How should the NHL address its myriad of problems?

[The Czech Republic 0]

I conceived the idea for this post this morning, and had planned a big formal essay on the rise and fall of the NHL through the 80s and 90s, but it's late and I'm tired, so I simply can't put together a nice slick post, and for this I apologize.

 

Basically, what I intended to say was that over the years, the NHL has fallen from a competitive to a distant fourth in terms of major league sports popularity, with debatable sports like golf and NASCAR nipping at its heels. Either despite or as a result of expansion and mainstreaming of hockey by Gary Bettman and the rest of the league, the NHL seems to be not succeeding but faltering in many regards.

 

The NHL television contract, which is small change compared to the other three leagues, expires after this year, as does the collective bargaining agreement, ostensibly resulting in another lockout. Even less exposure, in addition to labor unrest, is once again jeopardizing the league's future. Hopefully, the new WHA will fill the void in more ways than one: providing major-league hockey to compete with the trap-happy NHL, and restoring classic NHL markets that were deemed not viable by Gary Bettman.

 

Add in the fact that merchandise sales are not where they should be. Conversely, we can argue that due to being mostly gaudy and expensive, sweater sales are exactly where they should be. The NHL is trying to bolster jersey sales at the expense of tradition, a tactic which evidently most of us cannot see working.

 

Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but there doesn't seem to be a star player in the NHL the way baseball has Bonds and Sosa, NBA has Kobe and Shaq, and the NFL has Favre and Urlacher and others. Of course there won't be another Wayne Gretzky. But we need someone to be an ambassador for the sport, to achieve widespread popularity and respect. Many of the popular teams like Detroit and New York are focused on stars of the past. With Patrick Roy, Mike Richter, Kirk Muller, and Doug Gilmour all recently retiring, the players from the 80s and 90s, the league's better days, are slowly being phased out. But back on track, there's no player that represents hockey right now. Our talent pool is large but shallow, if that makes sense.

 

There's a lot more to say, and I'll leave that to the rest of you, because I'm tired. I apologize for a disjointed mess in lieu of a polished essay (I'm actually getting the gears spinning on a paper for econ regarding the NHL's economic systems and marketing problems), but hopefully our discussion can salvage this. I'll leave with these quotations regarding management and league quality:

 

"I sympathize with the hockey players, because they bust their ass, give you good return on your money, and legitimately love what they're doing . . . and that new commissioner Gary Bettman seems like some sort of Napoleonic creep." -Dennis Miller in 1994 regarding the lockout

 

"Who would pay to watch this?" -Brett Hull regarding the NHL's quality of play

[treble 0]

Brett Hull should be in charge of the league.

 

The NHL television contract, which is small change compared to the other three leagues, expires after this year, as does the collective bargaining agreement, ostensibly resulting in another lockout. Even less exposure, in addition to labor unrest, is once again jeopardizing the league's future. Hopefully, the new WHA will fill the void in more ways than one: providing major-league hockey to compete with the trap-happy NHL, and restoring classic NHL markets that were deemed not viable by Gary Bettman.

I'm really not that optimistic about the WHA, as it seems to have a sort of 'XFL' air about it. Tweaking the rules a little bit is fine, but tweak them too much and the game ceases to be hockey and becomes something totally different. I realize that Bobby Hull isn't going to radically change the game, but you walk a fine line when it comes to changing rules.

 

Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but there doesn't seem to be a star player in the NHL the way baseball has Bonds and Sosa, NBA has Kobe and Shaq, and the NFL has Favre and Urlacher and others. Of course there won't be another Wayne Gretzky. But we need someone to be an ambassador for the sport, to achieve widespread popularity and respect. Many of the popular teams like Detroit and New York are focused on stars of the past. With Patrick Roy, Mike Richter, Kirk Muller, and Doug Gilmour all recently retiring, the players from the 80s and 90s, the league's better days, are slowly being phased out. But back on track, there's no player that represents hockey right now. Our talent pool is large but shallow, if that makes sense.

Well, Giguere became something of a star during last year's playoff run, so if I were the NHL's marketing machine, I'd be pimping the hell out of him. Put lots of Anaheim games on ABC during the regular season (well, as often as ABC shows games, at least), put him in commercials for the league, put his face EVERYWHERE, and just hope that he has a good year this year and can handle the pressure he'll be under.

 

The main problem is, the most successful teams today play the trap (and Lou Lamereillo doesn't care about selling the game at all, all he cares about is winning, which you really can't fault him for, but I think that there should be some effort by management to make the game exciting for the customers. I mean, look at the Devils attendance, and they're one of the most successful teams in the league over the past decade). That means you're going to see boring hockey, more than likely, during the league's most important games. I think all this talk about goalies' equipment being too big is a waste. It's not goals that are exciting, it's scoring chances. Usually, a 10-1 game really isn't going to be that exciting, while a 1-0 or 2-1 game has the potential to be one of the best games of the year. Personally, I'd rather see 2 goalies make big save after big save than to see them act like sieves, letting in shot after shot.

 

Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but I just can't see there being a lengthy lockout. I know the owners want a salary cap, but I think that no hockey for a year (or maybe even longer) will cause much more damage than continuing under the current CBA (or something similar, at least) would ever do.

[MrRant 0]

Well with all the teams migrating to the US, I think some of the problem is that there aren't any superstar American players to be honest.

 

Sad?

 

Yes, but true. Bob in Atlanta is going to probably have a harder time getting behind someone named Solavinksi from Romania then a guy named Jackson from Iowa.

[The Czech Republic 0]

In regards to the eternal debate of high score vs. low score:

 

Both have their merits, but I don't want to see one or the other all the time. A low-scoring game in which the goaltenders are standing on their heads fending off all sorts of scoring opportunities for the better part of sixty minutes is entertaining. Watching endless stalling in the neutral zone after a fluke goal is not. Watching the best snipers in the league send the puck into the net time after time on both teams is entertaining. Watching the goaltenders slack off and just let everything in like a sieve as you said, is not.

 

I'm not a Typical American High-Score Junkie, I can appreciate a 0-0 tie forty-five minutes into the game. But I'm not going to "mark out for the trap" like Bob Barron. Seriously, that's weird:

::June, 1995, Bob and others are watching the Devils bore their way to the Cup::

(bored by Jersey's trap) "What is this? They're not doing anything. This game sucks."

(transfixed to the screen) "HOLY CRAP, GUYS.....HOOOOOO-LY CRAP!"

 

In regard to the WHA being XFL-like, they should learn from Vince's mistakes and simply make small changes and nothing too radical. Keep it at five skaters, play on regular or international ice, I don't care, but no touch-free icing. And don't rely on goons and marketing the players, or gimmicked camera angles, and so forth. If they can give us a product with quality akin to the 1980s NHL, or even the early 90s, I'll be happy.

 

I don't know where I stand on the salary cap. We need a happy medium between the NHL and NFL. Even though I'm not crazy about the same few teams running everything, it gets hard for me to follow the NFL because everything is just too ebb-and-flow with teams.

 

In conclusion, fuck the Devils.

[treble 0]

Bob in Atlanta is going to probably have a harder time getting behind someone named Solavinksi from Romania then a guy named Jackson from Iowa.

Yeah, but then you have players like Ichiro and Yao Ming in other sports coming in and being huge fan favourites, so I don't know how much water that theory holds.

[The Czech Republic 0]

Bob in Atlanta is going to probably have a harder time getting behind someone named Solavinksi from Romania then a guy named Jackson from Iowa.

Yeah, but then you have players like Ichiro and Yao Ming in other sports coming in and being huge fan favourites, so I don't know how much water that theory holds.

I'd base it on how well a typical ignorant American can locate the country of origin.

China? Yes.

Japan? Sure.

Slovenia? Good luck.

Estonia? Gotta be kidding me.

 

Russia is the exception, but they're inaccessible because their names are so freaking hard, and still to this day, some people "don't like those Commies."

[MrRant 0]

Bob in Atlanta is going to probably have a harder time getting behind someone named Solavinksi from Romania then a guy named Jackson from Iowa.

Yeah, but then you have players like Ichiro and Yao Ming in other sports coming in and being huge fan favourites, so I don't know how much water that theory holds.

They are oddities in a sea of American players (excluding Cubans, etc which are still a minority and most fans probably don't know that they are from other countries anyways). Compare that to a sport of probably 85-90% non Americans.

[the max 0]

NEW YORK (AP) - NHL teams posted record losses of nearly $300 million US last season, according to figures distributed to owners this summer.

 

That was an increase of 35 per cent from the $218 million in operating losses incurred by the league last year.

 

The losses are blamed on soaring player salaries. Without a salary cap, the NHL spent 76 per cent of $1.93 billion in revenue on players salaries and benefits. That is a greater percentage than in the NBA, NFL or major league baseball.

 

"This is a level at which no business can survive," Bill Daly, the NHL's chief legal officer, told the Wall Street Journal in an article about league finances. "The league will lose teams and players will lose jobs if we can't fix this."

 

The NHL would not comment further to The Associated Press.

 

The league will seek what commissioner Gary Bettman calls "cost certainty," in bargaining a new collective agreement with its players' association. The current deal expires in September 2004 and there are expectations that negotiations will be stormy, possibly resulting in a strike or lockout.

 

The NHL locked out players for 103 days in 1994 and reportedly has assembled a $300-million war chest as it prepares for contract talks.

 

That's part of their problem.

 

Part of it is signing these European players who just come over here for the money, who have no desire to stay here as a valued member of a club (glares at Marian Gaborik). If they see that they are not going to get the money that they want, they threaten to play in the Elite Leagues, which offers them the chance to stay at home with their family (Gaborik is engaged, so he stays home with his fiance, plays hockey with fellow countrymen, and gets paid. He doesn't have to deal with the craziness of the media over here, and the rabid hockey fans aren't going to Trencin, Slovakia to heckle him). Maybe some kind of deal can be reached with the Elite Leagues that if a player plays in the NHL for any team, he has to wait a year before going to play over there or something. That way, players will think about it before accepting a contract. I mean, FFS, he had an incentive laden contract that earned him close to 10 million over 3 years, but Doug Risebrough "wants a good team, not a good player."

 

Another problem, and I said this in the thread we did right after the playoffs, is the marketing (or lack thereof) that they do for a lot of their players. For instance, ESPN and ABC routinely feature games with Colorado, Detroit, Dallas and St. Louis, most often against another big market team...and the ratings aren't really there. What the NHL is doing, and needs to stop, is they are marketing the older players over the young future stars. Last year, for example, they routinely featured Patrick Roy on ESPN telecasts, when it was known that he was probably going to retire. I have no problem with that, but it falls under the category of "If you're leaving, put someone over". What would have been the problem with airing, say, Colorado v. Tampa or Colorado v. Atlanta(!)? They have a major problem with marketing the smaller teams. They finally jumped on the Minnesota Wild bandwagon with only a few weeks left in the season. It's things like that that can jump up and bite them on the ass, because it asks the question "Why weren't you covering them before? Now you look stupid."

 

They have the stars that are needed to jump start the league. Part of the problem is that money is being thrown around too much by teams that have it, that the teams that don't have the money, can't afford their star players. For instance, Jaromir Jagr gets 11 million dollars. Paul Kariya made 10 million in Anaheim. This sets a bar that players that have ONE good year (glares at Marty Turco) think that they have jumped over, and demand a certain amount of money, or the team will not get their services. Holdouts REALLY piss me off, especially when a player says that he feels 'insulted' by the teams offer of 3 years, 9 million or something like that. Gosh, I wish that I could be insulted to be paid 3 million dollars to play a fucking game. Players that holdout should be punished by being forced to sit out for any amount of time, without pay.

 

The thing that sucks is that I know there is going to be a work stoppage. And with that work stoppage, the NHL is going to lose some of its best players; Peter Forsberg, Joe Sakic, Jeremy Roenick, BRETT HULL, Steve Yzerman, and many others, will walk. It's too bad that both sides are to blame for this, and we fans, who support them by tuning in, buying 80 dollar hockey sweaters, and going to games whenever we can afford to, get fucked by this. Fuck Gary Bettman.

[nl5xsk1 0]

As much of a hockey fan as I am, I don't think that it will ever reach the level of appeal that basketball, football, or baseball. There are a few reasons for this ...

 

1) Too many non-Americans ... with the dominance of French-Canadians, and the influx of players from the former Soviet countries, there are just too many players with hard to pronounce names for the average fan. Just look at Atlanta, Heatley gets a ton more press than Kovalchuk, even though more people think Ilya is going to be the bigger star. Baseball might have a large number of Latino players, but a name like "Martinez" or "Ramirez" is much more common in American society than "Samsonov".

 

2) Too regional-ized ... fans in New Mexico, or Nebraska, or Mississippi, won't want to sit down and spend three hours watching too random teams play a game, the way they would with a football or baseball game. Hockey has historically been more popular in certain regions (Michigan, Minnesota, New England, etc)

 

3) Too ignored by ESPN ... just try and watch for hockey highlights on an episode of Sportscenter. You get maybe 2-3 minutes, and not until about 25-35 minutes into the hour. You get basketball highlights, golf, NASCAR, and either football/baseball (depending on the time of the year) before you get any mention of a hockey game. And can anyone tell me what night was "National Hockey Night" last year on ESPN? It was Wednesday 2 seasons ago, but when ESPN got the NBA they switched it, and only played on random nights. Their reason was that "too many games turned off the audience, so we didn't want to saturate the market" ... but why play baseball 5 nights a week, multiple games a night?!?

 

4) Boring rules ... cut down on the hooking, clutching, interference and let the players play. Cut down on the instigator rules and let the players police themselves. Stop this "the goalies are untouchable" when they leave crap, and they won't leave the net 30 times a game to play the puck. It's a beautiful game when it's played right, let's let them play it right.

 

5) Gary Bettman ... his grandiose intentions of making another NBA has been a horrible blow to the league. There's too many teams, too many teams in the WRONG places. Too many stupid innovations to "help" the game. Too many rule changes. It's driven off the old time fan without attracting the casual one.

 

There's a ton of other things, but I think I've ranted too long already.

[MrRant 0]

Replica Jerseys because Authentic in any sport is outrageous. From ESPN.com's TeamStore.

 

MLB Replica Jersey - $79.99 - FOR A FREAKING PIRATES JERSEY~!

NFL Replica Jersey - $65-70.00

NBA Replica Jersey - $55-69.99

NHL Replica Jersey - $89.99

 

See anything wrong with that picture?

 

I'd like to get an NHL Jersey but with prices like that with tax it's like a hundred bucks.

 

Edit: Shit... at HockeyMonkey.com if you order say the Maple Leafs jersey for $55 US you get ALL THREE versions. Home, Away and Alternate. Sweet deal. I may get my little girl the Canucks for toddlers or the NY Islanders.

Edited September 21, 2003 by MrRant