PITTSBURGH—Everything’s great. Hear that, hockey fans? Everything is great, and more, it is not an accident that it is great. Sure, some people complain about the National Hockey League, but people can complain about anything. Some people complain when it’s too sunny! Some, when it rains. What a world, am I right?

A couple hours before the Stanley Cup final opened, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman performed his annual state-of-the-league address, in which he spent rather a long time detailing how everything was indeed great. Who saw that coming? In fairness, goals are slightly up, there is an NBC darling in the final (Pittsburgh) against a vibrant Sun Belt market that the league championed, and whose sale to an eventually convicted fraudster named Boots was only approved by the league once, way back when. Boots wanted to move the team to Kansas City, before the bottom fell out and he went to jail. Anyway, it all worked out fine, though not for him.

So yes, Gary was riding high. And time after time, when the familiar issues that bedevil the league propped up, a theme emerged: this isn’t an accident. The offside reviews, which drag the game to a halt and in some cases actually drag it backwards in time in order to make a call which might be correct by millimetres? The review of goaltender interference, which is the closest thing in sports to interpretive modern art?

“They are working exactly as they are intended to,” said Bettman. “We hear the commentary ... but the fact is it’s our job to make sure the rules are complied with, and the video replay, through the coach’s challenge on offsides, has worked exactly as we hoped it would.”

(A P.K. Subban goal was called back on offside review to start the game, after a lengthy delay and some inconclusive video. Catch the fever!)

The concussion protocols which seem to have holes, as shown when Sidney Crosby hit the boards in the series against Washington and wasn’t immediately pulled after getting up slowly?

“It is evolving. It is working well,” said Bettman.

Not going to the Olympics in South Korea in 2018, which has angered the players and no small number of fans?

“We’re not anti-Olympics,” said Bettman. “We’re anti-disruption to the season.”

He blamed the players for that one, and also derailing a calendar that would have included two World Cups and maybe two Olympics and two Ryder Cup-like events, and some of that is true. The union responded by saying they would prefer not to trade collectively bargained rights to reopen the CBA — or to decline to extend it — for the right to go to an Olympics, which didn’t require that degree of horse-trading before. In hockey, remember, all roads lead back to eventual labour disruption.

Now in fairness, many indicators are at least not trending downwards in every way. Yes, the salary cap will stay flat unless an artificial inflator is triggered by the players, which will only lead to more money clawed back from the players in escrow. (Also in hockey, all roads lead back to eventual escrow.) If the inflator isn’t used, the already-limited trade market will tighten, as will free agency. Well, super.

But hey, scoring was at its highest level since 2012, at 2.77 goals per team per game from 2.71, with fewer empty-net goals. Now you might say, there have only been 12 lower-scoring seasons since 1956-57, and five of them happened in the past five years before this season, but an increase slightly beats the alternative. Maybe forcing the goaltenders to wear skinny jeans and tight shirts will pay off.

“The general managers meet on a regular basis to take the pulse of the game to see what, if any, adjustments are needed. But I think the game is in as good a shape as it’s ever been ... it’s about flow, it’s about scoring chances, it’s about how entertaining the game is,” said Bettman. “And the game has never been faster, never been more skilful ... we’re in a good place. But that doesn’t mean we take it for granted, and we’re constantly in a self-evaluative mode.”

But on the whole this remains a league mired in the land of the uninspired, a league whose vision remains so limited. Rob Rossi, a longtime Pittsburgh reporter and columnist, asked one question about player safety and headshots that went uncalled; afterwards, NHL executive vice-president and director of hockey operations Colin Campbell told Rossi he thought the question was “crazy” and “out of line.” This in a league where the player safety department under Stephane Quintal has reduced public communication, and seems to have taken a step back when it comes to consistent and strong penalties (for example, Tommy Wingels elbowing Pittsburgh’s Scott Wilson in the face at the end of Game 5 of the Pittsburgh-Washington game).

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But regardless, everything is great. Connor McDavid and Auston Matthews and Patrik Laine have arrived, and Crosby is still hanging around getting cross-checked and poked and generally abused, and it’s going to be fine. You might think the league has boxed itself in with salary caps and labour worries and a generally pervasive sense that its mistakes are the product of an incrementalist vision executed by men who have been the stewards of hockey for a long time, even too long. You might think that.

But this is the NHL, in all its glory. It’s not a bug. It’s a feature.

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