In my humble opinion, Niagara misses totally the flavour of the piece. Just giving the devil his due, in other words noting that Bettman is a cunning weasel is by no means admiring his tactics. 

The bottom line is that Bettman does not care whether he is selling hockey or doughnuts. His job is to make more money for his bosses and his main audience is certainly not Canadian nor Olympic hockey fans. His bosses are the owners of the NHL and they certainly have a different agenda for hockey than we have in mind.