Once you get past hockey, Canada’s second-favourite national sport is hating NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman. Booing the 65-year-old executive has proven endlessly popular down in the States as well. 

There’s good reason for this. During his 20-plus years at the league’s helm, Bettman’s major accomplishments have included watching the Winnipeg Jets leave the country for the sparkling hockey hotbed of Phoenix. 

And deciding that the notoriously fevered hockey fans of Las Vegas are more deserving of a team than Quebec City, which lost the Nordiques early under Bettman’s reign in 1995. 

And totally and epically screwing the Vancouver Canucks out of a Stanley Cup in 2011 (the injustices only started with Aaron Rome receiving the first multigame suspension in the history of the final).

But for all that Bettman gets wrong each year—including having his underlings seemingly decide suspension lengths by throwing darts at a board while blindfolded—he sometimes get things right.

Nowhere has the NHL been better at moving things forward than the issue of concussion awareness. How dedicated has the league been to getting intentional head contact out of the game? Well, it’s chosen to use its marquee event—the Stanley Cup Final—as a showcase for what we don’t want to see on the ice.

The Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Nashville Predators 6-0 in Game 5 Thursday night.

Just to make it clear that targeting heads WILL NOT BE TOLERATED, the game featured an extended demonstration on the problem, delivered by the NHL’s biggest star.

Watch below as Penguins captain Sidney Crosby attempts to soften up the ice in Pittsburgh by using the head of Predators' defenceman P.K. Subban in the first period. It's a thoughtful gesture, as the softer the ice, the less likely someone is to injure themselves falling on the ice headfirst.

Either well aware of the important player-safety work that was being done—or gunning for a spot at the entirely clueless table beside Kelly Sutherland—referee Brad Meier eventually decided that both were guilty of nothing more than holding. 

Holding, of course, sounds a lot more civilized than jackhammering in the name of ice-softening.

Bettman—who’s no doubt mentally preparing himself for his annual booing while presenting this year's Stanley Cup—must have been proud at how far we’ve come. 

(P.S. Warning: commentary by Craig Simpson which means you might want to hit "mute" first).