ST. PAUL, Minn. — The executive committee of the NHL’s Board of Governors has begun planning for Gary Bettman’s retirement in “a couple years” and has started the process of finding a successor for the longest-tenured commissioner in North American sports, Minnesota Wild owner Craig Leipold said on a podcast Wednesday and clarified with greater detail during a phone call with The Athletic on Thursday.
Leipold was asked Wednesday if he had any concerns about the business of the game during an appearance on The Sick Podcast/The Eye Test with Pierre McGuire and Jimmy Murphy. He raved about where things stand with the league before adding his lone concern: “The fact that Gary is going to be retiring.”
Leipold said it would be a sad day when Bettman, commissioner for nearly 32 years, was not part of the league, “but that’s a couple years down the road and we’re doing the planning now, and we have to make sure we get it right when he leaves.”
Leipold, one of the owners on the Board of Governors’ executive committee, elaborated during his conversation with The Athletic.
“Listen, we’re like a $5, $6 billion company — the entire league is,” he said. “So we have a CEO who’s going to be moving on and any transition would cause us to be concerned. And so, really, all I was saying is that we have had a commissioner now for 30 years, maybe a little more, and he has been outstanding. I mean, truly, truly, has been an incredible commissioner and has done great things.
“Now we’re going to transition to somebody else, and that should make us all a little concerned that we have to be certain we get the right person. It’s a concern that I have that, ‘How are we going to get anybody as good as Gary?’ The answer is we’re not. So who’s going to be the second best person, and is that going to be good enough?”
Asked if the executive committee had begun the formal process of finding Bettman’s successor, Leipold said: “I would say that we have.”
Leipold didn’t realize, however, that Bettman had not formally announced his plans to retire.
Bettman coincidentally attended Thursday night’s Wild game against Utah Hockey Club and met with The Athletic alone in Leipold’s suite prior to the game.
Bettman, 72, said he has not decided when to retire but did bring his eventual retirement up to the executive committee for the first time in advance of last month’s Board of Governors meeting in Manalapan, Fla.
“I raised the specter that at some point this is something the league is going to have to deal with because when you’re dealing with a CEO who has been doing this as long as I have, it’s a more complicated process,” Bettman said. “But the only discussion that was had was with three-plus decades at this job, at some point the league is going to have to deal with the reality that I can’t do this forever.”
Bettman was named NHL commissioner on Feb. 1, 1993, and has already surpassed Clarence Campbell for the longest tenure among any leader in league history. The NHL has grown from 24 to 32 teams on his watch and pursued a strategy of expansion into the Southern United States. It’s also become a nearly $7 billion per year business.
Bettman was also at the helm for four work stoppages, including a lockout that wiped out the entire 2004-05 season before the introduction of a salary cap.
There’s been increasing interest in Bettman’s future as his tenure stretched into a fourth decade with the league, as well as much speculation on a succession plan that could even see the reins passed off to deputy commissioner Bill Daly. Bettman has repeatedly swatted away questions on the topic.
Eyebrows were further raised in November when the NHL gave promotions to multiple senior staff members — elevating Steve McArdle to Chief Operating Officer, Keith Wachtel to President of NHL Business, Steve Mayer to President of NHL Content and Events and Julie Grand to Daly’s Chief of Staff — in a series of moves seemingly made with the long-term future of the league’s head office in mind.
But while Bettman said it would be irresponsible of him to not have the Board of Governors begin preparations for life without him, he insisted he never told Leipold and the executive committee the timeline of his eventual departure.
“I just wanted to put it on their radar,” Bettman told The Athletic. “When you don’t have the energy and the passion you have to think about it. The good news is I have the energy and I have the passion. I love what I do, and actually I enjoy doing what I’m doing probably more than I ever would enjoy retirement.
“I’m not wired to be retired.”
(Photo: Joel Auerbach / Getty Images)
