RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Hours after a report surfaced that he was discussing a succession plan with members of the Board of Governors executive committee, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman reiterated that he is not expecting to retire any time soon from the job he has held for more than three decades.
Bettman on his 74th birthday acknowledged the league has a plan in place like any major organization but is not in any rush to enact it.
"I am 74, and I do acknowledge the fact that I can’t do this forever," Bettman said Tuesday during his annual state of the NHL news conference prior to Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final. "There’s nothing happening imminently, and reports of my demise or retirement are greatly exaggerated.”
Bettman has been commissioner since 1993, when he took that title instead of president as part of a modernization effort. It was not clear what the succession plan, which he said has been a topic of conversation for at least a couple of years, would entail.
Hockey has labor peace at its highest level through 2030 after the league and the Players' Association negotiated a new collective bargaining agreement last summer. Union executive director Marty Walsh said the relationship between the sides is strong but is not worrying about Bettman's future.
“I’m not going focus on whether he’s leaving or not,” Walsh said. “I’ve been politics for a long time. I’ve seen leaders and speakers come and go. When and if the time comes, we deal with it.”
Bettman and Walsh unveiled a new format for 2027 All-Star Weekend, including a skills competition for players age 25 and younger and an international event. The change comes after the immense success of the 4 Nations Face-Off last year made the NHL and NBA rethink midseason festivities.
Following the skills competition on Friday night, Feb. 5, the plan is to hold a round-robin 3-on-3 tournament with 11-player teams from the U.S., Canada, Sweden, Finland and the World. Walsh figures it could serve as a prelude to the 2028 World Cup of Hockey.
“We think the format that we created will be fun,” Bettman said. “It'll be entertaining, it'll be great for the players and the fans. We know there have been some fits and starts on this, but we think together we figured this out.”
It is scheduled to take place at UBS Arena, home of the New York Islanders, which was supposed to host All-Star Weekend this year as a leadup to the Olympics. That was downscaled and then canceled.
Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said Russian players would be part of the World team.
The International Ice Hockey Federation last week said it would determine Russian participation on an event-by-event basis. Teams from the country have been banned since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the NHL has said it would follow the lead of the IIHF and the International Olympic Committee.
The league and the Players' Association are running the World Cup, so they hold the cards on whether players from Russia are allowed to take part. One question is whether countries such as Sweden and Finland would refuse to participate if Russia is involved, and Daly got an update on that front from the IIHF earlier Tuesday.
“They don’t anticipate a problem with the Swedes and Finns, necessarily, or the Czechs right now in terms of a boycott if it comes to that," Daly said.
The NHL and the NHLPA are against a possible change to NCAA eligibility rules that would give athletes five years of eligibility with the clock starting when an athlete turns 19 or graduates from high school, whichever is earlier. It would be a problem for college hockey players, who are often older after playing at a junior level before going.
“We’re not in favor of the change, and we’ve made the NCAA aware of it," said Daly, who spoke to NCAA President Charlie Baker about the matter last week. “We and a number of other hockey organizations throughout North America — the three junior leagues in Canada, the USHL, USA Hockey, the college coaches association — all have raised concerns, so we’ve made the NCAA aware of those concerns and what it might do to development of players in North America.”
The sport is already dealing with a major change to the developmental landscape after the NCAA allowed players who played in the junior Canadian Hockey League to play college hockey. Adding the wrinkle of the so-called “5 in 5” rule would cause all sorts of complications.
“It’s something that’ll affect the hockey ecosystem," NHLPA assistant executive director Ron Hainsey said. “We’re obviously removed from the conversation, and there’s a lot going in the NCAA, but when that comes forward it’s incumbent upon us to at least make an impression on how that will affect the entire hockey ecosystem, which everyone here knows, is a little different than the other sports, how our guys get to college. And so we’ll continue to try to impress upon them how the whole system would be in shock.”
AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl
FILE - NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman speaks at a news conference prior to Game 3 of the first round NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoff series, April 24, 2026, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Melissa Majchrzak, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans were evaluating Tuesday whether the Trump administration's scrapping of a $1.8 billion fund meant to compensative the president's allies eased their concerns enough to move forward with votes this week on separate legislation funding immigration enforcement.
Democrats were relishing the chance to put Republican senators on the record about the settlement fund for those who claim to have been politically prosecuted. They were promising scores of votes on the issue when the immigration bill is considered.
“Democrats won’t settle for half measures," said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York. "We’re going to kill the slush fund permanently and we are going to bury it and bury it deep.”
GOP senators has also revolted against the settlement fund before leaving for a Memorial Day recess two weeks ago. They returned to Washington this week saying they wanted more information from the administration about the future of the fund, which could potentially go to Trump supporters who beat police and attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The Justice Department said Monday it would comply with a court order pausing implementation of the fund. And then acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in testimony Tuesday that it was being dropped altogether.
“We are not moving forward with the fund, period,” Blanche said.
Caught in the middle is legislation that would fund Trump’s immigration enforcement agencies for three years. Republicans abruptly left town May 21 without passing it after Democrats said they would offer amendments to scrap the fund or scale it back, forcing Republicans to go on the record for or against it and endangering the money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol.
Returning to Washington on Monday evening, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he wasn’t sure if the immigration spending bill would move this week. “To be determined,” he told reporters.
He offered little more clarify after Blanche's assurances.
“It’s still a work in progress," he told reporters.
Republican senators leaving a lunch meeting Tuesday also said it was still unclear if it would move.
“We'll just have to wait and see,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told reporters. If senators are satisfied with Blanche's testimony, “we'll probably proceed quickly,” he said.
The extraordinary standoff comes after Trump announced the fund with no heads up to lawmakers as part of a settlement to resolve his lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns. When word of the settlement broke, the Senate was already navigating tricky passage of the immigration legislation with an added $1 billion in White House security costs — including for Trump’s ballroom project.
Furious, Senate Republicans jettisoned the White House security money from the bill and made clear they would not pass the legislation at all unless the White House made major changes to the settlement.
“I do think the best way to handle it is if the administration decides to shut it down themselves,” Thune told reporters Monday, referring to the fund.
The Justice Department said it would comply with a ruling Friday from U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who temporarily halted the fund for two weeks. The judge scheduled a June 12 hearing for arguments on whether to extend her order.
The outrage over the fund came to a head last month at a closed-door meeting between senators and Blanche that Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas described on a recent episode of his podcast as “one of the roughest meetings I’ve seen in my entire time in the Senate.”
GOP senators had been discussing several ways that they could curb the fund, including limiting who can receive payouts, changing the makeup of the commission in charge of settlement decisions, adding some sort of judicial review for applicants or scrapping the fund altogether.
Also complicating matters is Trump’s campaign-year push to defeat GOP lawmakers whom he sees as disloyal, including some of Thune’s most reliable Republican votes in the narrow 53-47 Senate.
Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and John Cornyn of Texas both lost reelection bids in May after Trump endorsed their primary opponents, and it’s unclear how supportive they’ll be of the president’s agenda going forward.
Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.
A giant portrait of President Donald Trump looks down from the Justice Department in Washington, Tuesday, June 2, 2026. The Justice Department said it would comply with a court order pausing the implementation of a $1.776 billion settlement fund designed to compensate President Donald Trump's political allies after GOP senators revolted. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche testifies before the House Appropriations Committee, Tuesday, June 2, 2026 in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., talks to reporters about Democratic efforts to push back on President Donald Trump's policies, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, June 2, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., joined from left by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., speaks to reporters after a closed-door meeting with fellow Republicans, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, June 2, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FILE - Supporters of President Donald Trump try to break through a police barrier at the Capitol in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)
FILE - Rioters storm the West Front of the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
