Buccigross talks to former Whalers owner -- very incriminating stuff about Goodenow

[dawgbone]

This kind of possessive attitude towards your "assets" is a sign of bad management IMO.

Bad management? How so? Hockey players, especially NHL calibre ones, are assets. They aren't parked on shelves where you can go pick one up at your local Wal-mart.

You acquire these players through the entry draft, free angency or trades. Through the entry draft, most players aren't ready for a couple of seasons anyways, and when you trade you are giving up 1 for 1 (basically). The only way you can add without losing, is through free agents. If there are only a handful of teams willing to cut a player lose, that isn't a viable market. Your choice is to either sign your guy to his 100, or 110% offer, or lose him and maybe pick up a far less valuable player as a free agent.

It simply doesn't work when only a few teams are doing it, and it really doesn't work when a handful of teams will jump all over any asset that gets let go.

The rich teams cannot just sign everybody due to roster limitations anyway,

So they let go of their pressbox guys (which everyone has), in order to pick up a 2nd liner who had a bad season.

Thanks.

and normally they are limited to only signing the young players that are deemed disappointments by their original teams, and the UFAs.

Wouldn't the players we were just talking about fall under the first category?

 

[myrocketsgotcracked]

Would not you say they are now paying for the mistake they made giving him $10mil salary in the first place?

oh they are paying for it now. but i dont know if it was a mistake at the time to sign kariya to that contract. remember, back then the ducks are a 2 men team, kariya and selanne. with both of them they are just barely making the playoff. if you let kariya (whos the one demanding the $10M contract i believe, its not like disney just go up to him and say "would you like to be pay $10/yr?") sit out, the result is a bottom feeding anaheim team. if you are the GM/owner, what would you do?
option 1-sign kariya, have the most dynamic duo in hockey, fill up the arena, make the playoff and keep people interested in hockey.
option 2-let kariya sit, be a one man team, half the arena is empty, not make the playoff, and let this non-hockey market die a slow death while your investment depreciate to the point where you have to sell it just to cut losses.
again, nobody points a gun to the owner's head to sign kariya at $10M/yr, but to me, he didnt have much of a choice.

 

[OlTimeHockey]

Kariya wanted out, had the leverage and used it. It's prefectly alright, IMHO, to rake the team and fans over coals in order to try your hardest to get out of the team named after Emilio Estevez's eternal nightmare.

And making ten million dollars is a must. No one can live on six or seven million anymore; what, with inflation worries and the price of coffe what it is today?


(sarcasm be noted)

 

[dawgbone]

And making ten million dollars is a must. No one can live on six or seven million anymore; what, with inflation worries and the price of coffe what it is today?

Don't forget Dog Food!

 

[shveik]

Bad management? How so? Hockey players, especially NHL calibre ones, are assets. They aren't parked on shelves where you can go pick one up at your local Wal-mart.

You acquire these players through the entry draft, free angency or trades. Through the entry draft, most players aren't ready for a couple of seasons anyways, and when you trade you are giving up 1 for 1 (basically). The only way you can add without losing, is through free agents. If there are only a handful of teams willing to cut a player lose, that isn't a viable market. Your choice is to either sign your guy to his 100, or 110% offer, or lose him and maybe pick up a far less valuable player as a free agent.

But that's the point, isn't it? You do have a choice. And the management *is* about choices like this.

The players are assets, but it is not only about the price you paid for them once, whether it is non-monetary (draft,trade), or monetary (signing bonus). It is also the price you have to pay to keep them. And you should not let the first price dictate your decisions about second. It is all about present and future, not the past. If it is about the past, it is bad management.

 

[Epsilon]

Kariya wanted out, had the leverage and used it. It's prefectly alright, IMHO, to rake the team and fans over coals in order to try your hardest to get out of the team named after Emilio Estevez's eternal nightmare.

And making ten million dollars is a must. No one can live on six or seven million anymore; what, with inflation worries and the price of coffe what it is today?


(sarcasm be noted)

I love how Kariya "raked the team over the coals" when they let him become a free agent by deciding his salary could be better spent elsewhere.

 

[degroat*]

I am sorry, but this "cost certainty" BS that we hear from the owners is one of the reasons I tend to side with players in this dispute. All they need to do is tell their GM: ok, Tom (Dick, Gary), you can spend 30million on player salaries, and not a cent more. How is that for cost certainty?

I am of perhaps an old-fashioned school of thought that how much you have determines what you can get. If the owners really could not pay the money, they would not have. Nobody is forcing them to pay, so I am quite annoyed when they are whining about it.

Why is it that you and so many other pro-PA people have such a hard time understanding that every other team is effected by what one team does?

 

[thinkwild]

Players eligible for 110% qualifying offers are making less than $1.8mil. So they are entitled to a maz raise of $180,000. Hardly back breaking. Hardly seems possible that is a major problem, especially since the players have agreed to lower the cap and start them off all half a million lower in salary from which they will start ot get their 10% QO's from.

What particlulary is the worse problem in arbitration decisions: that players are getting awards more than their comparables, or that the wrong players are being classified at a certain pay level. What if GMs had an option where if a majority agreed, they could veto a contract they find outrageous as ineligible for arbitration as an outlier. WHy not look for things like this to solve a specific problem?

It always sounds potentially terrible in the abstract, but using real situations where does the problem lie. Small market teams have established a lot of the comparables that big markets get to follow.

UFA's of course have no bearing. Hossa got a raise from $2mil to $3mil, despite what Holik made. Iginla wont get more than Holik. It has no bearing. And these players are not useful to building teams in buying their core. And the number of the top paid players in the final 4 each year has been countable on one hand recently.

When the Isles signed Yashin, they would of still been under a $35mil payroll cap. It could still happen under a cap, and then all owners will be forced to match it.

 

[Guest]

Players eligible for 110% qualifying offers are making less than $1.8mil. So they are entitled to a maz raise of $180,000. Hardly back breaking. Hardly seems possible that is a major problem, especially since the players have agreed to lower the cap and start them off all half a million lower in salary from which they will start ot get their 10% QO's from.

What particlulary is the worse problem in arbitration decisions: that players are getting awards more than their comparables, or that the wrong players are being classified at a certain pay level. What if GMs had an option where if a majority agreed, they could veto a contract they find outrageous as ineligible for arbitration as an outlier. WHy not look for things like this to solve a specific problem?

It always sounds potentially terrible in the abstract, but using real situations where does the problem lie. Small market teams have established a lot of the comparables that big markets get to follow.

UFA's of course have no bearing. Hossa got a raise from $2mil to $3mil, despite what Holik made. Iginla wont get more than Holik. It has no bearing. And these players are not useful to building teams in buying their core. And the number of the top paid players in the final 4 each year has been countable on one hand recently.

When the Isles signed Yashin, they would of still been under a $35mil payroll cap. It could still happen under a cap, and then all owners will be forced to match it.

To be a compareable, it needs to compare with the player in arbitration. The only players eligible for arbitration are something like 26-30 years old, so of course you can't compare them with 31 year old players who signed UFA contracts like Holik.

Arbitration is a fair way for many of the star players to get their star salaries. If you look at many of the larger awards were given to players who were on their game at the time. The downfall to it is that it is one sided, it's a way for only the players to increase their salaries because you wouldn't knowingly go into arbitration after a bad year unless you were truely committed to signing for the season. EJ Hradek of ESPN had a good point in his proposal, to make it so that the teams could also elect to take players to arbitration to lower salaries.

I don't see a problem with the qualifying offer increasing 10% until the league average, but I think it many cases having the 100% qualifying offer tends to give the player all the momentum. There have been only a few major cases where teams didn't make the qualifying offer and let a good player walk, but again it has done nothing to drag salaries down.

In the end, it's the owners fault, because they don't have to give out these high salaries that most can not afford. It's the league's fault for having the balance of the league so that only a minority of teams can afford the best players. It's the players fault only for taking the money and skating away. The players have the puck in their zone now, and if they are willing to cut jobs they can keep the higher overall salaries as the league will lose teams. If the players are willing to back off salary demands, then they will have to settle for more jobs at a lower rate of pay.

 

[shveik]

Why is it that you and so many other pro-PA people have such a hard time understanding that every other team is effected by what one team does?

The team is affected by what other team does. How do you argue with a general sweeping statement like that? In fact, it is so generalizing, there is nothing in it that would separate pro-owner or pro-player side. What separates one from another is the *degree* of that influence. And it's funny how the pro-owner side paints them like mindless lemmings following one another to death.

Are you saying that the teams in the NHL need to be protected from one another in the CBA? :lol They already have protections in place: each team has their market allocated to them, they have the players bound to the teams until they are 30, and the roster sizes are limited too. You want to put *more* restrictions in place that would protect teams to the point that the owner can install their Harvard flunkie nephews as GMs and sleep tight knowing they will still get their profit?