Removal of Gary Bettman and Colin Campbell

We, the undersigned, wish to express our concern with the actions of National Hockey League commissioner, Gary Bettman, and the NHLs principal disciplinarian, Colin Campbell.

We feel that they have shown an obvious display of favoritism and disregard to the actions by players and certain teams, while coming down far heavier on others. For example, Sidney Crosby, the face of the league, was never suspended for a punching an Atlanta Thrasher, Boris Valabik, below the waist and from behind Valabik was being held down by another Pittsburgh player.

We feel that while Bettman has tried hard to promote the NHL product well to the casual fan, he has also made a mockery of the game for the already existing fan and created a product similar to Italian league soccer in terms of embellishment and diving on penalties. The casual fan that Bettman tries to recruit may be pushed away because they can see little clarification of what a penalty is and what is not.

Most recently, Flyers forward Dan Carcillo was suspended one game for winning a face-off. While following through on his face-off in the final seconds, he hit Penguins forward Maxime Talbot in the head with his hand or stick. Maxime Talbots head was only struck because Talbot put his head practically below Carcillos shoulder prior the face-off. Talbot put himself in a vulnerable position. The National Hockey League executives felt that Carcillo being on the ice was some form of message sending. The NHL executives did not bother to look at Penguins forward, Bill Guerin, going after Philadelphia Flyers defenseman, Braydon Coburn, to fight only a few seconds prior. NHL poster-boy, Sidney Crosby was never suspended for sending a message on January 3rd, 2009 when he fought Florida Panther, Brett McLean.

In closing, we, the undersigned, would prefer the NHL to be what it used to be instead of it becoming a mockery of a professional sports league.