English
EspañolCALGARY — Gary Bettman wasn’t ready to commit to handing Calgary the 2028 World Cup.
But he was willing to anoint the building bidding to host it as the world’s best.
“I don’t think there’ll be a nicer building anywhere than that,” said Bettman, shortly after touring the Scotia Place construction site on Tuesday.
“It looks like it’s going to be a spectacular, first-class, state-of-the-art arena. I’m excited about it, and Flames fans will be excited about it when they have a chance to experience it. It’s going to be great for the City of Calgary to have this type of facility, which in addition to hosting the Flames, will be able to host concerts and other events that don’t currently come to Calgary.
“The new building is twice as large in square footage. It has more bathrooms, it has more amenities. It’s just going to be incredible.”
As Sportsnet reported Sunday, the $1.2 billion event centre, located across the street from the Saddledome, is on the short list of venues to host the eight-team best-on-best tourney that will see four nations play in Europe and four in North America before playing the finals on this side of the pond.
Sources confirm Calgary’s bid is considered the frontrunner based on several factors, including the extensive and unique celebrations planned around it, the world-class arena and city hosting it, the league’s desire to reward cities that make such investments, and the city’s endless support of the game.
“Nothing has been finalized, but it was a good bid,” said Bettman.
“I’m not prepared to tell you today that it was, or was not the winning bid, but certainly it’s a bid that people could be very proud of. I think this has always been a great place to come. Ask the millions of tourists that come here every year to the Stampede.”
Calgary also has an advantage over U.S. destinations, due to the political uncertainty of hosting games in a country in which the president has already threatened to disrupt the scheduling of FIFA’s upcoming World Cup.
Bettman said a decision on the two host cities will be announced in two weeks, and insisted the league hasn’t spoken to Alberta premier Danielle Smith about the $15 million she said Monday that the province had given for a joint hosting bid between Calgary and Edmonton.
The commissioner wouldn’t comment on whether Edmonton was involved, or what other cities were on the short list that the NHL and NHLPA have whittled down from 25 original applicants.
The party line is that his visit, with deputy commissioner Bill Daly and several other league officials, was simply part of regular checkups with ownership around the league, albeit with an eye on the progress of the new rink, which includes a community arena.
“What’s clear to me is a lot of homework was done studying the most recent new buildings, to the extent anybody did something that they wish they would have done differently, they’ve taken that into account,” said Bettman of the building slated to open in September 2027.
“They’ve been able to look at best practices in terms of the layout. The building, by the way, is a lot further along than it looks, because you see the steel coming out of the ground doesn’t go all the way around. There’s interior work already going on below the ground that you don’t see.”
At the players’ insistence, the league has committed to hosting the World Cup every four years, alternating every two years with the Olympics.
Bettman said there’s no need to commit right now to the eighth nation that will join Canada, the U.S., Sweden, Finland, Czechia, Germany and Switzerland at the February 2028 edition.
“It depends on things that we don’t control, such as the IIHF decision-making in that regard, and the state of the world, I suppose,” said Bettman when asked if currently-suspended Russia would round out the field.
If not, Slovakia’s fourth-place finish at the Olympics would likely gain them entry.
As an interesting side note regarding the hosting of events in Alberta, Bettman said the league has, in the past, looked into hosting an outdoor game at Lake Louise.
“In terms of having a picturesque site that would be magnificent, yeah, but I don’t know that in reality it can happen,” said Bettman, who equated it to hosting games at Lake Tahoe during the pandemic.
“Logistically, it’s a little hard because you don’t have any infrastructure. Economically, it’s a little hard because you have no fans. Any preliminary discussions we had about it, that’s federal land around Lake Louise, and the regulations might make it next to impossible to deal with in terms of what we would have to do and how people who worry about those aspects of the environment wouldn’t like it.”
However, hosting the world at Scotia Place is an entirely different story.