Gary Bettman doesn’t care if fans hate him. Why his NHL reign has last…

Gary Bettman made a name for himself in the 1980s as the NBA’s general counsel and third-in-command, the sharp, young lawyer who created the league’s salary cap. Working alongside Commissioner David Stern, Bettman helped stabilize the NBA and transform it into a star-centric league watched by a global audience.

Still, it was a surprise when the NHL, seeking a chief executive who could get them a salary cap and revenue boost, landed on Bettman. He wasn’t born into hockey or part of its old boys’ network. He was from Queens, N.Y., not Canada.

“When I first heard about it, I sent the guy a puck and I heard he spent all day at his desk trying to figure out how to open it up,” said Pat Williams, then general manager of the NBA’s Orlando Magic.

Bettman isn’t warm and fuzzy. He can be haughty, alienating the fans whose interests he claimed to be protecting when he locked players out three times during labor disputes.

Spots of color flame in his cheeks when he stubbornly defends what seems indefensible, such as his contortions to keep the Coyotes in Arizona at a tiny college rink and being unmoved by studies that have found links between repeated head trauma and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease found in autopsies of more than a dozen NHL players.

Yet Bettman is smart. Very smart. He figured out how to open that puck and stretch the reach of a sport that doesn’t translate well to TV and has little tradition in many areas of the U.S. The longest-serving commissioner in the four major North American sports leagues, Bettman on Wednesday will celebrate 30 years on the job. He turned 70 last summer but has no retirement plans.

“Like birthdays, it’s just a number,” Bettman said. “Because everybody’s…