As shown by the Twitter account linked below, Bettman makes $9.3M annually, which would make him the 19th highest paid player in the NHL - even more than some of the greatest players of all time, Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin.
This information paired with the NHL being the only major sports league in North America to have a hard salary cap, Bettman taking in a massive yearly salary has disgusted many fans. Heatdaddy on Twitter, one of the internet's more prolific fans accounts, wrote a scathing rant about Bettman's high salary in a league where it seems all players are vastly underpaid.
Heatdaddy has a solid point: most players in the league are greatly underpaid compared to the increasing value of teams and their hockey related revenue, especially so to star players and depth players. Despite acting so cash-poor in limiting teams' ability to spend, and in doing so paying their players, Gary Bettman took no such action to limit the salaries of league executives, including himself.
POLL | ||
Should Gary Bettman make $9,300,000 per year? | ||
Not a chance | 261 | 79.8 % |
He absolutely deserves it | 26 | 8 % |
Get rid of the cap and pay him whatever | 40 | 12.2 % |
List of polls |