Rick Stephens

And he says...

I don't get what the NHL gets out of participating.

Plenty of risk, but no tangible benefit.

And you have to agree with that.

Why didn't the NHL negotiate to get stats?

Why didn't the NHL negotiate to get video clips?

And this interview by Gary Bettman this week is...

Well, as you said, the bar of low expectations.

Gary said, I do believe that both the IOC and the IIHF have been a tad more flexible in terms of the things we can do.

He said, with respect to intellectual property and how the games are covered so that we don't completely disappear for a couple of weeks.

Bettman pointed to players being able to create their own social media content as participating athletes and the NHL's ability to repost it.

Um, so the NHL, um, have permission, uh, that if their players create content, they can share it.

That's it.

That's all they have.

Um, and that to Gary is, is a win.

And as he calls it, and the, the word he used was tad, uh, more flexible, um, um,

The issue, and I'm not going to lay it all at the feet of Gary Bettman here, a lot of this comes down to Marty Walsh and the Players Association, because during the negotiations of the most recent CBA,

that was their number one priority, uh, was being back in the Olympics.

Um, and it's, it's kind of like the Panarin, um, situation, um, where, um, there was nothing to negotiate on, you know, the Rangers had nothing to negotiate because there was only one destination here.

Uh, Bettman can't, can't, uh, has difficulty, um,