WRAL Sports Fan

Hurricanes

Bettman says the Triangle will get All-Star Game, won't give date

Feb 20, 2009

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said an All-Star Game will come to the Triangle, but he wouldn’t give a specific date in an interview with 99.9 FM The Fan Friday afternoon.

“We will have an All-Star Game here,” he said. “I m not prepared to tell you when.”

Scott Jackson, one of the co-hosts of The Insiders, followed up and asked for a specific time frame, asking it could be longer than five to 10 years.

“I can’t imagine than it being longer than that,” Bettman said. “We’ll get it in the next few years.”

But Bettman said he couldn’t say I that would be three, five or seven years down the line.

Bettman promised in 2001 that the Triangle would get an All-Star Game within five years if Canes fans bought 12,000 season tickets. The Canes reached that goal, but the NHL backed off from awarding a game, saying the market needed more first-class hotel space and more meeting facilities.

Since then, the Triangle has added the convention center and several upscale hotels.

Bettman said he had toured downtown Raleigh in his trip to the market and was aware of the new convention center and the growth of the market over the past eight years.