NHL Peachy: Commissioner Bettman Transcripts Our Coverage Sponsored by Stribling and Associates
For over 30 years, Stribling and Associates has represented high-end residential real estate, specializing in the sale and rental of townhouses, condos, co-ops, and lofts throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn, and around the globe. Stribling has more than 200 professional brokers who use their respected expertise to provide personalized service to buyers and sellers at all price levels. A separate division, Stribling Private Brokerage, discreetly markets properties over $5 million, and commands a significant market share in this rarified sector of residential real estate. Stribling is the exclusive New York City affiliate of Savills, a leading global real estate advisor with over 200 office in 48 countries.
Check out their listings: http://www.whomyouknow.com/2016/01/remarkable-real-estate-listings.html
& their most recent State of the Market:http://www.whomyouknow.com/2013/12/remarkable-real-estate-stribling-fall.html
Whom You Know Congratulates their new President, Elizabeth Ann Stribling-Kivlan: http://www.whomyouknow.com/2012/12/breaking-manhattan-real-estate-news.html
***
An Interview With:
COMMISSIONER GARY BETTMAN
GARY BETTMAN: Good afternoon and welcome, everyone. Welcome to Nashville. Welcome to All-Star Weekend. We're going to do this media availability a little bit differently than typical. So before I make formal remarks and take your questions, which is the interactive part of our event, I wanted to share with you a presentation that was made to the Board of Governors this morning by Bob Bowman, who's the President of media and business for Major League Baseball and the CEO of BAM.
Our partnership was announced 180 days ago, and they've done some incredible things in an unbelievably short period of time -- not the least of which you see every night on the NHL Network, that they were up and running by October 1st, which was incredible, but there are changes that are going into effect for next week on NHL.com, GameCenter LIVE, and our app, our out-of-market package.
Bob is going to take you through all of the changes that our fans and you can expect to see as we do the re-launch. It would be an understatement to say, effectuating what they've done in this period of time is nothing short of incredible, and doing it midseason, Bob has analogized it to a high wire act, and that's probably correct. But we're excited. We have confidence in them. They've been great partners.
I would like Bob and Matt Restivo, his senior product developer, to come up and share with you what I think is exciting news.
BOB BOWMAN: We'll be brief. As the Commissioner said, we'll talk about ten minutes to walk you through this stuff. Typically, these are done in off-seasons. As the Commissioner mentioned, we're doing it midseason because it was the right thing to do, get on with it. We've made substantial changes.
The NHL, from the Commissioner, who's seen everything and commented and changed things, on down to his great staff, Steve McArdle, Dave Proper, and many others have been intimately involved. Every club has been involved in seeing this and giving us advice. And NeuLion has been terrific too in sort of this transition period.
You're going to hear from two other people today. You're going to hear from, first, Rob McGlarry, who runs NHL Network. He was a year- not even a year into running MLB Network, which had record ratings this year, when we gave him the opportunity to run NHL Network from Secaucus. He's going to talk a little bit about the network, which you've seen and enjoyed. Fans are enjoying it more.
And then you're going to hear from Matt Restivo. We stole him away from the NHL to launch three new products, the website, NHL.tv, which used to be GameCenter LIVE, and the official app. We're going to talk about those. It will be ten minutes, and hopefully we can get through it quickly. First, I'm going to ask Rob McGlarry to come up and do three or four slides on the network, and I'll be back as your temporary emcee.
ROB McGLARRY: Thanks, Bob. Thank you, Commissioner.
As they both mentioned, NHL Network has hopefully evolved and been watching launched in October with the start of the regular season. We launched in what was called for baseball purposes Studio 21, given the timing that we had. What we did was we also revamped the programming schedule, putting more emphasis on NHL Tonight in primetime and shifting On the Fly to be more of an end of night show of record.
We also, as I hope you've all noticed, updated the looks of all the shows and new graphics packages, new looks, and we think it showed.
We also hired a bunch of new talent, a good mix of new faces and hopefully familiar faces. One of the things that we tried to do in the shows and hopefully you've noticed- is give the analysts an opportunity to interact with each other, get from behind the desk. You put a stick in Scott Stevens' hand, you get a lot more out of his personality. You can see how comfortable he is sitting behind a desk, and we've really excelled with that.
We've continued with live coverage of hockey's greatest events. We had a great experience with the Winter Classic, and Nashville has been great. We'll be doing pre- and post for the skills event and the game tomorrow.
In April, we will have a new dedicated studio for hockey. Given the timing that the Commissioner referenced, we were able to creatively use some existing studio space, but we're hard at work building a dedicated studio. We'll still be able to use the facilities that we have, that we've been using. This will just give us more opportunity to highlight the game.
With that, I think we want to talk about the things they're going to launch next week.
BOB BOWMAN: So we're launching three things on Sunday night, Monday- the website, NHL.tv, and the new app. The website is going to be- everything's been redone. It's going to be completely responsive. That means it will mold to the device you have. So if you have a phone or a tablet, it will look great on that. You won't be missing half the website because you've got to move it over on your tablet. So everything will be responsive.
Your home page will be a little clearer, a little bit more white space. This is what people want. It translates better onto other devices. Hopefully, we'll have better images, more video. Video should be easy to discover throughout the site. Kids want video, and that's what we're trying to give them, particularly from this game.
Scoreboard will be a little cleaner, as you can see here, and also if you touch it, it will open up and give you more scores of what you want, a deeper look. You'll get it all in one click. You'll get all the scores in one click if you look.
These articles will be scrollable, as you see in many other apps and many other websites. This website will start to look like an app. You'll be able to go through them as you want. We'll intersperse things as you go, but everything will have at least a picture or hopefully a video for everything story. That's the way some people are.
We'll now have team pages on the NHL site. If you want to find out something quickly about the Rangers, you can go there. But as you can see on the right-hand side of that header, you can also go to the New York Rangers site if you're much more of a serious Rangers fan.
Finally, players are going to be completely redone, up to date stats, up to date video. We think people spend a lot of time, they do in baseball, on these player pages. So we thought they deserved an overhaul, too.
This will all launch, God willing, Sunday night and Monday morning. For that, I'm going to turn it over to Matt for five minutes or so to talk about the streaming app, which I think you're going to really like, and the app itself. Again, all launching on Monday, free live games on Tuesday.
MATT RESTIVO: I'm here to talk, give you a nice demo of our brand new app that launches on Monday morning. First, let's touch on NHL.tv. The product known to fans as GameCenter LIVE will be rebranded as NHL.tv, and we'll be launching on all major connected devices' platforms.
We'll have favorite team customization, a multi-cam mosaic layout for alternate angles. You can actually watch six camera angles simultaneously for select games, and DVR controls as well. The web has a completely redesigned NHL.tv player, brand new player, you're really going to like it. We're streaming at 5 megabits per second down, beautiful HD stream. Multi-viewing, alternate angles, and enhanced live game data.
Let's jump into the app. So what we thought about was how do we make a great fan experience on all platforms, iOS and Android. So let's start with iPad. The iPad app will now support iOS9 multitasking, which allows me to just pull in from the right side with my finger to pull in the NHL app. There's our scoreboard. These are the different ways you can multitask with your iPad on iOS9. You see we support split view. You can drag it all the way out and support landscape. We support every way you use your tablet- portrait, landscape.
But really the iPad is a great device for watching video. Let's tap ‘watch’ to get a quick look in on a game. So we're launching a brand new video experience. We're going to be streaming 60 frames per second, which is spectacular. The video quality is absolutely amazing. We've been watching these feeds. So much easier to follow the puck. You can see it right there, beautiful quality stream.
When we thought about handset, we thought about how do we get fans to get the content they want, and that starts with the team. Easiest way for the fans to get access in the palm of their hand. When you launch the app on Monday morning, you'll be asked what your favorite team is. We're introducing a new concept called following teams, so you can quickly access those teams' content as well.
So we are in Nashville. Favorite, the Preds. I'm from New York, so we'll follow the Rangers. Monday morning, this is the brand new team experience. It's going to be the default page for fans. You can see it's got a focus on teams' ongoing games, their upcoming schedule, news, and as you scroll, video, stats, and more info. You can tap to get notifications, to get real-time information for things that you care about.
If I head on over to the scoreboard, we respect those ‘favorite’ and ‘follow’ teams that you previously told us and order those games right to the top. Familiar concept for fans. When you tap on the scoreboard, you get more information. This feature is awesome. We're putting the scoring summary right on the front of the scoreboard view so that you can just quickly swipe to see the story of the game, who scored and in what order. You can even tap watch, as these highlights come in in real-time, to see goals. It's never been easier to see every goal from every game.
The news experience is completely redesigned as well. Beautiful photos, articles have been completely redone. Now when you tap into an article, you'll see that player names are linked. You'll see photos inline, videos inline. You can launch into player cards. Beautiful photography at the top with action shots. As you scroll, get their stats. Any attributes, information you want to know about that player, you can find it there.
We're also introducing searchable video. So now just type in what you want to find, and you can find it. You can even use video channels that you know and come to love.
And finally, and most exciting for fans, we're introducing a brand new out-of-market package, where fans can watch live games for the final five minutes, including everyone's favorite three-on-three overtime and shootouts. We call it NHL Premium, and it's just $2.99 a month.
With that, I'll turn this back to Bob.
BOB BOWMAN: I guess I'm going to turn it over to the Commissioner for the more important presentation.
GARY BETTMAN: I wouldn't suggest that this is more important, but thank you, Bob, and thank you for everything BAM is doing.
Thank you. Let me again welcome you all to Nashville. I'm glad you could join us for a first-hand look at the great job Nashville and the Predators have done with so many activities that mean so much to the communities we play in, especially when we pick a community to host one of our signature events.
In addition to the Honda NHL All-Star Skills Competition at the Bridgestone Arena tonight and the 2016 Honda NHL All-Star Game tomorrow- there's a lot of attention, obviously, being placed on the three-on-three format for tomorrow- there is a lot going on as part of this weekend here in Nashville.
Fans who are here will be able to connect with the game and the NHL experience in a variety of ways, including the IntelliCentrics skating rink at Bridgestone Winter Park, across the street where we have public skating and Learn to Play clinics as part of our larger national Learn to Play program, which we'll be launching later this year. The 2016 NHL Fan Fair in this building, presented by Bridgestone, where among other things, we'll be hosting 2,000 children from local schools as part of our Future Goals initiative. It's an educational initiative that we operate in cooperation and collaboration with the NHL Players Association. There's the Junior All-Star Tournament at the Ford Ice Center in Antioch, and we have the Red Carpet player arrival.
Let's not also forget, all you have to do is go outside to hear it, the non-stop music with concerts from some of the top name talent in country music. I can't mention all of the great artists who are performing this weekend, but I do want to express the NHL's appreciation to all-star celebrity assistant coach Vince Gill, who has supported the Predators from the start, and his wife Amy Grant, and interestingly enough, together was their concert that opened what was then called the Nashville Arena in 1996.
I'm also proud on behalf of the NHL to have been part of the dedication ceremony yesterday at the Nashville Inner City Ministry, where we turned 30,000 square feet of an empty warehouse garage into a multipurpose classrooms, a pantry, locker rooms that all are intended to serve at-risk youth and their families, and this is a project, a legacy project that obviously transcends and goes well beyond the events of this weekend.
The 2016 Honda All-Star Weekend is destined to be outstanding on a number of levels, and I want to recognize the hard, important, and good work of the City of Nashville, that they have put into making this such a special weekend. I want to also thank the Nashville Sports Council, and, as importantly, the local organizing committee for their time and effort. This is truly memorable. You can feel the excitement and energy here. I've heard nothing but praise from all of our guests that are here for the weekend. So it's just a lot of fun.
Interestingly enough, hockey here has grown exponentially at all levels. There's three times as many sheets of ice as when Predators got here. There are more high school teams than ever before. And hockey registration has quadrupled in size. USA Hockey recently announced that there are in excess of 100,000 players in the 8-and- under age class, and that's sustaining participation that outpaces growth in the U.S. for virtually every sport, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association. And interestingly enough, USA Hockey said that the 100,000th player to register actually did so at the Ford Center in Antioch.
To continue this momentum, the Industry Growth Fund, which we do in collaboration with the Players’ Association, voted last November to donate more than $4 million over the next three years to further develop youth hockey in Middle Tennessee. So hockey in Nashville is growing. Downtown, just look around, is thriving, and that's thanks, in no small part, to the role the Bridgestone Arena has played in revitalizing what was a less than terrific area.
So we're excited to be here. I would be remiss if I did not thank Tom Cigarran, Sean Henry, David Poile, Jeff Cogen for the time he was with the Predators, and the entire Predators organization for all that they've done to make this weekend special and to make the NHL family feel at home here.
It's also my great pleasure to tell you where we're going to be next year for All-Star. Now you go to your pads and pens: We'll be in another city where the building of an arena transformed its downtown into a destination after years of just the opposite. The 2017 NHL All-Star events will take place at Staples Center in Los Angeles as the Kings celebrate their 50th anniversary and the NHL celebrates our Centennial, our 100th anniversary.
There will be lots of events over our centennial celebration, which I'm not going to get into today. There will be further announcements. There will be league-wide events throughout the USA and Canada, but there will also be some events that are part of the All-Star Weekend in Los Angeles.
We're glad that representatives of the Kings are here. President of Business Operations Luc Robitaille. President and CEO of AEG Sports, Dan Beckerman. Chief Operating Officer of AEG Sports, Kelly Cheeseman. Coach Darryl Sutter, and Kings players Drew Doughty and Jonathan Quick, who I'm delighted, with everything we're imposing upon them this weekend, were willing to be here as well. So thank you guys. And they will be available to speak with you after this availability is done.
I also want to let you know that, on behalf of the NHL clubs, the NHL is donating $200,000 to assist Denna Laing in her rehabilitation and recovery from the injuries she suffered at Foxboro. In addition, two of our partners, Honda and Ticketmaster, are teaming up to donate a 2016 Honda Odyssey that will be retrofitted to meet Denna's transportation needs. And we're thrilled that Denna's mom, Jerilyn, and her sisters Lexie and Brianna will be our guests for the game tomorrow here in Nashville.
We had a brief and uneventful Board meeting. The Board was brought up to date on where we are with the Industry Growth Fund, the Future Goals and Learn to Play projects, which are off to a great start in terms of the engagement that we're having with young people.
We had a report on hockey operations, principally focused on how well the coach's challenge is working. We had a report on the player education program we do with the Players’ Association, which is put on by a group Call to Men that deals with domestic violence and sexual assault.
Everyone who's here seems to be thrilled to be here, and that's for good reason. Everything has been awesome.
While I know everyone is looking forward to the skills competition tonight and the three-on-three All-Star Tournament tomorrow afternoon, I'm actually looking forward to your questions. So let's do it.
Q. Can you update us, Gary, on the status of expansion and potential timeline for finally going to a vote.
GARY BETTMAN: The Executive Committee, which is the group of owners charged with making a study and going through a process and ultimately making a recommendation to the Board of Governors met, I think, two weeks ago, and the process is continuing.
We're not ready to make a recommendation. That's something that will be done over the next few months, and that recommendation can be no expansion, one team, or two teams. So the process is ongoing, but I don't have a firm date for you, but the process is on track.
Q. Fighting is down 35 percent from two seasons ago. Is that the kind of trend you want? Where do you see fighting down the line?
GARY BETTMAN: As I've said for years, the game will evolve as the game is being played, as the coaches coach it, as the players play it. We haven't effectuated a particular rule change. There may be a lot of factors. I think perhaps the predominant one may be- and this is my speculation- the game is so competitive now that teams are focused on skill and having four lines that can help you win a game, and I think that's been the focus more than anything else, and I think that may be the reason there's less fighting.
Lots of people can have lots of reasons and speculate why it's down. Some may suggest it's the visors. But I tend to believe that the games in the season are so competitive. Our competitive balance is incredible. Best ever in our history, maybe the best in all of sports.
Q. Gary, what is it specifically right now that the executive committee is struggling with in terms of expansion? And specifically to the Las Vegas bid, is there anything there that is holding up moving this thing forward?
GARY BETTMAN: The issue I'll take with your question is the notion that they're struggling. We're going through an orderly process. This is a very important decision. Lots of things have to be evaluated and considered, both as it related to the applicants and what their application contains, whether or not it's ownership, market, arena. Impact on the league is probably the most important.
The Executive Committee is doing this in a very orderly and businesslike way. I don't think they're struggling at all. To the contrary, I think they're pleased with the process.
Q. As to today's bid specifically, is there anything-
GARY BETTMAN: I'm not going to get into the specifics of the applications, either Quebec City's or Vegas', but we're just going through a process.
Q. I have a question for you about John Scott. Can you clarify the situation? Is it true the league asked him to stay home this weekend?
GARY BETTMAN: I'm glad you asked that question because there's been a lot of conversation about the topic. When John Scott won the popular vote, we announced him as the captain. There were a number of discussions with him, either NHL personnel or Coyotes personnel, about whether or not he wanted to come. This was a campaign that was created. Maybe it was aimed at the League. Maybe it was aimed at the All-Star Game. Maybe it was aimed at John Scott, but he had a decision to make. Did he want to be here?
Once he decided, taking everything into account, that he wanted to be here, it was a closed issue from our standpoint. He was welcome to come, and we welcomed him here. There was never any issue beyond that despite all of the commentary and suggestions to the contrary.
Q. Along those lines, what was your reaction to John's Players Tribune article, and specifically the contention he said he was called by an NHL official who said, do you think this is something your kids would be proud of?
GARY BETTMAN: I think John had to take into account a variety of factors in deciding if he wanted to be here. Our most important concern was that he be comfortable whatever he decided. Once he decided that he wanted to be here, not only was he welcomed to be here, we wanted him to be comfortable being here. I think that's how he feels.
Q. Did someone from the league ask him that question?
GARY BETTMAN: I'm not going to get into who said what. Those discussions are not particularly relevant because he made the decision to be here and we're all good with that. He knows, and he knows from me, because he told you that, that we're delighted to have him here, and we want him to enjoy his weekend.
Q. Gary, going back to the expansion, with the Canadian money going down and down, is it still possible for people in Quebec City to have a shot for a team?
GARY BETTMAN: We haven't been led to (believe) the contrary, by Quebecor, who's the applicant, so I don't think anything has changed in the process. Could that be a factor? I don't know. We haven't completed our deliberations.
Q. Is there any update in terms of NHL involvement and the next Winter Olympics?
GARY BETTMAN: No, there isn't. The last discussion we had was with the IIHF two months ago, and they told us we had collectively a year to decide. There are a lot of things that are up in the air, at least at this point, from the IOC and the IIHF standpoint, including, as a threshold matter, the responsibility that the IIHF and the IOC bear in terms of the expenses of us showing, whether or not it's transportation or insurance. So there's still lots of things from a variety of constituents that have to be dealt with before we even get to a serious consideration of that issue.
As you all know, we are focused, however- I'll use this as a shameless plug- for the World Cup of Hockey next September in Toronto. We're looking forward to that.
Q. Mr. Bettman, is there going to be any changes to the voting system for the All-Star Game?
GARY BETTMAN: I don't know. It's not something we've considered. We're focused on this weekend. When we get done with any of the major events and everything that went into them, we sit down internally, debrief, think about what was good, bad, what we could do better. That's obviously something we'll take a look at, but nobody's made any decisions.
Q. Just a followup to the Canadian currency question, obviously, you've already made a very preliminary projection at the Board of Governors meeting, but since then the Canadian dollar has gone down. Has there been a second preliminary? Have you warned teams?
GARY BETTMAN: We haven't discussed that today. Right now with the volatility in the Canadian dollar, all that will lead to is speculation. I think it's safe to say that, if the Canadian dollar goes down, vis-a-vis the U.S. dollar, the numbers get a little softer because hockey related revenues, which is used to compute the cap, is done in U.S. dollars, specifically to account for fluctuations in the Canadian dollar.
The clubs are well aware of it conceptually, and nobody is overly concerned because I believe we're going to be in the same universe. When you're dealing with a cap over $70 million, whether you're a million dollars more or less or a couple of million dollars more or less, I don't think is all that material.
Q. Has Chris Hansen in Seattle become an impediment to that city getting a franchise? He's got the deal with the city tied up through the end of 2017. He wants an NBA team. It doesn't seem like-
GARY BETTMAN: Well, there were three groups, individuals expressing interest. One from downtown, Chris Hansen's group, Area Arena, one from Bellevue, and one from Tukwila. Actually, whether or not they expressed interest, there was discussion about arenas in it all three places. I wouldn't characterize him that way. It is what it is.
As things stand right now, there's no prospect in the foreseeable future of a new arena in greater Seattle. It is what it is, and frankly, right now we're focused on Quebec City and Las Vegas. So that's not even on our radar screen.
Q. The way things are there, though, can you see why people are saying maybe the league is slow playing things?
GARY BETTMAN: No. I assure you one has nothing to do with the other. We're going through this expansion process, and frankly, at this point, if somebody wanted to give us an application right now, we wouldn't take it.
Q. Gary, a couple years ago, former MLSE President Tim Leiweke said he wanted an All-Star Game draft and obviously an outdoor game in Toronto. Obviously, you can't have everything that you ask for, but where does it stand on the Leafs' 100th anniversary celebrations and looking for an outdoor game and a draft?
GARY BETTMAN: We love Tim, and Tim always gets what he wants. Seriously, we don't have the announcements to make yet that we're going to make. We are going to have an extensive Centennial celebration. Obviously, it's the league's 100th anniversary. It's the 125th anniversary of the Stanley Cup. It's the 100th anniversary of the Leafs. It's the 150th anniversary of Canada, sesquicentennial. But today is not when we're prepared to announce all of the things we have planned.
But we believe that a 100th anniversary requires an extensive celebration. We're proud of the fact that we're going to be 100 years old, and we're going to celebrate it and hopefully engage all of our fans in that celebration, but we'll announce all of that at the right time.
Q. Commissioner, will we see increased player suspensions and maybe team fines if players miss the All-Star Game?
GARY BETTMAN: Again, that's not something that we focused on with respect to this game. It will be part of the debrief, and if that's appropriate, it's something we'll discuss with the Players Association. It's really pretty simple. If you're injured, we assume you're injured for more than the All-Star Game, and that's why you need to miss a game on either side. I think it's been a fairly effective mechanism. By the way, if you're injured and can't play but you want to come and spend the weekend and come to the media, we'll take that.
But players during the course of the season- and a testament to our players. We know that they sometimes play pretty banged up. So we understand the realities of it, and we try to work with it in a sensible way.
Q. Gary, you said that the executive committee is not ready to make any recommendations. Does it mean- it doesn't give much time for like a season or a team starting in 2017/'18. Does it mean that the vote would be for a season after or for later?
GARY BETTMAN: Well, it's a good question. Let me parse it a little bit because I think one of my more recent avails somebody said to me, well, if you're going to expand for '17/'18, don't you have to make a decision? And I've always said the earliest we would expand is '17/'18, and whatever we do, the clubs need at least a full year of figuring out how they'll manage their rosters to deal with the requirements of an expansion draft.
So as long as there's a year, at least a year lead time, we could make '17/'18, but if we don't make '17/'18, we don't make '17/'18. We're not running a 60-minute game here where the clock's going to run out. We get to do this in as orderly and deliberate a fashion as the Board of Governors ultimately decide they want to.
Q. Commissioner, are you concerned about the league's image with the anticipated release of documents by the judge in the concussion case?
GARY BETTMAN: I think that the selective release leaking of documents out of context may cause some people to scratch their head, a couple of other people maybe to, for a brief moment, be a little embarrassed about salty language or the like, but I'm very comfortable with our record.
I think, in terms of us running our business on an ongoing basis and the fact that we have a league to run, I'd prefer these things not be public. They'll be a distraction at best. But I don't think they impact the merits of the case.
Q. Three-on-three overtime has been well received, but do you anticipate any changes in the format with the coach's challenge potentially with hockey operations being involved in the decision-making next season?
GARY BETTMAN: Hockey operations is involved. We have the technology in place where we can talk to the officials from the situation room. We'll study it after the season.
Overwhelmingly- and this goes to the report to the Board today- for the first year out of the box- you've seen some of the other issues the leagues have had with replay- ours has worked really well. We were very careful, very judicious, as to how we were extending the use of replay.
As it relates to goaltender interference, it is a judgment call, and that's why we've said this is the better call, giving the refs an opportunity to get another look to see if they can make a better call. Overwhelmingly, that's working well.
Offsides -- you know, I've heard some people say, well, if you're only offsides by a couple of inches . . . Well, that's what the rule says. That's more black and white, and how we deal with that is something we're going to continue to look at. I think there will be more cameras in our future.
We're really good with the camera work that's available in real time to the situation room. I think we're a little too reliant on the broadcasters right now on offsides, and that's something actually we're going to test some camera work this weekend to see if we can get a more instantaneous, better view from the blue line.
It's a work in progress, but I think for the first year it's worked really, really well.
Q. Can you update ticket sales for the World Cup of Hockey, and have you met at this stage projections for those sales?
GARY BETTMAN: We expect- we're not sold out yet, but the event is eight months away. I think the building is substantially full. We're not worried at all about having the building full for every game. There's plenty of time. But the initial response- and, again, you have to buy a full strip- has been outstanding.
Q. What's your impression of the Islanders' first season in Brooklyn halfway through, how it's gone after all the years of talk about that subject?
GARY BETTMAN: First of all, I've been to a few games there. As the fans get accustomed to a different place and, if you will, a new environment, a new and modern environment- obviously, Barclays is an upgrade to the Nassau Coliseum, and that's probably an understatement. But people have to adjust to going to a different place.
Obviously, the building wasn't designed for hockey, but I think the people at Barclays have been doing a good job of adjusting, and I think over time it's only going to get better and better in terms of the fan experience. And I've seen that, as I've gone to games. The game presentation is getting better. The fans are getting more comfortable in the state-of-the-art arena compared to what they were in, which was not so good anymore.
Q. Do you have any concerns about a potential Penguins sale?
GARY BETTMAN: No.
Q. Whether it's the optics of one of your most iconic players getting out of the ownership game?
GARY BETTMAN: No.
Q. Is the demand strong? Would the sale price affect your expansion fee, anything at all?
GARY BETTMAN: No. The franchise is in strong hands with Ron Burkle and Mario Lemieux. For a variety of reasons, some of them which may be personal, they're exploring their options. But their support of the franchise has never wavered, and they've been great owners. If they choose to make some adjustments, I'm sure they'll do only what's in the best interest long term of the franchise.
Q. Your next Board of Governors meeting normally would be in June, the normal calendar year.
GARY BETTMAN: Correct.
Q. But given that expansion needs a three-quarter vote, I assume you'd rather do that in person?
GARY BETTMAN: First of all, it would be way inconsistent with everything I said about the importance of the process to suggest that we would do this by a technology vote, either by fax or e-mail or even a conference call. So if there's a recommendation that's ready and if the timing is right, I can always call a special meeting of the Board of Governors. Whether it's the June meeting or whether it's before or whether or not it's after, when we get to the ultimate result- although I suppose if the recommendation is to do nothing, there may not be a need for a meeting.
Because it needs a three-quarters vote, and if the committee, which consists of 10 people, isn't in favor and it were unanimous, you wouldn't need to do it. This is more detail than you need or want. But the fact that there's a June meeting has no bearing on the timetable. That was a really long winded way of me saying that.
Q. If you did go with the two teams, meaning Vegas and Quebec, would that automatically require realignment, given Quebec would be a 17th team in the East?
GARY BETTMAN: That's obviously a factor we have to look at. Alignment, just like where do the teams get placed in the Draft, what does the expansion draft look like if it's one or two teams, how many players can you lose, how many can you protect- all that stuff has to be dealt with, as would alignment. Which is why this is an important, complicated decision, and we're trying to do it the right way.
Thank you all for being here. Enjoy the weekend. It's been great so far, and we're looking forward to even more good things. Pleasure to be with you.
