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This old saying surely applies to many of things that Gary Bettman has done to the NHL… from the glowing puck, to the latest controversy over the new Reebok uniforms. These newly designed uniforms were widely promoted last year by Bettman and the NHL for their new sleek design and for how light they were supposed to be.
Apparently, the new uniforms have led to players drowning in their own sweat. The new material repels sweat/water rather than absorbing it like the old jerseys, and leaves the players soaking wet. Furthermore, players have complained about the tightness of the jerseys limiting their range of motion and not being loose and comfortable like the old ones. It’s funny to read quotes like “But the jerseys have incredible technology that allows players to perform better” from the promotion articles and read how the jerseys were tested for 30 months to make sure they were put to the real-world test. After the complaints we’ve been reading about, it sounds like it was more of a 3 second brain fart on Gary Bettman’s part.
This obviously was a big marketing ploy and money maker for the NHL and not really anything to try to fix a problem, since there really was no problem in the first place. The NHL was just trying to get big fans of other high-profile sports (ie, the NFL), to be wowed by these new uniforms and interested in hockey, and to get people to start buying new team jerseys, which would make the NHL more money. Well, it turns out that the majority of the fans think that the new uniforms are ugly as can be (just do a search on Google for “NHL reebok uniform opinion”), and that they are causing problems for the players rather than fixing any.
Well, it turns out that the NHL is listening to the players somewhat, and will be addressing certain players issues by using a different “performance fabric, an air-knit fabric”. The NHL is insisting that players experiencing problems with the new uniforms are the minority, and that there are only certain players who have issues that need to be addressed. Since this story has gotten so much publicity, and you find players from almost every team speaking out about it, we at FB find the NHL’s stance on this to be far from the truth, which is nothing unusual and surprising… how many times have we pointed out their contradictory statements, their fallacies, and complete BS?
In other news, Gary Bettman is recovering from tendon surgery on his left arm this week after spending too much time clicking on our site and reading about all the things he has done wrong in the NHL.
