NHL commissioner rejects ‘ridiculous’ idea that state income tax hurts teams

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman doesn’t want to hear excuses from the league’s clubs. After the Dallas Stars and Florida Panthers engineered deep playoff runs, thanks to big-money signings, some analysts questioned whether state income taxes affect that calculus for players.

During Monday night’s TNT broadcast, Bettman rejected the idea and criticized commentator Paul Bissonette for raising the issue.

“I don’t want to take anything away from the teams from Florida,” Bissonnette told Bettman before Florida dominated the Edmonton Oilers 6-1 in Game 3 to take a 2-1 series lead in the Stanley Cup Final. “Any plans, maybe in the future, to implement a balance as far as the no state tax?”

Bettman wasn’t interested.

“Will you stop?” replied Bettman. “It’s a ridiculous issue. When the Florida teams weren’t good, which was for about 17 years, nobody said anything about it.”

The Panthers or the Tampa Bay Lightning appeared in the Stanley Cup Final in each of the past six seasons. Florida’s lack of an income tax — a trait shared by eight other states, including Texas and Nevada — wasn’t a factor, according to the commissioner.

“For those of you who played, were you sitting there at the tax table?” he said. “No, you wanted to go to a good organization in a place where you wanted to live, where you wanted to raise your kids and send them to school.”

Bettman confessed that taxes could be a factor “if everything else was equal,” but fans shouldn’t expect an NHL intervention soon.

“By the way, state taxes are high in Los Angeles, high in New York,” he said. “What are we going to do? Subsidize those teams?”