Geoff Ward... Keep him or find someone else?

[Anglesmith]

Another proof that BT really doesn't know what the hell he is doing.

It would appear that ownership has them sorting by price: lowest to highest.

 

[Tkachuk Norris]

It would appear that ownership has them sorting by price: lowest to highest.

the funny thing is that Brian Burke stated one extra home playoff game can make 3 million dollars. That literally pays the bill.

gotta spend money to make money... novel concept

actually 20000 seats at 200 bucks is 4 mil revenue and I bet the average playoff seat is more than 200 in Calgary.

 

[Anglesmith]

the funny thing is that Brian Burke stated one extra home playoff game can make 3 million dollars. That literally pays the bill.

gotta spend money to make money... novel concept

actually 20000 seats at 200 bucks is 4 mil revenue and I bet the average playoff seat is more than 200 in Calgary.

You have to subtract operating costs... how sure is Burke of that number? And was he talking revenue or profit?

 

[stickty111]

Leafs fan here.

Tough game 6 but good season for you guys.
Unlikely you guys would choose Babcock, but if any one of you were considering him, don't.
I posted this on 2 other team boards.

Stay away from.Babcock. The guy is incredible overrated. He is one of the worst in game coaches in the league. Just watch the Leafs Bruins series last 2 years. Cassidy skated circles around him. He rarely changes lines except for in extreme situations, and loves his grinders.
For someone who is haralded as a great systems coach and defensive idiologies, the Leafs were always awful defensively under him, and funny enough improved defensively when Keefe came on.
If you want somewhat of a motivational guy, sure get him, but if your looking for an actual coach, stay away from him.

I will leave you with this.
Babcock played a washed up useless Marleau more then Matthews in a game 7 in the 3rd period.

 

[Fig]

Leafs fan here.

Tough game 6 but good season for you guys.
Unlikely you guys would choose Babcock, but if any one of you were considering him, don't.
I posted this on 2 other team boards.

Thanks for the heads up, but I don't think Babcock was ever a finalist here due to the fact his protege Peters unceremoniously ended up in Russia.

 

[Tkachuk Norris]

You have to subtract operating costs... how sure is Burke of that number? And was he talking revenue or profit?

well there is also concessions. 3-4 million would be minimum profit IMO. No way operating costs for additional games are more than a million per game.

regardless, the point stands. Pretty sure the Caps regret not paying Trotz right now

 

[stickty111]

Thanks for the heads up, but I don't think Babcock was ever a finalist here due to the fact his protege Peters unceremoniously ended up in Russia.

Thats true. Honestly if you look at the people that came from Babcock's coaching tree, none of them are good.
Peters, Blashill, Mclellan, Maclean, etc...

 

[Flames Fanatic]

well there is also concessions. 3-4 million would be minimum profit IMO. No way operating costs for additional games are more than a million per game.

regardless, the point stands. Pretty sure the Caps regret not paying Trotz right now

The Athletic says 1.5-3 million in Revenue, not profit, from home games for what it's worth.

 

[Tkachuk Norris]

The Athletic says 1.5-3 million in Revenue, not profit, from home games for what it's worth.

playoffs games? The math just doesn’t add up though. Like I said 200 bucks x 20000 seats is 4 million. Plus beers, food and merch (and potentially parking if the team owns that)

I think 1.5-3 million would make sense for a regular season game when ticket prices are lower,

 

[Flames Fanatic]

playoffs games? The math just doesn’t add up though. Like I said 200 bucks x 20000 seats is 4 million. Plus beers, food and merch (and potentially parking if the team owns that)

I think 1.5-3 million would make sense for a regular season game when ticket prices are lower,

Could very well be. I was just going off google results lol.

 

[Anglesmith]

playoffs games? The math just doesn’t add up though. Like I said 200 bucks x 20000 seats is 4 million. Plus beers, food and merch (and potentially parking if the team owns that)

I think 1.5-3 million would make sense for a regular season game when ticket prices are lower,

But do you have an idea of the number of staff required and their compensation? What about power and other resources? To me, that's a huge mystery. Also, do concessions divert all profits to the owners, or do they just take a cut?

As you say, the decisions to pinch pennies on coaches wouldn't make any sense for any franchise if the reward was that substantial. So that's why I'm skeptical.

 

[Fig]

But do you have an idea of the number of staff required and their compensation? What about power and other resources? To me, that's a huge mystery. Also, do concessions divert all profits to the owners, or do they just take a cut?

As you say, the decisions to pinch pennies on coaches wouldn't make any sense for any franchise if the reward was that substantial. So that's why I'm skeptical.

If I had to venture a guess...

Coronavirus: NHL players and teams pledge to pay arena workers impacted by league's hiatus due to COVID-19

TML info shows 4000 event workers. Let's pretend it's on average 10 hours at $20 per hour overall "average". It's less than 1M for employee compensation an evening. There's other operating costs, but I cannot imagine it's more than $500K.... but let's conservatively say $2MM of the $4MM is net income. 4 games of playoffs is quite a bit of profit assuming the regular season profits have paid off all the fixed cost bills.


I just think it's hilariously ironic that there's some posters who think that Treliving should be fired if he cannot get a good coach. The irony is that the owners haven't OK'd the budget and hiring BB/GG/Lavi against their wishes IS the fire-able offense, not promoting Ward to full time HC.

The other is the arguments about no 1C and major hole on RW being an example of Treliving's failure. Sam Bennett isn't that guy, but the team should have tried to properly rebuild in 2015 rather than have playoff mandates. Plenty of 1C and RW and RHS in that 2015 draft.

I've argued vehemently that Treliving is a really good GM who is in a bad situation and also having to take credit for failures due to ownership restrictions that are straight up kind of ridiculous. IMO Ward is kinda the same. He is a surprisingly good coach (newbie head coach let's not forget) who was dealt a bad hand (huge off ice distraction, no training camp, mid season change etc.) and he ended off with a decent record. He even showed that he was very willing to make changes to his overall strategy in the playoffs several times and also showed he had some new ideas that even a crazy idea person like me was blown away by. His line blending often was considered a positive rather than dumb line blender situations per Peters. That's actually kinda surprising. Fundamentally, Ward's system seems to theoretically seem sound (ie: Gully and Peters vs Hartley), but his in game seems to be much stronger than both Gully and Peters, but not as good as a guy like Hartley and Sutter. That's pretty darn good for a guy who is a rookie head coach.

If this was a typical season where Lavi/BB and GG weren't on the market, I'd be fine keeping Ward, but since those guys are on the market, I'd want to try and nab one. If we end up with Ward as HC, I think it should be obvious that Treliving was basically given no choice by ownership. Anyone using it as evidence for his head should give his/her head a shake because it's obviously out of his control and not technically his choice. IIRC, hiring Peters needed special approval for his salary and it was rumored that Peter's salary was around 1.5MM.

 

[User1996]

I think you have to bring in someone else at this point with some pedigree. You can’t keep doing what hasn’t been working and expect different results.

Maybe if this was a bottom team in rebuild mode I’d say let Ward grow with the team. Not time for that though.

 

[Ace Rimmer]

If we want an uneducated but reasonable guess on concession revenue, figure average $25 per person spent (low? two beers, nachos) with 35% overhead. (high estimate)

$25 x 20,000 = $500,000
Less overhead ($175,000)
Per game profit = $325,000

Never mind revenue from merchandise costs, inflated ticket prices, or parking. Also team share of network revenue, and board advertising.

$3 million profit per game is definitely reasonable.

 

[Fig]

If we want an uneducated but reasonable guess on concession revenue, figure average $25 per person spent (low? two beers, nachos) with 35% overhead. (high estimate)

$25 x 20,000 = $500,000
Less overhead ($175,000)
Per game profit = $325,000

Never mind revenue from merchandise costs, inflated ticket prices, or parking. Also team share of network revenue, and board advertising.

$3 million profit per game is definitely reasonable.

I think the concession stuff is negligible overall. It's like fight night at a pub. They're probably making far more on cover than drinks and food.

 

[FlamerForLife]

 

[Ace Rimmer]

I think the concession stuff is negligible overall. It's like fight night at a pub. They're probably making far more on cover than drinks and food.

No profit on $8 popcorn? On $9 beer? On $13 nachos?

K

 

[Fig]

No profit on $8 popcorn? On $9 beer? On $13 nachos?

K

No, I meant they're making maybe half a mil in profits on the concessions, but 3-4 times that in entrance fees. I guess that's still like 20% of the net profits and negligible was a bad word to use.

 

[Bounces R Way]

I'd just like a coach that can get the team to play with some level of consistency. This team has been on again off again for like 6 years. The highs are great but the lows come around too often. Gaudreau and Monahan especially.

Maybe Ward is that guy, I didn't mind some things he was doing. Tough to judge really on what was a very strange half season of coaching. He just seems a little too laissez faire about things for my liking. Probably would prefer Laviolette or Gallant, guys who coached a team to a final recently. Flames always cheap out on the coach though so Ward is probably ownership's preferred option.

 

[Fig]

I'd just like a coach that can get the team to play with some level of consistency. This team has been on again off again for like 6 years. The highs are great but the lows come around too often. Gaudreau and Monahan especially.

Maybe Ward is that guy, I didn't mind some things he was doing. Tough to judge really on what was a very strange half season of coaching. He just seems a little too laissez faire about things for my liking. Probably would prefer Laviolette or Gallant, guys who coached a team to a final recently. Flames always cheap out on the coach though so Ward is probably ownership's preferred option.

One of the underrated things that I seemed to notice was that his line blender stuff wasn't as heavily criticized by our fan base. I actually found it bizarre that many fans kept freaking out that Ward wasn't making adjustments, because he was making huge adjustments.

I know he's a players' coach who talks to the players and finds way to help them play well. He also gives players leash and doesn't seem to staple anyone to pine for singular mistakes. The players seem much more relaxed and if something bad happens, you can tell certain players go out looking for a pound of flesh and full on redemption.

He had no training camp, he had a huge off ice distraction, he was thrown into the fire mid season, he took the game plan from the season and tweaked it a ton for playoffs, with significantly more positive tweaks than bad tweaks (ie: Peters). I really disliked the last game against Dallas, but the more time has passed, that game was just straight up all sorts of weird bad luck. Both goalies, including his team MVP goalie for playoffs suddenly played like a pair of drunk beer leaguers. That's not totally on him.

I still really want one of BB/GG or Lavi, but Ward did definitely exceed my expectations by a lot and if it were any year other than this one with 3 super high profile guys available, I'd be more than happy to give Ward the reigns no questions asked.

 

[Zirakzigil]

playoffs games? The math just doesn’t add up though. Like I said 200 bucks x 20000 seats is 4 million. Plus beers, food and merch (and potentially parking if the team owns that)

I think 1.5-3 million would make sense for a regular season game when ticket prices are lower,

Parking is owned and done by the Calgary Stampede, they are getting zero from that. Ive heard multiple times over the years that each playoff home game brings in about 1mil in profits for owners.

 

[DFF]

One of the underrated things that I seemed to notice was that his line blender stuff wasn't as heavily criticized by our fan base. I actually found it bizarre that many fans kept freaking out that Ward wasn't making adjustments, because he was making huge adjustments.

I know he's a players' coach who talks to the players and finds way to help them play well. He also gives players leash and doesn't seem to staple anyone to pine for singular mistakes. The players seem much more relaxed and if something bad happens, you can tell certain players go out looking for a pound of flesh and full on redemption.

He had no training camp, he had a huge off ice distraction, he was thrown into the fire mid season, he took the game plan from the season and tweaked it a ton for playoffs, with significantly more positive tweaks than bad tweaks (ie: Peters). I really disliked the last game against Dallas, but the more time has passed, that game was just straight up all sorts of weird bad luck. Both goalies, including his team MVP goalie for playoffs suddenly played like a pair of drunk beer leaguers. That's not totally on him.

I still really want one of BB/GG or Lavi, but Ward did definitely exceed my expectations by a lot and if it were any year other than this one with 3 super high profile guys available, I'd be more than happy to give Ward the reigns no questions asked.

A player coach..have I heard that before...I thought that was a disaster for this group. They need a coach, not a friend

 

[Fig]

A player coach..have I heard that before...I thought that was a disaster for this group. They need a coach, not a friend

Yes, except GG was just a pure friend with dumb ideas square pegging round holes. Ward is listening to the players and making sure there aren't square peg round holes.

In theory GG was supposed to be great for player development. He was horrendous. We saw a ton of guys develop under Ward in huge ways and leaps rather than steps. We never saw that under GG, just a bunch of decently talented guys that started to look like they were tuning out the coach and doing their own thing.

Ward isn't the same level as GG or Peters IMO. He's higher, but not as high as GG/BB and Lavi.

 

[BudRobinson53]

While the players may like the lighter approach of Geoff Ward, I think they know this is not the way to get the team through multiple rounds of the playoffs.
They need a task master and as much as they seemed to dislike Peters his first season, they were 2nd overall in the West under his guidance.

Open the coffers and pay to have someone like a Gallant call Calgary home for the next 3 years, let's see how that goes!

 

[Anglesmith]

While the players may like the lighter approach of Geoff Ward, I think they know this is not the way to get the team through multiple rounds of the playoffs.
They need a task master and as much as they seemed to dislike Peters his first season, they were 2nd overall in the West under his guidance.

Open the coffers and pay to have someone like a Gallant call Calgary home for the next 3 years, let's see how that goes!

Believe it or not, they were top of the West, not second place.