Gary Bettman: Hockey Hall of Famer

In this football-centric world we live in, people rightfully lament Roger Goodell for the uninspiring job he's done as NFL commissioner since 2006. I won't bore you with his resume but as you know, it's considerably weak to quite weak.

Yet for every "-gate" suffix you can think of involving the Roger Dodger, he's not the worst among the active Big Four commissioners at his job. Far from it, in fact.

The worst commissioner in professional sports today is the NHL's Gary Bettman, who has improbably outlasted every fellow Big Four commissioner who held office when he took over in 1993. And he's now enshrined forever in the Hockey Hall of Fame after the class was announced on Tuesday.

Bettman has overseen not one, not two, but three work stoppages in his tenure. One of them (in)famously wiped out the entire 2004-2005 season, Stanley Cup and all. When the NHL returned to action in the fall of 2005, the only national TV contract the league could procure stateside was on something called the "Outdoor Life Network." Foreshadowing the watering down of the Winter Classic, I suppose.

Bettman has forced the Quebec Nordiques, Hartford Whalers, Minnesota North Stars and Winnipeg Jets logos into a graveyard.

That's not my father, that's former Quebec Nordiques great Claude Julien rocking the finest uniform this league has ever seen.

The only reason Winnipeg rose from the dead earlier this decade is because it's the offspring of far and away Bettman's most ill-conceived Sun Belt Expansion team, the Atlanta Thrashers.

Bettman awarded Atlanta a franchise for the beginning of the 1998 season, this despite Atlanta already having failed once as an NHL city in the '70s. This despite Atlanta, host of the Braves during that run to five World Series in the decade, led the National League in attendance just once during the stretch.

Bettman allowed the OG Jets to fly away to Phoenix and become the Coyotes, where they've been flailing around in the desert wind ever since. The NHL bought the 'Yotes out of bankruptcy in 2009; during said time frame, the team hasn't finished any higher than 28th in attendance. Even when Phoenix made the Western Conference Finals in 2012...it finished dead last in attendance. But don't worry, after the lockout wiped out nearly half of the 2012-13 season, attendance rebounded all the way to 29th for the 'Yotes.

Decent sweater...for a minor league team.

Sun Belt Expansion has produced a few solid franchises in the Lightning and -- for now -- the Predators and Golden Knights. Let's see how long those waves ride. Carolina, which stole the Whalers, did win a Stanley Cup in 2006. In defending that title the following season, the Hurricanes couldn't even finish in the top half of the league in attendance (18th) and now haven't made the playoffs since '09. They've finished dead last in attendance in each of the last three seasons, becoming the first team ever to finish 31st in attendance this season. Keep that in mind for if/when Nashville or Vegas regress to the mean.

People know all about how few South Florida sports fans tuned in to LeBron's Heat, not to mention that albatross of a stadium for the Marlins. Shocking to say, they aren't tuning into the Panthers, either. Florida finished dead last in attendance in 2008, rose back to respectability by finishing 17th in 2013...and regressed to dead last by 2015.

It looks like Seattle is going to be awarded the 32nd NHL franchise in short order, evening out the conferences with two divisions of eight teams each. I'm glad Seattle is getting a crack at the league but why expand when you can relocate any one of those moribund teams from the southern United States?

Every sport today has issues with replay, slowing games down in real time to determine if Dustin Pedroia's finger came off the bag at second for a millisecond or if Jesse James failed to survive the ground. Hockey's off-sides challenge takes the cake for worst of the bunch, though, and it's not even close. Why should Zdeno Chara's skate blade being 0.000000000000001 centimeters ahead of the puck on the offensive blue line matter when Brad Marchand scores 1:15 later after the Maple Leafs have had three chances to clear the zone?

I can't even

Is it longevity that's getting Bettman into the Hall? So what if he's been in charge for a quarter century? He's nothing more than a compiler in that regard.

Compiling financial growth for the league, to be 100 percent fair. There's also a little thing called inflation and if you're telling me he's the only empty suit out there who could have overseen said growth, spare me.

Speaking of growth, the game was growing via NHL players participating in the Olympics, which was originally a Bettman notion. He inexplicably pulled the plug on it this past winter. Just too much of a good thing I guess.

Bettman's hockey epitaph will forever be the three lockouts he's overseen and it is simply mesmerizing he'll now be immortalized in Toronto for it. Bear in mind that Bud Selig has a bust in Cooperstown despite cancelling the 1994 World Series and overseeing the death of the Expos, this all could mean Goodell is on a fast track for Canton. What's next, David Stern shows up in Springfield for murdering the SuperSonics and the whole Tim Donaghy thing?

Here's a few other thoughts on this year's hockey hall class, which Bettman aside, is quite strong.

• Former St. Louis Blues great Martin Brodeur, who also spent some time with the New Jersey Devils, is perhaps the best goaltender in the history of the NHL. Brodeur was around for so long that in David Puddy's iconic Seinfeld scene, it was a Marty Brodeur jersey he was wearing. That episode aired in 1995; Brodeur was still in Jersey through the end of the 2014 season. 

• Marty St. Louis has now completed his journey from undrafted to the Hall of Fame. You know where he played his college hockey? That's right it was a state school in New England that cut its varsity football program in 1972 to put a stronger emphasis on hockey, the University of Vermont. Too bad another school in the region can't follow suit.

• Very cool to see Willie O'Ree get his due as a Hall of Famer for breaking the NHL's color barrier as a member of the Bruins in 1958. He had only 14 points in 18 career games with the B's, but it goes without saying his induction transcends production. And is also a good reminder that the Bruins actually broke hockey's color barrier before the Red Sox fielded an African-American player; the Red Sox were the very last (pre-expansion) MLB team to do so, when Pumpsie Green debuted in 1959. 

• A couple of Massachusetts products in Jeremy Roenick (Thayer) and Keith Tkachuk (Malden Catholic) missed the cut again. Things are going fine for the Tigers, with Hingham's own Jay O'Brien being selected in the first round of last weekend's draft by the Flyers, but it's another story for the Lancers. MC recently announced it's going to stop playing its fellow Catholic Conference opponents in football, and one can only wonder if the school is long for the Catholic Conference altogether.