Well, not exactly…. (Gary Bettman has put a black eye onto the All Star Weekend)

Gary Bettman has put a black eye onto the All Star Weekend. Friday afternoon, he announced that players chosen to the All Star Game who are chosen to play in the All Star Game and cite an injury as a reason to not play in the All Star Game must either attend the non-game schmooze fest part of the weekend or miss at least one game either before or after the All Star break. Effectively, this suspends players for the first game after the break who decided not to attend the event.

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There are several reasons why these suspensions are unfair. The first is that they apply only to players chosen to the All Star roster and not the Young Stars roster.

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Second, there is significant precedent for players opting out of the All Star Game. It has been happening for years. Some fans and the league complained, but nothing had been done to punish those players.

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This is all problematic because it is an example of Gary Bettman trying to expand the power of the commissioner. There is no precedent for suspending players who miss a league event.

via KuklasKorner : The Puck Stops Here : All Star Game Suspensions.

The only problem with this commentary is that it’s not true.

The rule isn’t new. It is, in fact, a clause in the standard player contract, which means it was part of the negotiation of the CBA with the Player’s Association. Paul Kelly confirmed that in Montreal today, in fact. And this wasn’t exactly a surprise, Gary Bettman noted today that GMs were warned before the season started that the league was tired of players taking advantage of the league cutting them slack and that they were looking at clamping down on this. So the teams really have no excuse to be surprised. Some of the players that have taken advantage of not going to the All-Star game (Brodeur, for instance) did, in fact, not play in the first game after the break, although it wasn’t portrayed as a suspension. I’m not sure if Luongo did the same without doing the research.

This is a rule that’s been in existance for a number of years. The league has shown some discretion in enforcing it — and as a result, more and more players abused the situation, and now the league is cracking down. This is Gary Bettman’s problem how? oh, right. all problems are caused by Gary Bettman.

And in fact, Bettman also said today that the current rules don’t include the young stars in the requirement to attend, and that he will discuss this with the board of governors and that will likely change for next season. So the reason Mason and some of the Young Stars aren’t in Montreal is because Bettman wasn’t being arbitrary about the rules and wouldn’t change them without going through the formal processes — exactly the opposite of what he’s being accused of here. Gee. A little research does wonders some days…

The players want a partnership with the teams in working together to make the league better and more successful (and richer?). Well, you can’t cherry pick WHEN you want to be partners. And part of marketing the game is, well, marketing the game, and that includes showing up at the All Star weekend and doing the press thing and the sponsor thing and making the fans happy. Because isn’t that what both sides are supposed to be about?

Well, I guess not when it’s inconvenient.

By the way, there’s a more subtle, secondary issue here: replacing one of the Red Wings was San Jose’s Patrick Marleau, who went willingly and happily (and last-minute-ly. oh, never mind..) as a replacement. With San Jose and Detroit in a tight, really tight battle for the Presidents Cup and first seed in the west, one could make an argument that the Wings are impacting the Cup race by holding back their players without a good reason and instead causing a Shark to go in the place of one of them — thereby resting their player, and causing a Shark to miss out on his days off.

So what if Marleau pulls a groin two weeks from now? What if the Wings end up winning the President’s Cup by a cople of points? An argument could be made — these two teams are THAT closely matched — that if the Wings had held to their obligation and Marleau had stayed home and rested  as originally decided, maybe it would have been different.

So it may seem like a trivial issue, but the fact is these players are in violation of their contracts — AND it has some interesting wrinkles in the way it could potentially impact how the teams finish down the stretch. Of course, people who write about hockey don’t need to worry about those kinds of details — but Gary Bettman does.

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