Gary Bettman’s Biggest Mistake During NHL Draft Revealed After Widespread Backlash

The talk should have been about how and which teams have come out as the winners after the 2025 NHL Draft Round 1. It’s not that such stories aren’t grabbing the attention, but the negative publicity that this year’s Draft has drawn will make Gary Bettman feel uneasy yet again and, more importantly, undone. Because the changes that he thought would be fun have actually left the fans wanting. And one media expert pointed it out as fact.

Drew Livingstone, the executive producer of SDPN Sports, took to Twitter on June 28 to put his points across. “The Decentralized draft wasn’t the issue, it was the way they did it”. And the tweet continued: “Just let Bettman make the picks and have the teams call players on the phone like every other league. No need for the weird zoom interviews with GMs Would have been a smooth 2 hours”.

The smooth 2 hours show that the NHL fans would have loved to have followed scene by scene, turned into a long, discouraging, and failed experiment from the NHL commissioner, Bettman. What went wrong? Ask anybody, and they will say it’s the NHL Draft House concept. Well, then it would surprise you when we share that the Draft House idea was a deliberate and conscious choice made by the NHL.

But the robotic vibe, the corporate ambience it created, especially in the sport that is known for unadulterated passion and emotions, ended up being anticlimactic, didn’t it? Even when Matthew Schaefer was overwhelmed with emotions, not being able to control his tears remembering how painful and difficult the last year has been when his mother passed away from cancer, but there was the Islanders management on the other side of the screen, unable to connect with their new recruit, hug him, embrace him, and tell him he’s home.

Livingstone does give the idea of keeping it simple. And following what others are doing. Maybe Bettman tried one too many experiments. But it was always a difficult task to follow up after 2024’s massive hit.

The 2025 Draft brings Gary Bettman a lot of flak, but does he deserve it?

The decentralization of the NHL draft was, or is still, up for debate. If anything, the NHL commissioner had said he is willing to go either way. “I’ve already heard a lot of people who voted for this (decentralized draft) saying, ‘Well, maybe we should go back to that.’ At some point over the summer, we’ll poll the clubs again. We can go either way. We’re easy. It’ll really be the preference of the clubs.”

And to be honest, it seems Gary Bettman is being made the scapegoat in all this. The decision to go decentralized was actually made by the franchises themselves. Talking to NHL.com, LA Kings president Luc Robitaille had said, “I put a lot of value on what scouts do in the season and the traveling and so forth, so the less distraction you have when you’re in the room when it’s time to make a decision that can impact a franchise for 10-plus years, I think it’s very important.”

And Luc Robitaille had 25 other backers in this huge change. NHL Insider Frank Seravalli’s tweet on June 28 made it all clear. “No idea why the NHL is taking bullets like this. Teams pleaded to try it this way, craving war room privacy and travel savings. Against the commissioner’s advice, teams voted 26-6 to go to a decentralized Draft. So the league simply said, “your wish is my command.” Blame the 26.”

And when you compare this with the hit entertainment success that the 2024 NHL Draft was, it does make one wonder. What will be the future of the NHL Draft House and the Centralized NHL Draft as a whole? Will the 26 franchise managements move away from their needs for the betterment of business? Yet another misstep cannot be good for the NHL? The TNT and truTV viewership drop in the US has already shown how these experiments keep hurting the NHL business.