves.
http://www.csulb.edu/~kmacd/

One well-known group of Jewish social critics, The Frankfurt School, pathologized the family, church, and state, as a means to ending White hegemony in the West through the weakening of its most powerful institutions. This pattern of social criticism (now known as “political correctness”) by influential Jews was repeated in the fields of psychology by Sigmund Freud, in anthropology by Franz Boas, and is evident in efforts to undermine U.S. foreign policy (the neo-conservatives), and U.S. immigration policy, today.
http://www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=7370

The NHL was perhaps the most racially-homogenous sport in existence. Of the thousands of athletes to lace up their skates for NHL play, a mere 35 have been Black since 1917. This racial integrity coupled with the league’s thinly veiled nationalism, and implicit warrior culture, made it an attractive target for Jewish subversion.
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/bhmhockey1.html

The demands of television executives and the response of Gary Bettman and his staff to them, illustrate this pattern of criticism, which is, in fact, a weapon used to undermine the founding assumptions of the game of hockey. Where hockey was once the property of fans of all levels of economic attainment, appropriately priced and marketed for their consumption, it has become a game dedicated to corporate exploitation and consumerism (an off-shoot of globalism), where it was once a game of equal parts finesse and physical play, it is becoming one that severely restricts and penalizes most forms of contact, and finally, where it was once a game for the native sons of Europe, and the White families of rural Western Canada and the rural mid-Western and Eastern U.S., it is now a game that aggressively pursues inner-city youth and minority discretionary spending.
http://proicehockey.about.com/b/a/218867.htm

In Bettman and the “New York lawyers” the media executives found the perfect vehicle to remake the game in their own image. Where previous White league officials were reluctant to tamper with the game, Bettman was an eager participant in its reworking. The irony is that fans were very happy with the game just as it was when Bettman assumed power and none of the changes to it were necessary.

The decision to pursue a network-based television contract with Fox and ABC (the league already had a regional television pact with Sportschannel) as a foundation for economic growth was always a bit of a mystery. Game play was fast and the puck was small and difficult to follow on the screen. Most television people considered hockey even less telegenic than its commissioner and the league had already failed its audition for network T.V. twice in the ‘70’s. At best, what Bettman was attempting was an incredible and inadvisable gamble.

The Commissioner took over a thriving “gate-driven” business in 1993, where franchises were averaging nearly 90 percent of paid seating capacity league-wide, and nearly all teams remained profitable. Player salaries were kept in check in comparison to other professional sports, and as a result, average ticket prices remained affordable at 32.75 (1995). What the league lacked were the astronomical dollars attached to a big-league television contract enjoyed by all of the other major sports. The NFL is by far the largest recipient of television revenue (reportedly $2.2 billion US for the 2012 season), with the NBA and MLB second and third ($500 million and $479 million respectively). The NHL gained that contract-though for much less money ($80 million), eventually-but lost it again as the result of the lockout in 2005, and now has a contract worth about 60 million.
http://www.moagandcompany.com/i_a/industry_analysis.pdf

To attract those dollars the league pursued a radical relocation program. Moving four franchises, Minnesota, Quebec, Winnipeg, and Hartford from traditional to non-traditional hockey markets in Dallas, Denver, Phoenix, and Raleigh and expanding by five teams, Miami, Columbus, Nashville, Tampa, and Anaheim, with little to no connection to the game. “Both Winnipeg (99.3) and Quebec (94.9),” wrote Fischler, “played to more than 90 percent capacity, but that wasn’t enough in the Bettman era. The accent was on new arenas, luxury boxes, merchandising, and bigger TV deals.”
http://www.hockeyresearch.com/mfoste.../nhl_attn.html

The result of all the expansion was to create unstable franchises in non-hockey markets and to dilute the talent pool through inadvisable expansion to the point that the game became almost unwatchable, even to long-time fans. As a result of the new (2005) collective bargaining agreement, the economic emphasis on revenue generated by attendance returned, however whereas in the past the league could count on strong attendance in traditional hockey locations such as Quebec and Winnipeg, it can no longer count on fan support in non-hockey locations in the U.S. West and Southwest, where franchises were moved in the mid-90‘s to secure a national television contract. The interests of the game were damaged further by removing the support system, including access to professional training and instruction, from young athletes in Canada, who traditionally stock the league with 60% of its talent, and placing access to those assets in areas which have never produced even one NHL player.

Just as damaging were the attacks on the rules and culture of the game. The “New York lawyers” began stripping the game of much of the passion and tradition which had attracted fans to the sport for generations.

A policy of relentless commodification for television consumption replaced the “mom and pop” feel of the “old” NHL. The “grand old barns” like the Boston Garden, Chicago Stadium, and Montreal Forum were renamed or replaced with the innocuous sounding titles of their corporate sponsors to bring in more corporate financing. Gone too were the traditional names of the conferences (Campbell, Wales). Both were named after traditional Canadian icons: Clarence S. Campbell attained fame as a Rhodes Scholar, lawyer, and prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, and The Prince of Wales Conference, was named after a title traditionally given to the heir apparent to the ruling monarch of England. Both were scuttled in favor of historically-cleansed monikers for geographic locations, which became the Eastern and Western Conferences, respectively. Traditional divisions were renamed, removing their historical ties. They were replaced by plain, uninspiring geographical titles, reminiscent of the NBA. (League officials saw the old, traditional names as impediments to securing the new, non-White fan base they coveted in the South and Southwestern United States). Everything from television timeouts to sweat towels were quantified, exploited, and for sale in the “new” NHL.

But none of this new funding resulted in even a penny saved by ticket buyers, who now pay an average ticket price of 44.22 and as much as 180.00 for the “really good” seats (luxury boxes), most of which aren’t even for sale to individuals, as they are now primarily the property of corporate executives, who hold them-tax free- to entertain clients.

The aggressive re-writing of the game’s history and traditions was followed by an equally aggressive critique of its rules.

It was no secret that network television executives hated what they termed the “violence” of the sport. The movie Slapshot- a hilarious, if completely inaccurate picture of minor league hockey- lampooned the traditions of the game, emphasizing an image of gratuitous violence that was parroted throughout the media. Sports casters regularly seized on negative images of the sport and replayed them over and over again, while simultaneously underreporting and suppressing news of the numerous instances of extra-competitive violence committed by minorities in other sports. Hockey players were depicted as toothless, uneducated buffoons, while their non-White counterparts in football, were held up as models for the youth in United Way commercials.

Any physical contact was recast by the “New York Lawyers” as “violence” and targeted for extinction. The first target of league officials was fighting. Fans and players alike loved fighting because it represented the spontaneous outpouring of emotion that many other games lacked and often influenced the outcome in tight contests. Players also understood that fighting helped prevent injuries by making players accountable physically for their conduct on the ice. Studies also showed a correlation between fan attendance and fighting. Poll after poll revealed that fighting was one of the most popular aspects of the game among both players and fans, yet those polls were ignored.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...100202310/pg_1

Bettman found an energetic Shabbats Goy in the crusade to eliminate fighting from the game in an unlikely source, Wayne Gretzky, who had been the beneficiary of some of the game’s most reputable pugilists in the 1980’s.Much of the extra “ice” and “time” which allowed him to break all of those records was purchased by the able fists of men like Marty McSorley and Dave Samenko, who earned their living on the ice the hard way. Gretzky campaigned hard for the end of fighting, convinced by Bettman and others that the future of the game was somehow tied to its extinction.

Bettman’s use of Gretzky ( using Whites as pawns to achieve Jewish goals is a frequent tactic of Jews) worked particularly well in the effort to end fighting. For every five players that would go on record against the restriction of fighting, Gretzky would be trotted out by television executives to move forward their agenda.

Eventually, the league won and players were tagged with “instigator” penalties by officials who were asked to determine who started an altercation (not always an easy task), and to assign additional penalties. Gradually more restrictive rules came into effect that suspended repeat offenders, and the league’s “enforcers” were gradually phased-out of the game. “Body Checking”-the use of the shoulder or hip to slow or stop an opposing player who is carrying the puck- has also been severely curtailed. Contact that was common even ten years ago is now routinely penalized. Penalties for physical contact have become so frequent that many fans question whether or not checking is even legal in today’s game. The results of all of this restriction on “violence” were increased instances of injuries caused by “high-sticks” and rapidly rising number of “concussions” to players who lived under a false sense of security that they would be protected by the new rules. In the end, outlawing contact under the banner of eliminating “violence” only created a climate where more dangerous acts occurred with increasing frequency.


Next came a rather conspicuous campaign to rid the league of “intolerance”. Gary Bettman called for an end to the “systematic racial discrimination against Blacks in hockey”…. He formed a “Diversity Task Force” and required all players to attend “sensitivity training” seminars. The league was considered “too White”, by the network executives and their media mouthpieces, lapdog columnists, and league officials clamored for more minority representation in the sport. Curiously, those same media mouthpieces and league officials never uttered a complaint about the vast overrepresentation of non-Whites in a variety of other sports, nor did they point out the glaring lack of diversity in the NHL league office, or indeed around the sporting world-as Jews held the reigns of power in all four of the major sporting leagues: basketball, baseball, football and hockey.
http://www.jewishsports.com/profiles...entialjews.htm

Every non-White in hockey was suddenly an expert on what needed to be done to induce more minorities to take up the sport. One by one they were led before the cameras to complain of real or imagined abuse. Phoenix Coyotes winger, George Laroque, wailed that “bananas” had been hurled his way by fans in the U.S. while Columbus Blue Jackets winger, Anson Carter, said that the game wasn’t marketed in a manner acceptable to Black youth. Players were threatened with heavy fines and suspensions if they uttered a harsh, un-PC word to their fellow skaters.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...30/ai_80678770
http://www.blackathlete.net/artman/p...le_02497.shtml

NHL programs like “Be a Player” dumped tens of thousands of dollars into inner-city ice hockey programs in places like Harlem, NY and Washington D.C., which produced few, if any, hockey players of note, while 11 public ice rinks in Winnipeg, Manitoba-a hotbed of White NHL talent-faced closing, and the Polish National Team was forced to resort to begging for equipment on an ABC broadcast of the 1998 Winter Olympics, just to compete.

League officials claimed that the “disadvantaged” classes lacked the resources to play an expensive sport like ice hockey, yet Blacks made up just 0.02 percent of the Canadian population until 1990. Nor were Blacks particularly frugal in their spending habits, as many found the means in the mid-nineties to purchase very expensive (100 dollars a pair) “Air Jordan” basketball shoes and other high dollar consumer goods. Yet, in 1998, former International Hockey Federation Vice President, Bill Jamisen, gushed “ With the youth hockey programs that are in place now, such as Hockey in Harlem, in 20 years we may see a strong influx of African American or Latino players. Who knows? The league MVP could be from Raleigh North Carolina, or be Black or Hispanic. And if he’s not, the fans will be.” To date, not a single graduate of the NHL Diversity program has played even one, NHL regular season game.

So just what is the future of the NHL?

Jamieson may be correct, if the game continues to alienate its traditional White player and fan bases, those fans may spend their entertainment dollars and their recreational hours elsewhere. Hockey fans have seen their teams moved, their traditions trampled on, and their heroes demeaned. However, it is hard to imagine that the game will not survive in some form-it is too deeply embedded in Canadian culture and Canadian blood not to survive. There is little question that it will suffer the lingering effects of Bettman’s poor decisions and a diminished prestige due to his non-hockey decisions. Ironically, the first signs of the league regaining its health may be its low attendance numbers. Fans are displaying a healthy backlash to the clique of “New York Lawyers” who have so unceremoniously hijacked their game. Undoubtedly Bettman needs to go. Even leaders in the business world recognize this fact, as he was named one of the “worst” executives by Business Week in 2005. The long honeymoon he has enjoyed with the league was purchased by a press-wing that never had the best interests of the game, nor its fans at heart.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...2/b3915648.htm

Hockey has deep roots in our White racial spirit, which is played in 17 White countries around the world. Some consider the game of ice hockey a metaphor for our European pilgrimage to the new world, where daily survival was a struggle that demanded incredible teamwork and untamable courage. Settlers faced steep odds as they battled the frozen elements of an unsettled prairie, while maintaining vigilance under constant harassment and attack by savages. The true owners of the game of hockey are its fans and enthusiasts, young and old alike. If hockey is to survive, the White men and women of the West will need to summon some of the courage displayed by their ancestors and throw off the foreign influence of the meddlers who are ruining the sport.

.


Other Sources:

Fischler, Stan Cracked Ice An Insider’s Look at the NHL
McDonald, Kevin Culture of Critique

Silver, Jim Thin Ice Money, Politics, and the Demise of an NHL Franchise

Pictures:

Gary Bettman http://sport.jdmag.net/img-news.asp?Id=31795&country=en
Wayne Gretzky http://www.uni.ca/carddeck/gretzky.jpg
Hockey fight http://my.opera.com/Mathilda/homes/a...ey%20fight.jpg
Anson Carter: http://images.google.com/images?q=tb...son_carter.jpg
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Old November 4th, 2008 #15
April
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Now you know why I am in love and impressed with a guy who has the above writing ability, AND he plays hockey!!! What a combination!
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Old November 4th, 2008 #16
Steve B
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Quote:
Originally Posted by April Gaede View Post
Now you know why I am in love and impressed with a guy who has the above writing ability, AND he plays hockey!!! What a combination!
Good article, well written. I still think that guys who wear the same equipment as Michele Kwan are pussies but that's neither here nor there.
 
Old November 4th, 2008 #17
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Originally Posted by Steve B View Post
Good article, well written. I still think that guys who wear the same equipment as Michele Kwan are pussies but that's neither here nor there.
Go for it.Call the Tiger a pussy.I dare you.

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Old November 4th, 2008 #18
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Thanks for posting April. I posted it here http://www.castefootball.us/forum/fo...876&PN=1&TPN=1
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