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Video: Colin Campbell denies bias, will speak to Savard

Sean Leahy
Contributing writer

Four days after "Colie-Gate" broke and everyone in the hockey world seemed to have their take on the situation and how it should be resolved, NHL Senior VP and Director of Hockey Operations Colin Campbell spoke publicly for the first time during phone interviews with David Amber of NHL Network's "On the Fly" and later with the "NHL Overtime" crew on VERSUS.

The Amber interview wasn't quite as hard hitting as you'd like, but Bill Patrick, Aaron Ward(notes) and Billy Jaffe on VERSUS did ask Campbell some of the questions many have floated this week.

Here's video (starting at 1:40 mark after some recent suspension talk) of Campbell being asked about whether or not his emails were taken out of context, if he had any regrets about the situation now and if he plans to apologize to Marc Savard(notes):

Before Campbell publicly defended himself, Commissioner Gary Bettman chimed in on his weekly radio show expressing his "full support" for Campbell and the job he's been doing.

From NHL.com (which has the full audio from Bettman):

"I know that we owe it to our fans and our fans should expect that there is going to be integrity in our game in everything we do, and we believe we do that. People will disagree with decisions -- reasonable people can always differ, especially when you deal with supplemental discipline. Obviously when you're dealing with supplemental discipline, no two acts are the same, the context is different, the situation's different, the players' histories are different. I've said it repeatedly -- supplemental disciplines are like snowflakes, no two are the same. And to do it, and to do it well, that is administer supplemental discipline, you must know the game, you must know all aspects of the game, you must be able to distinguish between an intentional act and an accident resulting from a hockey play."

Despite the NHL's attempts to defend Campbell's reputation and try and move past this story, the rest of the hockey world is keeping it alive and given the ire toward the league's "czar of discipline" over the years, this story is likely far from being over.