Bettman is correct that the situation was bad for the NHL and changes were needed, but he still completely mismanaged the situation.
As a healthcare executive that currently sits on several boards, my guess is this has been a major sore issue for the board for a long time, but because it is a hard problem to solve, they were paralyzed and kept putting off the decision. Then along comes Bettman's buddy Ryan Smith, wining and dining the board, greasing their palms, and likely trashing AM and Phoenix to further undermine confidence, and promising to solve all their problems if only he gets the team in Utah. This has been a sore issue for the board for so long, they rush into a decision to make the problem go away.
This is still a terrible management move but not surprising coming from the NHL. If this was a truly sore issue, they should have acted forcefully in a quicker timeframe (not kept pushing it off), and they should have spent the time required to come up with the best solution, not the quickest, easiest and most convenient. If *I* was in that tough position, as soon as the board lost confidence in AM, they should have forced a sale and made it public, including meeting with and drumming up interest from investors in AZ, which I argue is probably the best market for the team, followed closely by Houston as the second best option. AZ is a great market for sports right now given the large growing population, demographics, the rapid growth of sports gambling/media, and the coyote history here. It really took a lot of stupidity and mistakes in the NHL and AZ ownership to screw this up.