Unions impact player, official safety issues
/LA Kings Insider has the transcript of NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman's press conference from his Southern California appearance this week and there was an interesting exchange regarding player safety and the role of both player and officials unions.
Reporter: In terms of your own profile, you’ve been less visible recently it seems lately. I would assume that’s a product of everything going really well and that probably is good, but one question about player safety.
GB: Before you do that, let me respond to that statement. I continue to do what I’ve always done. You may not be as interested in what I’m doing, but I can’t help that. I’m around as much. I’ve gone to as many games as I typically do. And when needed, I make whatever statements are appropriate and take whatever actions are appropriate. Maybe you just haven’t been paying attention to me as much, but that’s OK. I don’t mind.
Reporter: I didn’t mean that at all as a criticism. In terms of player safety, the concussion issue and the lawsuit that came out – you know the other night a referee got hit and I saw him on television a few nights later working again still no visor and the chin strap way down below the chin. That’s not going to hold a helmet on well and I know there’s a culture, because I was hockey player, that says you do things this way. At what point is the league going to step in and say both players and officials if you work in our sport we’re going to mandate how you wear the safety equipment.
GB: Well you know it only took me 15 years to convince the players association to agree to phasing in visors. When either officials or players are represented by a union they negotiate over terms and conditions of employment. We have taken the issue of player safety very seriously and we’ve worked very hard on the concussion issue going back to 1997 with the players association. But there are some changes that require the players or the officials to agree. If I could wave a wand, and I used to say this all the time about visors, and just make everyone into wearing a visor I would have done that but that’s not the way it works. The players have had a lot to say about what it is they’re going to be accountable for on the ice. Whether it’s equipment changes that we may want to make, but the fact of the matter is we have worked together on things like baseline testing, of the protocols we have with respects to diagnosis and return to play decisions, the fact that a player is supposed to come off the ice if he has a head incident and be evaluated. These are things that we were leaders on in all of sports and we’re continuing to work on it.
Source: Jon Rosen, LA Kings Insider