Cup Finals earlier this year Womens Andrew Cogliano Jersey , Commissioner Gary Bettman couldn’t talk enough about the feel-good story of the Vegas Golden Knights and the NHL’s role in bringing major league sports to Las Vegas.When it came to a question about concussions and the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy, Bettman wasn’t nearly as chatty.“There’s nothing new on the subject,” Bettman said before turning to Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly and asking, “Do you want to answer that?”Daly didn’t, though he did note that the NHL believes there’s not enough scientific information to draw a definite link between concussions and CTE.“This is not the commissioner’s view, it’s the science view,” Daly said.No big surprise there, since Bettman and Daly run a league that has tolerated — and tacitly condoned — players hitting each other in the head ever since the era of the league’s Original Six began in 1942. And it is true that while there is increasing research that indicates concussions can cause CTE, there is a lot more researchers need to learn about head injuries before establishing it as a scientific fact.Still, the NHL moved this week to settle a lawsuit from former players who accused the league of failing to warn them about the dangers of concussions and about the risks of playing hockey. The league agreed to settle with retired players in a deal that could net each $22,000 and make them eligible for up to $75,000 in medical treatment.That’s not much for players who got their brains scrambled playing the hard-nosed sport of hockey. More importantly, perhaps Brandon Montour Jersey Kids , is that it’s not an admission that the league did anything wrong, with the NHL not acknowledging any liability.It’s simply a way to move on, with a token payment to the 318 retired players settling the legal score.The total cost to the NHL is $18.9 million, a far cry from the NFL concussion settlement that covers 20,000 former players with payouts expected to top $1.5 billion over 65 years. As of last month, the NFL concussion lawsuit claims panel had already approved more than $500 million in awards and paid out $330 million.One reason the numbers are so different is that the NFL is a much bigger league than the NHL, generating about three times the revenue that major league hockey does. Another is that a federal judge denied class-action status in July for the lawsuit, preventing another potential 5,000 retired players from being involved.The main reason, though, is that while the NFL attitude toward concussions softened over the years, the NHL wasn’t about to change its stance that there isn’t enough evidence to show that blows taken to the head led to brain damage.“When you have a defendant who has spent millions of dollars litigating a case for four years to prove that nothing is wrong with getting your brain bashed in, you can only get so far http://www.officialducks.com/authentic-adidas-cam-fowler-jersey ,” players’ attorney Stuart Davidson told The Associated Press. “I think it’s important for players who have an opportunity to settle their case with the NHL now to understand that before they get anything through a trial against the NHL, it’s going to cost millions of dollars in experts to get there, and that’s going to have to be paid for before they see a penny from any recovery, assuming they win.”In other words, a token settlement is better than no settlement at all.The NHL will end up spending the equivalent of the salaries of one first line over a year to get rid of a problem that could have vexed the league for many years. It did so without having to acknowledge that high-speed collisions and ubiquitous fighting could lead to brain problems later in life.Bettman’s hard-line approach paid off, and that’s no surprise.This is a commissioner, you might recall, who canceled an entire season rather than let players get paid what they’re worth. The lawsuit had already dragged on for four years, and with the NHL fighting it every step of the way, there wasn’t much appetite among attorneys and most former players to take it further.In the end, the players will get some medical testing and a few dollars. The NHL, meanwhile, will get protection from further suits at a small cost.Pretty easy to figure out the winner in this one. LAS VEGAS (AP) Just before the most improbable of Stanley Cup Final in the most improbable hockey city around Womens Corey Perry Jersey , Gary Bettman and Bill Daly put on a little show of their own.As lounge acts go, it probably wouldn’t play on the Las Vegas Strip. Then again, no one ever thought the Vegas Golden Knights would be playing on the Las Vegas Strip – and certainly not as late as Memorial Day.But play they did, in a wild 6-4 win over the Washington Capitals that officially ended with Elvis singing ”Viva Las Vegas” and the Golden Knights taking a 1-0 lead in the series.The greatest expansion team ever against a classic underachiever was already a story that has played well even among those who wouldn’t think of watching anything but playoff basketball this time of the year.But a thrilling Game 1 couldn’t have been scripted any better even if Bettman and Daly had spent their pre-game writing it instead of sitting in front of the media, sharing laughs and a few inside jokes. They completed each other’s sentences, and seemed to be having so much fun that they didn’t want to leave.And why not? They could have taken a victory lap outside the T-Mobile Arena and no one would have seemed to mind.They are the architects of NHL expansion, the gatekeepers who decide which cities are in the league and which cities must watch from the sidelines. They came up with the plan – hatched privately a decade ago – for billionaire Bill Foley to pay $500 million to put a team among the gamblers, degenerates and, yes, upstanding citizens of the city where fun never stops.They then made sure it would work, despite all the naysayers who said hockey would never catch on in the desert and certainly not in a city where there are a lot of other things to do than watch hockey players race up and down the ice.But even the top league execs didn’t expect this.”No one saw this coming,” Bettman said.They didn’t in New York, and they didn’t in Las Vegas. A generous expansion draft helped set the Knights up to be competitive Kyle Brodziak Jersey Womens , but competitive doesn’t mean scoring 109 points in the regular season and then going 13-3 in the playoffs.Competitive doesn’t mean taking the ice on Memorial Day with nearly 19,000 crazed Knights fans cheering them on inside the arena on the Strip and thousands more partying as the game unfolded on big-screen TVs outside.It was, as Bettman pointed out, 342 days since the expansion draft in the same arena. And what a 342 days it has been for not only the new franchise but a league that took a chance on Sin City when no other league would.Bettman and Daly rolled the dice that Las Vegas would raise the league’s profile and not just because it isn’t, well, Columbus or Ottawa.”We thought being in Las Vegas would give hockey a greater presence and make the game stronger,” Bettman said.The results, at least so far, show that bet paying off. Las Vegas has gone mad over the Golden Knights, and hockey is thriving in a town where most ice is made for drinks, not rinks.And the NHL is on a bit of a roll itself. The controversial decision not to halt play during the middle of the season for the Olympics paid off in increased attention for professional hockey and television ratings for the playoffs, while not nearly up to NBA levels, are up across the board.And so far no one has said a word about the evils of sports betting and how a major sports franchise can’t exist in a city that allows it.”This commissioner wasn’t scared by the things other sports leagues may have been scared about Jakob Silfverberg Jersey ,” Daly said.No one, of course, could have expected a hockey team to help heal a city in the wake of the Oct. 1 massacre that killed 58 people just down the street from the hockey arena. But the Knights helped that cause, too, adopting the Vegas Strong name and honoring victims not only at the opener nine days after the shooting but at games since.The players – who call themselves the Golden Misfits – have also done their part, both on and off the ice.”They seem to be playing with the emotion of a higher purpose,” Bettman said.That’s one reason why the bookies had them favored to beat the Caps and win the iconic trophy before the first puck dropped in Game 1. So far they’ve not only run through every obstacle in their way, but smashed through them.Good times in Las Vegas, and good times for the NHL.Little wonder that Bettman and Daly couldn’t stop smiling.—-Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg(at)ap.org or http://twitter.com/timdahlberg
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