Gary Bettman and 30 Years of Diversity Improvements

Gary Bettman became the NHL commissioner on Feb. 1, 1993. W. Graeme Roustan wrote about the NHL's diversity improvements in the 2023 Money and Power issue.

In 1989, long before any of the five NHL agents of change on the gatefold cover were even in the NHL, I was dealing with the NHL in my pursuit of a new franchise for San Jose. At that time, Gary Bettman was 37 and third in command at the NBA, Bill Daly was a 25-year-old lawyer at Skadden Arps, Kim Davis was 24 and just starting out at JP Morgan, Valerie Camillo was 16 and still in high school, and Samantha Holloway was just eight and in Grade 2. In fact, the only owner of any NHL team today who was around before my run at San Jose was Boston’s Jeremy Jacobs.

In all of my dealings with the NHL prior to Bettman’s arrival as commissioner in 1993, 100 percent of the NHL people I dealt with were white males. Seven months after Gary came on the scene, Bryant McBride was hired as an NHL executive who happened to be Black, an NHL first. I remember distinctly the first meeting I had with the NHL where McBride was in the room. What I took from this first meeting was that the NHL’s priority was to have the best people around the table, no matter what their demographics were.

In 2008, I became chairman of Bauer, which was and is an official supplier of the NHL. Working with the NHL on a weekly basis during my term there through 2012, I interacted with a much more diverse group of people than I did before Bettman’s arrival on the scene back in 1993.

In 2018, I acquired The Hockey News, and then, in 2019, I acquired the only hockey stick factory in Canada (Roustan Hockey). It supplies promotional sticks to NHL teams. Today, the people at both of these companies I own and I deal with a substantially more diverse group of people than ever before – both at the NHL and with its clubs throughout Canada and the U.S.

In my 33 years of experience in working with the NHL at all levels, I have been able to see for myself the changes in the diversity of people who work at the NHL and at its respective teams. I guess that is one of the benefits of being around hockey for a long time, you get to experience change.

There is more work to do until we get to the normalization of diversity throughout society. Even though I have personally seen progress at the NHL, I think everyone can agree that change hasn’t come fast enough; however, I would like to acknowledge the good work that has been done to date.

Bettman has clearly done more to grow the game of hockey than anyone else since 1993. On his watch, the NHL expanded from 21 teams to 32 teams, the league expanded throughout the Sunbelt, parity on the ice finally happened and the average franchise value surpassed $1 billion. These are all spectacular accomplishments indeed, however we are often judged on what we didn’t accomplish as opposed to what we did. As his hockey legacy in many ways is set in stone, it continues to grow as he leads the hockey world to ensure that hockey is truly for everyone.

This Money and Power and Influence issue marks the end of my fifth full year of ownership of The Hockey News. It is also the fifth Money and Power issue in the series of business issues I created to focus on the off-ice part of hockey, which I believed readers would be interested in knowing more about.

For the past 33 years, I have woken up each day and spent it immersed in the hockey world, watching the NHL and the game of hockey constantly change for the better. “The Game Changers, Changing The Game” on the cover have and will continue to effect change, which will become a part of each of their respective legacies.

This article appeared in the 2023 Money and Power issue, available for free at THN.com/free.