So commissioner Gary Bettman oversees the weakest professional sports league and continues to lay bombs. It got so weird that the player’s association recommended putting a second team in Toronto. Bettman and his minions denied the plan. They have enough to worry about what with about a 15/15 plus/minus for economic stability within the ranks of its 30 teams.

Bettman is glowing about the “real season” right about now as the playoffs, which used to take place in March, push on into the month of May. Last week he lost both New York TV markets, I mean, teams, with the NJ Devils giving up two goals in the final 1:29 (yes, Brodeur was in the net) to let the Carolina Hurricanes advance and the New York Rangers dropped a 2-1 heartbreaker in Washington to allow the Capitals to come back from a 3-1 deficit and move on to meet Pittsburgh. At least Bettman gets to feature Washington’s Alex Ovechkin against Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby.

The Devils loss comes as a special blow to President/GM Lou Lamoriello who runs his team with his foot on the Devils financial throat and whom has become the hero to every have-not team builder in every sport. Perhaps a little spending would have helped?

The Devils disappointment is overshadowed by the San Jose Sharks who won the Presidents Trophy for most regular season wins (53), but fell to the eighth-seeded Anaheim Ducks four-games-to-two to exit the playoffs for the fourth straight year. With the first round wrapping up, the NHL media people have done a horrible job of promoting the second round. Few people even know who the matchups are. The final eight teams square off like this:

Anaheim Ducks at Detroit Red Wings

Detroit is the defending champ and will lay claim to home ice advantage now that the Sharks are out of the water. Repeating as champs is next to impossible and even though Anaheim was an 8 seed, they are only two years removed from the Stanley Cup and have a savvy, veteran-led team that has saved its best for last. After a sweep of Columbus, the Wings are getting stale and this could be their biggest obstacle in round two. Chris Pronger and Scott Niedermayer will lead the effort to shut down the Red Wings’ high scorers including Marian Hossa, Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg and Johan Franzen. Duck goalie Jonas Hiller used to be a lefty reliever for the Detroit Tigers (no he didn’t) and regular season slumper, Wings’ goalie Chris Osborne, bounced back with four straight wins in the first round.

Chicago Blackhawks at Vancouver Canucks

Sportscream predicts the eventual Stanley Cup winner will come out of the west. This despite the NHL and Bettman’s patently unfair travel schedules. Detroit to LA and Chicago to Vancouver will bring time zone changes, jet lag and sluggishness to the Western Conference series’. The NHL welcomes back Chicago to playoff hockey. The passing of fossil owner Bill Wirtz and the radical takeover by son Rocky has shown immediate benefit. The Hawks will look to goalie Nikolai Khabibulin (4-2) and young scorers Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews and Kris Versteeg to carry them. Vancouver features Roberto Luongo in goal (4-0) and Daniel and Henrik Sedin, Alexandre Burrows and rent-a-hall-of-famer Mats Sundin as attackers.

Carolina Hurricanes at Boston Bruins

Another return to the playoffs of an original six team, Boston is riding unlikely 35-year old goalie star Tim Thomas (4-0), fresh off a sweep of the Canadiens, and scoring from winger Michael Ryder and center Phillip Kessel. Canes’ goalie Cam Ward (4-3) will look to stop them but he’ll need help from a high-scoring defense featuring Tim Gleason, Joni Pitkanen, Joe Corvo and Dennis Seidenberg. Eric Staal and Ray Whitney provide power up front.

Pittsburgh Penguins at Washington Capitals

This will be the match that Bettman will overexpose because of the head-to-head of the Pens’ Sidney Crosby and the Caps’ Alex Ovechkin, arguably the two best players in the game. Pittsburgh will feature a lot of Crosby’s flop act and discussions that refs call his game different. The toothless Ovechkin has recently rankled the Penguins for “over exuberance” and face-to-face confrontations with Sid. Alexander Semin and Nicklas Backstrom assist Ovechkin and he’ll need it because the Caps defense and the playoffs only real goalie tandem of Simeon Varlamov (4-2) and Jose Theodore (0-1) is leaky. The task of stopping the high-powered Capitals will fall to Pens goalie Marc-Andre Fleury (4-2) who is helped by offensive-minded defenseman Sergei Gonchar. Evgeni Malkin helps Crosby carry the scoring load.

As his season unfolds with its eight finalists, Bettman has no better time to assess what’s wrong with his product. He’d be well served by an effort to better familiarize his players (especially the Europeans) to his fans, incorporating Las Vegas into his league and examining how to take advantage of high-definition television by making his rinks “HD Studios” to better feature the game.