THE NHL : Owners Meet, Continue Their Search for a Commissioner

Owner Bill Wirtz of the Chicago Blackhawks, former chairman of the NHL’s Board of Governors, got used to being the league’s leading decision-maker during his long tenure.

If there were meetings in smoke-filled back rooms, Wirtz called the shots. Now, though, he doesn’t have the keys to those rooms anymore.

Which is why a meeting of the owners here Tuesday was called on relatively short notice. Wirtz requested it, wanting to know what was going on in the league, according to several of his colleagues.

He wasn’t the only one who was upset about being in the dark.

“A lot of us wanted to know what was going on,” one governor said.

Not much in way of concrete news emerged here after a three-hour meeting at the Plaza Hotel. There was a lengthy report from the head-hunting firm that is searching for a commissioner, the successor to John Ziegler.

The governors discussed the parameters for the job, deciding generally that a Fay Vincent-type would have too much power whereas Ziegler had been too limited by the owners. The NHL apparently is looking for someone in between those extremes. Someone with a strong marketing sense who can adapt to the sport’s changing economics.

But the NHL can’t change its conservative image all at once. It was a major step to elect King owner Bruce McNall, a representative of the new breed of owners, as chairman last summer.

One new name on the ever-changing list of potential commissioners has surfaced: Rick White, the president of Major League Baseball Properties. White, a former public relations assistant for the American League, was once a product manager in California for the Carnation Co.

Vice President Paul Beeston of the Toronto Blue Jays has been mentioned since early last summer.

One governor said that it is important to have a commissioner installed by June, if not before, because the collective bargaining agreement with the players will expire after this season.

Also on the agenda was the concept of NHL all-star teams--one Canadian, one American--for the 1994 Winter Olympics. There was believed to be a wide range of opinion on the concept Tuesday.

Neil Smith, New York Ranger president and general manager, is undecided, saying: “There’s a whole laundry list of reasons against it. There’s the threat of injury. There’s a chance you could hurt your own business. Brian Leetch or Mark Messier, if they got hurt, it would take away from our product.”

Smith said there are three options--shut down the league for three weeks during the Olympics, not do it at all or have limits on how many players per team could play and operate the league at a slower pace during the Olympics, one or two games per week.

That last idea has some support from a small, newly formed faction. Only 13 of 24 votes are needed to pass a Winter Olympic venture. NHL President Gil Stein said that the owners will vote on it during their December meetings at West Palm Beach, Fla.

Stein, who openly campaigned for the concept all summer, was not as enthusiastic Tuesday. Perhaps sensing the dissenting mood of a vocal faction of owners, including Wirtz, he decided to back off a bit.

“The board will have to make a decision,” he said. “There are a lot of people waiting to see the report of the committee. I don’t feel it’s my fight. It’s an issue for (them) to decide.”

Stein released the league’s penalty analysis through the first 106 games of this season. Five-minute fighting penalties are down 59.6%. Last season, there were 235 assessed. And the instigator penalty--an automatic game misconduct--has been called five times this season, compared to 26 times at this point last season. But last season it was merely a two-minute penalty.

The new penalty of holding the stick has been called 146 times.

“The frequency of that is getting less and less,” Stein said. “We assume by Christmas, you won’t see it happening anymore.”

Stein said that games are running four minutes shorter, on the average, through the first 106. At this point last year, the average game was 2 hours 40 minutes.

Those rumors of the North Stars leaving Minnesota for the Anaheim Arena simply won’t go away.

Minnesota owner Norm Green seems set to move out of the outdated Met Center in Bloomington. His two likeliest options are the Target Center in Minneapolis and the St. Paul Civic Center. Anaheim looms as a third option.

Green has been talking to the owners of the Target Center and might meet with St. Paul officials this week. His senior vice president, Pat Forciea, said that Green had been contacted by the Anaheim group last month, but there have been no further discussions.

Forciea is on record as saying that Anaheim is a remote possibility.

Pat Reusse wrote a column in the Star Tribune of Minneapolis on Tuesday, asking an unidentified former North Star employee what Green wanted to do. “That’s the problem,” the employee said. “He doesn’t know. My guess is he will wind up in Anaheim. Being a player out there--a fish in that big pond--would appeal to him.”