This is taken from (apparently) the third Malcolm Gladwell-Bill Simmons internet discussion thing:
SIMMONS
That reminds me: A Toronto reader just e-mailed me expressing his dismay that (A) Roy Halladay was traded, and (B) Chris Bosh is a mortal lock to be playing somewhere else next season. By August, he believed Canada's best non-hockey player would be either Hedo Turkoglu or Aaron Hill. I thought that was jarring. How is it possible that the Blue Jays and Raptors cover all of Canada for baseball, football and basketball? Shouldn't the country have more teams? And if your counter-argument is "No, actually, Canada is good, we only care about hockey," then why doesn't Canada have more NHL teams? What about my idea that the NHL should cut back to 24 teams, then go a 12-team American conference and a 12-team Canadian conference? Could Canada handle 12 NHL teams? Am I overrating Canada? Am I the only one who cares? I feel like I am.
GLADWELL
If the question is can Canada support 12 teams that are at least as successful as the Phoenix Coyotes and the Nashville Predators, the answer is of course. I suspect my high school could draw more fans than the Coyotes. I'm with you on the 24-team, Canadian-American conference idea, particularly since it turns the Stanley Cup finals into a border war every year. I was once in Brazil when Brazil was playing Argentina in soccer, and the entire country was in a state of advanced hysteria. I was at a conference and they stopped the proceedings, in the middle of the day, so everyone could go watch the game. Unbelievable. That's what happens when you combine sports and national loyalties. Can you imagine this happening every spring? I have a half a mind to march uptown to the NHL offices and pitch the idea to Gary Bettman personally. Oh, wait. I just checked. He's out. He's in Phoenix trying to figure out a way to skate on sand.
SIMMONS
Speaking of crazy theories, what about the idea that Stern planted Bettman in the NHL knowing he would screw the league up? Follow this timeline.
Fall 1992: Stern sees the NHL coming on strong: Gretzky in Los Angeles; a potential Lemieux/Jagr dynasty in Pittsburgh; Lindros looming in Philly, Messier leading the Rangers back to prominence; three other potential superstars (Alex Mogilny, Pavel Bure and Steve Yzerman); and four major markets (Detroit, Boston, Montreal and Chicago) contending for the Cup. Well, he has to sabotage this immediately. When the NHL owners come to him for a recommendation, he pushes his assistant Bettman on them. It's like Michael Corleone convincing Moe Greene to let Fredo run his casinos.
No, really, he'll be great!
Feb 1, 1993: Bettman takes over. At this point, he is
saying all the right things and not hinting at his desire to overexpand, lower the number of Canadian teams and effectively destroy the soul of the league.
June 1994: The league finishes its greatest 18-month run ever -- Montreal beating Gretzky's Kings in the '93 finals, then the Rangers ending a 54-year drought by winning the '94 Cup -- and if that's not enough, Jordan "retires" (sorry, I have to use quotes) and baseball has its damaging strike. Sports Illustrated cements hockey's coming-on-strong status with its memorable
"WHY THE NHL'S HOT AND THE NBA'S NOT" cover. Even in video games, the NHL was crushing it: That year, "NHL '94" became the single biggest time-waster other than the O.J. trial. There was no cooler/hipper/hotter sport.
Looking back, how can you screw that up? Bettman did it. Forget about all the other reasons the NHL fell off a cliff for 12 years (only recently have there been signs of life) and concentrate on this one: The league had 24 teams when Bettman took over, including eight in Canada. Now they have a whopping 30 teams, including more warm-weather American teams (L.A., Phoenix, Nashville, Carolina, Tampa, Florida, Atlanta, Anaheim) than Canadian teams (only six). Here's Canada, the country that loves hockey more than anyone loves anything … and it only represents 20 percent of the National Hockey League. This is the single dumbest true fact in sports right now. And it happened on Bettman's watch.
GLADWELL
It's incredible, isn't it? What I don't understand is how a country that is obsessed with hockey and supplies the lion's share of players and diehard fans to the NHL allows its national sport to be run by an American working out of New York City. It's as if the Super Bowl were moved, permanently, to Winnipeg. I think the Canadian teams should simply secede from the league and start over. And we'd take any northern American teams that wanted to come as well, particularly those in the upper Midwest and greater Ohio Valley which, if you'll remember your War of 1812 history correctly, is an area that really ought to belong to Canada anyway. But maybe that argument is best left for another time.