Bill Daly faces pushback from NHL governors as Gary Bettman's potential successor

The NHL's next commissioner might not be Bill Daly after all, and that crack in the succession plan surfaced Monday night.

Chris Johnston said on his show that his sense of the Board of Governors meeting was that some people have strong opinions about what Gary Bettman's succession plan should look like.

The phrase that jumps off the page? Johnston floated "maybe more of a search" rather than simply handing the reins to Daly.

Look at how he framed the alternative. Handing the reins to Daly was presented as the easy path, the one that wouldn't need much discussion.

Now some governors apparently want that discussion. At minimum, a few of them seem ready to kick the tires on other names before anybody signs off.

It's a bit like a family hardware store where the eldest kid always assumed he'd take over the keys, until a couple of siblings asked to see other résumés first.

Sometimes the eldest still gets the store. Sometimes the interviews reveal the family wanted something different all along, and nobody had said it out loud.

An open commissioner search would rewrite the NHL's power map

Be careful with the wording here. Johnston said "maybe," and he described his sense of the room rather than a vote or a formal process.

There's no mention of a search committee, a shortlist or a timeline in what he described. Daly hasn't been pushed aside.

But the mood in that room carries weight. Governors don't burn meeting time on questions they consider settled.

And here's where I land: a real search is the smart move. Even if Daly gets the job, he'd walk in with a mandate instead of a hand-me-down.

A commissioner who survives an open process can tell owners and players the chair was earned. That kind of authority matters once the hard conversations start.

On the ice, the season is barely underway, with most clubs only five or six games into the schedule. Ottawa sits at 5-1 heading into tonight's game against St. Louis.

Fans are rightly locked in on line combinations, goaltending and the early standings. The boardroom story will outlast all of it.

So what are the governors actually shopping for? A continuity pick with a fresh title, or someone willing to break from how the league has been run?

That answer will shape the league long after this October's standings are forgotten.

Daly can still win this. The difference is he may now have to campaign for a chair that once looked like it came with his name on it, and campaigns invite rivals.

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