Numerous times during the NHL’s ongoing lockout, Commissioner Gary Bettman has stated that the league’s owners are losing less money by keeping their doors shuttered than if they were to open for business. On Tuesday, two Boston-based firms – Bain Capital Partners LLC and Game Plan International – gave them a chance to exit the hockey business entirely, offering to purchase the entire National Hockey League for as much as $3.5 billion.

Such a scenario can only bode well for the sport’s devoted but ill-served fans. It is unclear at this point how the NHL’s prospective new owners would go about clearing up the league’s financial mess, but it has become eminently clear that the league’s current leadership is failing miserably.

Bettman has overseen a collapse of monumental proportions in the decade since the Rangers’ electrifying Stanley Cup win. Under the commissioner’s watch, the league has allowed the quality of the on-ice product to seriously deteriorate while ticket prices have skyrocketed.

Teams have been relocated from traditional hockey hotbeds and into Sunbelt cities with no natural fan base. The NHL has failed to market its super stars and missed out on valuable opportunities to introduce the sport to American children. All the while, television revenues have decreased exponentially, to the point where the critically panned Tilt represents a ratings boost for ESPN2 over National Hockey Night.

Yet the league’s owners continue to put their faith in Bettman’s vision for the future. Even if the Bain group is unsuccessful in its bid to purchase the league, its offer of 50 cents on the dollar should serve as a harsh wake-up call for the NHL.

If the new ownership group is successful with its bid, the first order of business will, of course, be a resolution to the lockout. This may necessitate the unilateral imposition of a new collective bargaining agreement, since the NHL Players Association has shown itself unwilling to take the sport’s long term interests into account.

Under the leadership of Bob Goodenow, the union has focused all its efforts on increasing the size of player paychecks, thereby speeding the league along its road to disaster. Throughout the 1990s, the players consistently played the owners against one another. For example, a feud between Detroit Red Wings owner Mike Ilitch and Carolina Hurricanes owner Peter Karmanos led to Sergei Fedorov earning $28 million in 1998 for playing just 21 regular-season games. Another feud between Ilitch and Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs led to grinder Martin Lapointe earning an unconscionable four-year, $20 million deal.

When the players walked away from the owners’ final offer two weeks ago, they virtually ensured that the league they return to will not be able to offer riches anywhere close to what they enjoyed previously. If the Bain group plays hardball with the union – and unilaterally imposes a $20-$25 million salary cap – the players will forever live to regret their decision, regardless of how “unfair” Bettman’s final offer might have been.

The new owners would also be wise to relocate struggling franchises to more traditional hockey markets or eliminate them entirely. Moving teams out of hockey outposts like Phoenix and Raleigh, N.C., and into hotbeds like Winnipeg and Hamilton could only help to rebuild the league’s rapidly dwindling fan base. Rather than insisting on maintaining all 30 existing franchises – a quixotic task that Bettman has foolishly undertaken – the Bain group would likely conclude instead that consolidation is the best way to maximize the value of the NHL.

The prospective ownership group could also wield unprecedented authority to resolve the game’s deepest crisis: the precipitous decline of its product. Andy Van Hellemond’s reign as the head of league officiating ended with a whimper when he was discovered to have taken inappropriate loans from his employees. As Van Hellemond oversaw the league’s ever-increasing failure to enforce its rulebook, the NHL game has devolved into a grinding, clutch-and-grab affair. Every effort must be made to restore the exciting, skillful game of yore.

Perhaps it is unreasonable to expect that all 30 owners would agree to sell their franchises; perhaps the Boston consortium won’t increase its bid enough to seal the deal. But the case remains that the status quo is doing the NHL no good whatsoever. The league’s leadership has failed in every meaningful way for a decade, and the best thing for all concerned parties would be a unilateral change.

Mr. Greenstein is the editor in chief of InsideHockey.com.