NY Post Larry Brooks: NHL Selling Out Fans - Not Games

[bling]

I'm not sure what kind of teams you are referring to re: lack of desire to ice a competitive team. Again, you're equating payroll to desire, when in fact, a team's payroll pre-lockout was directly tied to the team's revenues, which was dependant upon market demographics. The fact that Rangers spent more than Buffalo on payroll had nothing at all to do with the owner's "desire to ice a competitive team" or an ability to "manage [the team] properly." New York's higher payroll was almost exclusively a result of its massive revenues as a result of its incredibly large market and immensely wealthy fanbase.

If Buffalo had spent as much as the Rangers on payroll, rather than "managing [the team] properly," Buffalo would have been committing financial suicide. Even if Buffalo were to win the cup each and every year pre-lockout, its revenues would not come close to supporting Rangers-level payroll.

In short, your conclusion that "poor management is the biggest factor in the lack of success of any given team" is absolutely wrong if by "success" you mean profit.

I am referencing teams that were/are unwilling to pay for a competive team. Chicago comes to mind as a fine example of incompetence that was rewarded by the new CBA.

 

[Timmy]

I am referencing teams that were/are unwilling to pay for a competive team. Chicago comes to mind as a fine example of incompetence that was rewarded by the new CBA.

So any team that wasn't throwing gobs of money at players and jacking up the benchmarks was incompetent, while teams willing to spend $20 million on one forward line was competent?

Now I get it.

During the lockout, players said nobody was holding a gun to the owners head, and that nobody was forcing owners to pay ridiculous sums of money to players.

However, whenever an owner displayed this fiscal restraint, he was immediately branded incompetent, cheap, horrible, bad for the game, bad for the fans, and bad for the franchise.

 

[crashlanding]

You can create any comaparator to come up with a set of facts that will support any premise you chose.

To me the real issue is, rather than forcing a system of corporate welfare to shore up unprofitable businesses, those businesses should be sold to those willing to properly manage and fund them.

And who exactly will want to buy these unprofitable businesses?

Did you see the trouble that St. Louis was having finding an owner, you know the team that missed the playoffs for the first time in twenty-some odd years?

How about the Pens? Probably everyone's favorite for the cup five years from now.

Any owner gets into this business because they are highly competitive. However, at some point you run out of crazy people that are willing to lose millions year after year (only to have those losses increase year after year because of the inflation they helped cause) all for some silver cup and a small amount of recognition. I probably know the owners of maybe five teams in the league, the average fan just doesn't care.

However, with a salary cap in place and cost certainty owning a successful NHL team doesn't have to be a money-pit anymore. The system actually forces teams like the Rangers and the Avs to make money, when they weren't before. Boo-freakin'-hoo.

Actually having an on paper loss of $1.1 million when you are/were #6 on the list of highest valued teams hardly equates to losing money hand over fist.

When you've maximized your revenues by selling out every game AND winning a playoff series and you're still in the red, that doesn't spell success to me.

Just because Dolan and the Avs owner doesn't mind losing money year in and year out doesn't mean that the other 28 owners should have to to compete for free agents.

 

[crashlanding]

So any team that wasn't throwing gobs of money at players and jacking up the benchmarks was incompetent, while teams willing to spend $20 million on one forward line was competent?

Now I get it.

During the lockout, players said nobody was holding a gun to the owners head, and that nobody was forcing owners to pay ridiculous sums of money to players.

However, whenever an owner displayed this fiscal restraint, he was immediately branded incompetent, cheap, horrible, bad for the game, bad for the fans, and bad for the franchise.

It's also the GMs' own fault for financing the players for the lockout with ridiculous contracts. If salaries didn't get so out of hand, do you think the players would have been willing to prepare themselves for a 2-year work stoppage? They had been given so much in the past they had less to lose themselves. I'm sure what they weren't counting on was a year off was a year without losses for most of the owners and that didn't put too much pressure on them getting the season started back up.

 

[crashlanding]

I am referencing teams that were/are unwilling to pay for a competive team. Chicago comes to mind as a fine example of incompetence that was rewarded by the new CBA.

Chicago isn't eligible for revenue sharing, I have no idea why you think they're getting "rewarded."

 

[ColoradoHockeyFan]

The system actually forces teams like the Rangers and the Avs to make money, when they weren't before. Boo-freakin'-hoo.

Just because Dolan and the Avs owner doesn't mind losing money year in and year out

I'm not debating the overall point (I was very much in favor of a cap, and I remain in favor of it). But can we please stop lumping the Avs in with the Rangers and characterizing them as some band of fools that was unproductive and constantly hemorrhaging money?

 

[Timmy]

I'm not debating the overall point (I was very much in favor of a cap, and I remain in favor of it). But can we please stop lumping the Avs in with the Rangers and characterizing them as some band of fools that was unproductive and constantly hemorrhaging money?

We have to, because they're Bling's team.

If you'd like, you can go tell Vancouver_2010 that the Canucks suck.

 

[bling]

We have to, because they're Bling's team.

If you'd like, you can go tell Vancouver_2010 that the Canucks suck.

It seems you are taking this a little too personally, Timmy..

 

[bling]

Chicago isn't eligible for revenue sharing, I have no idea why you think they're getting "rewarded."

They are being rewarded for years of negligence by being able to sit back and grab up the players that the good teams have to release due to salary cap issues.

 

[ColoradoHockeyFan]

We have to, because they're Bling's team.

Surely there are better examples of teams that were hemorrhaging money. Like teams that actually were hemorrhaging money.

 

[burstgreen]

I am referencing teams that were/are unwilling to pay for a competive team. Chicago comes to mind as a fine example of incompetence that was rewarded by the new CBA.

As mentioned by someone above, Chicago does not get revenue sharing.

So let's see, your definition of "good management" is management with the "desire to ice a competitive team," by which you mean management willing to fork out a high payroll. So if a team didn't have a high payroll, it wasn't being managed well.

Your business sense is absolutely backwards. For the vast majority of teams in the NHL, a high payroll meant massive losses, even if the team made the playoffs and did well, which means that rather than "good management," forking out a massive payroll would have actually been horrible management.

"Desire to ice a competitive team," as you define that phrase, was equivalent to business suicide.

They are being rewarded for years of negligence by being able to sit back and grab up the players that the good teams have to release due to salary cap issues.

That was the exact problem under the old system, except even moreso. Teams with naturally large revenues because of their markets were being rewarded for years of negligence by being able to sit back and grab up the players that the good teams had to release due to revenue issues.

 

[crashlanding]

I'm not debating the overall point (I was very much in favor of a cap, and I remain in favor of it). But can we please stop lumping the Avs in with the Rangers and characterizing them as some band of fools that was unproductive and constantly hemorrhaging money?

They are two very successful teams in terms of revenue. Good tv deals, packed houses. Now while the Rangers success doesn't match the Avs, both teams lost money.

Let's say you're a mega-rich potential owner, when you see the top grossing teams lose money, does becoming an NHL owner still interest you?

Under the new CBA, the teams that generate the most revenue are now tremendously successful and the teams that generate the least now have toned down losses. This makes becoming an NHL owner more attractive and will increase franchise values.

I just feel that most people's "lockout + salary cap = lower ticket prices" dreams have been unfairly placed on Bettman's shoulders. I'm no fan of Bettman overall but he never said "the point of the lockout is to make the game more affordable to the fan." He's too smart of a man, and one with too little power to do that. He knows that dictating ticket prices to his owners is out of bounds.

 

[GKJ]

If only people knew this before the lockout...



Very few people didn't want on the pro-owner gravy train.

 

[crashlanding]

They are being rewarded for years of negligence by being able to sit back and grab up the players that the good teams have to release due to salary cap issues.

Oh I see, you're only mad at Bettman because your team isn't the one that can scoop up the players that had to be released due to salary issues. Remember when Colorado grabbed Kariya because the Ducks refused to pay him his 10M option? The Ducks went to the SCF, were they not a "good team?"

 

[crashlanding]

If only people knew this before the lockout...



Very few people didn't want on the pro-owner gravy train.

Brooks is one of them, he's been writing the same article for a few years now.

 

[bling]

As mentioned by someone above, Chicago does not get revenue sharing.

So let's see, your definition of "good management" is management with the "desire to ice a competitive team," by which you mean management willing to fork out a high payroll. So if a team didn't have a high payroll, it wasn't being managed well.

Your business sense is absolutely backwards. For the vast majority of teams in the NHL, a high payroll meant massive losses, even if the team made the playoffs and did well, which means that rather than "good management," forking out a massive payroll would have actually been horrible management.

"Desire to ice a competitive team," as you define that phrase, was equivalent to business suicide.



That was the exact problem under the old system, except even moreso. Teams with naturally large revenues because of their markets were being rewarded for years of negligence by being able to sit back and grab up the players that the good teams had to release due to revenue issues.

That is a clever turnabout on my statement but it does not apply. Being able and willing to pay to ice a competitve team does not equate to "years of negligence". That is considered years of good management and a desire to provide your fans with a quality winning product.

 

[ColoradoHockeyFan]

They are two very successful teams in terms of revenue. Good tv deals, packed houses. Now while the Rangers success doesn't match the Avs, both teams lost money.

Let's say you're a mega-rich potential owner, when you see the top grossing teams lose money, does becoming an NHL owner still interest you?

Under the new CBA, the teams that generate the most revenue are now tremendously successful and the teams that generate the least now have toned down losses. This makes becoming an NHL owner more attractive and will increase franchise values.

I just feel that most people's "lockout + salary cap = lower ticket prices" dreams have been unfairly placed on Bettman's shoulders. I'm no fan of Bettman overall but he never said "the point of the lockout is to make the game more affordable to the fan." He's too smart of a man, and one with too little power to do that. He knows that dictating ticket prices to his owners is out of bounds.

I'm not in the anti-cap camp. You're preaching to the choir with me. I've made it abundantly clear (from day one) that I'm in favor of a cap. I don't know how to be any more clear. I was making one little comment about using the Avs as a prime example here with the Rangers. My only point here was that there is a major difference between the Avs and Rangers in terms of unproductive spending. There are surely better examples than the Avs to use to make this point, when a) their spending was for the most part extremely productive, and b) the quoted loss for the example year was a whopping $1.1 million (which probably doesn't even nearly meet the margin of error for this particular analysis).

 

[burstgreen]

That is a clever turnabout on my statement but it does not apply. Being able and willing to pay to ice a competitve team does not equate to "years of negligence". That is considered years of good management and a desire to provide your fans with a quality winning product.

Again, you equate "ability to pay" with "good management." That's absurd. The two are barely related. Ability to pay has much more to do with revenues, which have more to do with market demographics than "good management."

Without getting into arguments about particular teams, I would suggest that the reason that many pre-lockout teams spent so much money on free agents, thus killing profits for the league as a whole, was because those teams' drafting and development of young players was paid little attention. It did not take skill or "good management" to look at the free agent pool and throw money at it. Rather than good management, massive payouts to free agents was a sign of bad management for a number of teams.

 

[Timmy]

I'm not in the anti-cap camp. You're preaching to the choir with me. I've made it abundantly clear (from day one) that I'm in favor of a cap. I don't know how to be any more clear. I was making one little comment about using the Avs as a prime example here with the Rangers. My only point here was that there is a major difference between the Avs and Rangers in terms of unproductive spending. There are surely better examples than the Avs to use to make this point, when a) their spending was for the most part extremely productive, and b) the quoted loss for the example year was a whopping $1.1 million (which probably doesn't even nearly meet the margin of error for this particular analysis).

I still don't understand why you hate the cap so much.

 

[ColoradoHockeyFan]

I still don't understand why you hate the cap so much.

 

[bling]

Oh I see, you're only mad at Bettman because your team isn't the one that can scoop up the players that had to be released due to salary issues. Remember when Colorado grabbed Kariya because the Ducks refused to pay him his 10M option? The Ducks went to the SCF, were they not a "good team?"

Of course! Anyone who claims to support something that will hurt their team is being disingenuous.

I am actually not mad at anyone. I am only expressing my opinion on the issues being discussed here. I was not in favor of the salary cap and I do not believe it has been a good thing for my team and several other teams that were doing fine under the old system.

The Ducks did what they believed was the right thing and it was their choice to release Paul. Again, the keyword was choice. The new CBA takes away that choice for teams and forces the release of players by disallowing teams the choice of who they can sign.

 

[crashlanding]

I'm not in the anti-cap camp. You're preaching to the choir with me. I've made it abundantly clear (from day one) that I'm in favor of a cap. I don't know how to be any more clear. I was making one little comment about using the Avs as a prime example here with the Rangers. My only point here was that there is a major difference between the Avs and Rangers in terms of unproductive spending. There are surely better examples than the Avs to use to make this point, when a) their spending was for the most part extremely productive, and b) the quoted loss for the example year was a whopping $1.1 million (which probably doesn't even nearly meet the margin of error for this particular analysis).

The Rangers loss that year was 3.3M. The first part of my post was directed towards you, I understand that you're on board, the rest was just expanding on a point.

I just don't think it makes much difference, from a business standpoint, what success the Avs and the Rangers had on the ice. Both teams sold out every game, so it's not like the Rangers fans weren't showing up due to a poor product, both teams maximized their revenues while maximizing their payrolls.

Hell, I'm a NJ fan and the Devils don't come anywhere near the revenues of both those teams. But after 2000, I think, the Devils ownership was faced with two options. Spend beyond your means on players to keep pace, or enjoy your past success and become an average playoff team. Luckily for me, and other Devils fans, they chose to overspend. That lead to massive losses even when they won the cup in '03 (20M or something I believe). Some of that is due to player spending, the rest is due to a poor lease. However that's beside the point. In order for NJ to stay competitive with teams like Colorado and Detroit, that could have 70-80M payrolls and not lose that much money, they had to spend themselves into a 13M+ hole year after year.

You're right though, Detroit is a much better example than the Avs, in 2004 with a payroll of 80M they lost 16.4M.

 

[Timmy]

According to some people, in the new NHL it's more like

 

[Timmy]

You're right though, Detroit is a much better example than the Avs, in 2004 with a payroll of 80M they lost 16.4M.

That's a lot of pizzas.

 

[ColoradoHockeyFan]

Of course! Anyone who claims to support something that will hurt their team is being disingenuous.

Is this directed at me? I have supported a cap from day one. One could argue that the cap "hurt" my team (though I would argue that it just presents new challenges). But I'm not being disingenuous.