Big takeaways:
- The league won't push collective bargaining until the NHLPA is ready, presumably after the other leagues finish their deals.
- Brendan Shanahan is now in charge of "player safety" and inherits Colin Campbell's dreaded "supplemental discipline" administration role.
- Bettman called for Shanny to develop safety rules and equipment/facilities improvement within the context of a "fast, open and skillful" game (Poor Hitch!).
- The Winnipeg deal was apparently pretty close to not getting done.
- The Board of Governors will vote on the Winnipeg purchase on June 21. Scheduling timing won't allow for a shift in conference alignments until next season. He suspects a "more balanced" schedule in years ahead.
- The City of Glendale will "fund losses" for the Coyotes for another year. (Poor taxpayers.) He sees no reason to move as long as Glendale keeps paying the losses while the league finds a buyer for the 'Yotes.
- He wants to use harsher penalties to drive undesirable behavior out of the league.
- Five markets still have expressed interest in hosting an NHL team (DBJ speculation: Quebec, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Seattle, Portland?), but there's no expansion on the horizon.
- Concussions are on the NHL's mind. Nothing clear has been determined beyond actions taken thus far.
- No updates on NHL participation in the next Olympics or a potential 'World Cup.'
- Salary cap projection - "in excess of $60M, as high as $63M." (FYI, CBJ salary budget for 2010-2011 was $52.5M.)
Take almost everything he says with a grain of salt. When he says the winnipeg deal almost didnt get done, its because of the fairly high requirements from the league in terms of $$ from True North. they wanted as much money as they could get and True North almost balked at those terms, not any anything else from the deal.
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