Gary Bettman isn't going anywhere yet. The NHL commissioner brushed off retirement talk Tuesday, on the same day a fresh revenue projection landed.
Asked about succession plans, he didn't dodge the age question. "I'm going to be 75 years old," he said, before admitting that "at some point I gotta stop."
Then came the pivot. "I love what I do, I'm energized, I love being part of this game."
And he had a message for the reporters who keep circling the topic: "You keep trying to kick me out, and at some point you're going to get a different answer."
The closer was blunt: "this isn't that point because no decisions have been made."
Read that line carefully, because he never said a plan doesn't exist. He said nobody has signed off on one.
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It's the front-office version of a veteran captain telling the locker room he'll know when he knows, which works fine until someone's waiting on the C.
The NHL's revenue boom gives its commissioner every reason to stay
Eric Engels reported Tuesday that the league's revenue projection for this upcoming season sits at $8 billion-plus, counted in mixed U.S. and Canadian dollars.
Commissioners sitting on that kind of number rarely feel ownership leaning on them to leave. And Bettman sounded like a man who knows it.
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The money is already visible on the ice. Leo Carlsson carries an $18,000,000 cap hit in Anaheim, the biggest number in the league.
Kirill Kaprizov sits right behind him at $17,000,000 in Minnesota. Connor McDavid? Ninth, at $12,500,000.
So who gets the keys when the answer finally changes? The commissioner didn't put a name on the table Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the preseason is already rolling. The Red Wings hung seven on the Penguins in a 7-4 win Tuesday night, and the league's biggest leadership question still has no timeline.
Bettman has earned the right to leave on his own terms. But a league projecting this kind of money shouldn't let its next commissioner arrive as a surprise.
A succession plan belongs on paper, somewhere owners can see it, instead of getting dodged in a media scrum every September.
When the answer does change, the real fight begins. Does Bettman get to hand the league to someone he picks, or do the owners pick for him?
Should Gary Bettman name his successor before the puck drops on this season?
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