Color@do @v@l@nche said:
in Football Chelsea is buying "championships",so why not in hockey?
In Chelsea, do they spend tons to get the best players from every team they can? And has it hurt/how has it hurt the entertainment value of the game?
It must be like baseball....watching the Mets/Yankees/BoSox buy every star and leave the rest of th league with less excitment for the respective fans.
Or hockey (where once the Jets had Hawerchuk, the Sabres had LaFontaine, the Devils MacLean, the Caps Gartner/Dino, the Kings Gretzky, the Stars Dino/Gartner, the Isles Turgeon, the Wings Yzerman, the Blues Hull, Oilers Messier, etc.) where we have witnessed in the past ten years seven teams buying up or squeezing 80% of the (established!) elite talent out there; where Heatley and Gaborik are predestined on a course to wear Red in Detroit or Blue in Toronto (or the Rangers....same thing, really, except for the record) or to get nosebleeds in Colorado.
My point all throughout is that it is NOT about the money.
"Little" people think about money. The wealthy think of power. To be able to force the highest ratings and garner the highest attendance in all 29 venues outside their own (ald reap the financial reards) and to get the exclusive coverage ESPN provides the Uber Spenders is the goal.....NOT the money.
The ratings/seat sales/POWER yields the money on its own.
The best hockey was played 12-15 years ago. It wasn't because of the trap or the changes in the rules or even the expansion that the game has declined and popularity has waned.
The reason that the game was much more enjoyable back then was that on ANY given night, the two worst teams had players that people would want to see play in their venue. On any given night, th talent level of BOTH teams on the ice could b counted on to be at least exciting.
Give me a last place Penguins team with Mario playing a Devils team with Carpenter and Muller over the current Red Wings playing the Panthers ANY DAY. I think of hockey like a book: if I know how the book is going to turn out, I ain't buying it, so I'd like to see a gam in the same light.
30 teams, dispersed talent and home grown heroes that kids grow up watching. Tickets aren't inflated in price like Kirstey Alley in a chocolate shop, games are more entertaining and meaningful, playoff rounds more riviting, and GM's are more acountable for their drafting and trading.
If we keep going at the rate we are, only the top three of the seven guilty spenders will be able to afford the best, leaving an elite group, a competitive group and filler/fodder in the other 20+ teams that can no longer to afford to keep their players IF THEY GET TOO GOOD before their contracts are up. There will be 10% great games, maybe 15-25% good games and the rest filler.
Networks will not pay, fans will have to pay more to view at home or live, coverage will shrink, teams will fold and the game will implode.
We watched it happen to all sectors of business, through the monopolies of the past century, through the rows of the grocery store and independant shops that were cut down by corporate sprawl. Demand shaped by planning and used as a spear on competition.
Options get limited, people financially cut off from enjoying it or forced to pay high rates.
My point is simply that the system now benefits the players and the owners who want to shape their market share and can do so. The system will kill the league or cripple it enough to destroy the quality of the games played. Eventually.
The only way for expenses to go now is up.
Heavily taxing the fat cat big teams who spend so wrecklessly will allow the smaller teams to field a quality product to make games, ALL GAMES, more entertaining, for the last place teams on up to the division leaders.
So in essence, this whole thing is about either the players wanting more and more money every year or it's about the monopolization of talent and domineering of the market and revenue by a select few teams at the expense of the fans, the league and the game.
So ask yourself:
Stevie Y vs. Mario
1988 Penguins vs. 1988 Red Wings or 2004 Penguins vs. 2004 Red Wings?
Cus after the summer of 1988, Gretzky got bought by McNall and players began to get bought and sold like commodities and the word team got soiled by the term "free agency" and the disgusting coinage "salary dump" every year since.
And the game has never been the same. Hopefully it can be again.
We need heroes, not heroes for hire.
That's why I don't support the owners or the players or anyone involved in this decaying game right now. I want better hockey than what was provided and refuse to stand behind anyone who has shown me the trap, bought a team or held out for more money because $X million wasn't enough to play in front of me and my $60+ seat.
You keep the abusers from raising salaries, you keep the expenses of fielding a team down and allow 30 teams to get as good as their management will allow them (meaning the Islanders will go nowhere, but I can stomach watching them play the Panthers/Penguins/'Canes).