Tampa Bay wins the cup

I don't give a crap, honestly: if it isn't the Rangers, I don't care. But I thought I'd point out that one of the guys we were deriding as a midget several years ago---one Martin St. Louis formerly of UVM---will shortly (no pun intended) be drinking from Lord Stanley's Cup. How many of our players from '94-'98 can say that? Just food for thought.

Cheers,
Kyle

[Q]krose Wrote:

I don't give a crap, honestly: if it isn't the Rangers, I don't care. But I thought I'd point out that one of the guys we were deriding as a midget several years ago---one Martin St. Louis formerly of UVM---will shortly (no pun intended) be drinking from Lord Stanley's Cup. How many of our players from '94-'98 can say that? Just food for thought.

Cheers,
Kyle[/q]

Excluding those who took advantage of Joe Nieuwendyk bringing the Cup to Ithaca, one. Jason Elliott had his day with the Cup in 2002. Obviously, Martin St. Louis played a more central role for the Lightning than Elliott did for the Red Wings. Nevertheless, being able to take the Cup for a day is an unforgettable experience, especially for someone who has never played in a single NHL game.

It would have been nice for a Canadian team to win the last Cup of the pre-contraction era.

I think it's fitting that a team with no fans won the Cup. I personally hope the NHL goes bankrupt, and some of the older teams with fans form a new, smaller league (12 teams or so) and just leave it at that. I hate watching the Rangers play and lose to teams whose names I don't even recognize, and apparently whose home cities are full of people who also don't recognize them.

Cheers,
Kyle

Yeah, but our players from 94-98 have two Whitelaws that St. Loius will never get... Heh-heh-heh...

Chill out Kyle. Tampa Bay was 12th in the league in attendance during the regular season, only about 200 fans per game behind your beloved Rangers. And about 1200 fans per game more than Calgary.

Yep, and when they start losing (as inevitably they will), all those fans will jump right off the bandwagon.

And you almost made my point: my Rangers had 200 fans more per game during a multi-season "so bad we're missing the NHL playoffs, which 60% of the teams in the league make" skid.

So I will not chill out: overexpansion has killed the NHL, both for the teams involved by thinning the talent pool and for the fans who have to endure games full of goons who can't skate, dribble, or shoot against teams that don't matter one whit. And I say: good riddance. It would be great IMO if everyone involved simply accepted the fact that hockey won't appeal to just everyone, and bring the game back to a point where real fans can enjoy it. North American hockey is long overdue for demanufacture.

Cheers,
Kyle

I don't think the talent pool is thinning significantly, Kyle. The fact that the league has expanded and is reaching new markets undoubtedly increases the net size of the talent pool as talent is being found in previously untapped areas (see McKee, David), so it sort of balances out. The bigger problem is the style of game the teams are choosing to play. Big, brusing goons are in; speedy talent guys are out.

I was actually pleased to see Tampa Bay win. Their style of play was refreshing, and it was nice to see Andreychuk finally get to skate the cup.

My point is that there are fewer professional-caliber speedy, talented guys relative to the total number of required players. I don't think the league has gone full-bore goon because it's a more-effective game: as you say, TB didn't play that game, and won the Cup.

Cheers,
Kyle

[Q]krose Wrote:

I think it's fitting that a team with no fans won the Cup. I personally hope the NHL goes bankrupt, and some of the older teams with fans form a new, smaller league (12 teams or so) and just leave it at that. I hate watching the Rangers play and lose to teams whose names I don't even recognize, and apparently whose home cities are full of people who also don't recognize them.

Cheers,
Kyle

[/q]

Ever heard the line "There are 20,000 Rangers fans in NY and all of them have season tickets"? The Rangers aren't exactly the talk of New York either, IMO (even on the occasions that they are good). It's just easier to fill a rink drawing from a market that size.

Attendance isn't really a good measure of overall success anyway. The league could sell every seat for every game and would still struggle because the TV market doesn't bring in enough revenue.

I agree that the league has probably over expanded. Columbus and Nashville with NHL teams? But at least we don't have everyone making the playoffs anymore (what was it, 16 out of 21 at one point?)

[Q]krose Wrote:

thinning the talent pool and for the fans who have to endure games full of goons who can't skate, dribble, or shoot against teams that don't matter one whit. And I say: good riddance. [/q]

Dribble?

[Q]Tom Lento Wrote:

Dribble?[/q]

We use the term where I play: it just refers to moving with the puck close to your stick (i.e., as opposed to pushing it ahead of you to keep it in front of you). Perhaps this isn't universal?

Cheers,
Kyle

[Q]KeithK Wrote:

Ever heard the line "There are 20,000 Rangers fans in NY and all of them have season tickets"?[/q]

No, but it wouldn't surprise me. FWIW, this only lends credence to my point that hockey simply isn't going to appeal to everyone, so the sport should downsize to the point at which it can be successful. NHL expansion has been an unqualified failure both from a geographic and marketing perspective: those who are turned on by the game are relatively few in number (i.e., as compared with other major sports), and as a result (a) local fan support is non-existent for all but the hottest of the expansion teams and (b) the sport can't command a TV audience sufficient to bring in the advertising dollars required to pay for national coverage.

[q]The Rangers aren't exactly the talk of New York either, IMO (even on the occasions that they are good). It's just easier to fill a rink drawing from a market that size.[/q]

...making it even more obvious that they shouldn't try expanding simultaneously into multiple markets with a combined total number of hockey fans less than the capacity of Lynah Rink.

[q]Attendance isn't really a good measure of overall success anyway. The league could sell every seat for every game and would still struggle because the TV market doesn't bring in enough revenue.[/q]

You're still not disproving my point. The insane salaries they're paying these days were based on expectations of future earnings: the NHL's own internet bubble, if you will. With their ridicul....er, ambitious expansion plans now clearly gone awry, the NHL probably will not be able to dig itself out of its current hole, so new leagues with players willing to play for salaries more in line with the actual popularity of the game are inevitable if professional hockey survives at all.

Cheers,
Kyle

[Q]KeithK Wrote:
Ever heard the line "There are 20,000 Rangers fans in NY and all of them have season tickets"? The Rangers aren't exactly the talk of New York either, IMO (even on the occasions that they are good).[/q]
Can't quite tell you how much that irks me every time I hear it. It's so full of crap. Must be Islanders fans talking. Want numbers? How about franchise value:

[www.forbes.com]

Despite the annual crapfest that is Rangers hockey, they're still #1 in value and revenue.

You could probably put a pee-wee team on the ice at 33rd and 7th in a market of 10+ million people and find yourself with the #1 dollar value in the league.

The fact that a New York team is #1 in value isn't exactly the best measure of fan support or intensity.

In fact, the little blurb about the Rangers (if you follow the link on the page Age cited) indicates that the team's value is due to the richest cable contract in the league (with its own parent company -- an easy way to drive up the value of an asset and justify forcing cable customer/competitors to pay more for MSG Network).

Oh bloody hell. Fine, here:

[q]ABC wants Detroit and Dallas on its Saturday afternoon telecasts because they are the two most popular NHL teams, according to a Sports Business Journal/ESPN poll. Detroit tops the list, with 9.3 percent of the country saying it is their favorite team. They are followed by Dallas (7.2), New York Rangers (6.1), Pittsburgh Penguins (5.9), Boston Bruins (5.2) and Philadelphia Flyers (4.4).[/q]

[Q]CUlater 89 Wrote:
In fact, the little blurb about the Rangers (if you follow the link on the page Kyle cited) indicates that the team's value is due to the richest cable contract in the league (with its own parent company -- an easy way to drive up the value of an asset and justify forcing cable customer/competitors to pay more for MSG Network).[/q]
Isn't that contradictory? Justify paying more for MSG for whom? The 20,000 fans? If they weren't popular enough to warrant it, no one would want MSG. Last I checked, I still can't get YES on DISH, but MSG has been there and on DirecTV and local cable all over the country for a long time.

Sorry about the comment, Age. It is obviously an exaggeration. But I would argue that you see a lot more people walking around in NYC wearing baseball, football or basketball paraphernalia than you do hockey. This alone proves nothing, of course, but I think it's fair to say that NYC isn't a hockey hotbed, even if the Rangers have the highest value among hockey teams. I'd imagine there are more hockey fans in NYC than in Tampa Bay or Nashville, but less than in Calgary.

Interesting to see that the Rangers are valued at $272 million, which probably doesn't rank anywhere near the top of the baseball or football lists.

MSG is widely available because they locked up the Yankees all those years ago and continues to benefit from pricing it imposed on cable operators back then. In addition, they can tell Time Warner, advertisers and others "we're paying lots of money to the Rangers and Knicks for their TV rights so we need to charge you a little more per subscriber or per commercial to cover that cost". And as you know, it would be more painful to the cable operators to take away MSG from the viewers who watch it than to just pass along that cost, grouped in with other increases.

[q]And as you know, it would be more painful to the cable operators to take away MSG from the viewers who watch it then to just pass along that cost, grouped in with other increases.[/q] The whole YES/Cablevision brouhaha is a prime example of this. The politicians even got involved in that one. (Though admittedly that was more of a power struggle than a fight over price.)

I agree with the point about TV viewership; some of that seems to be because hockey on TV is nowhere near as exciting as in person; or because the regular season is so long and lacks the passion of the playoffs; or because it's hard to follow the action or plays away from the puck on TV.

I will note, however, that Dallas is consistently in the top 10 in attendance despite not being a "natural" hockey city; LA is generally in the top half despite underperforming teams and not being a "natural" hockey city; Columbus (which is a great hockey city, as witnessed by their support of minor league hockey) has been in the top half for the past three years; and even a lousy Florida team has been in the top 2/3 the past three years.

Yes, Tampa used to be #20 (in 2001-2002) but when they field a winning, exciting product, the fans showed they'll show up. This is not the NFL; this is like MLB and the NBA -- if the teams suck, fans will generally not show up.

I disagree if Kyle is saying expansion to these non-traditional cities was a mistake. The league may have overexpanded generally, but I don't think the choice of cities is the problem; it seems to me that the problem caused by expansion, if there is one, is that the average talent level has gone down from the high scoring '80s. I certainly don't want to go back to the goon days of the 70s. Whether raising the average talent level by contracting teams and causing players to lose jobs will help, I'm not so sure (defensive systems like the left-wing lock and the neutral zone trap should continue to be effective, ever against a greater number of skilled players). But I do know the NHLPA will not sign up for its members losing jobs.

[Q]CUlater 89 Wrote:

I disagree if Kyle is saying expansion to these non-traditional cities was a mistake.[/q]

Your premise is false. My criticism is that the league expanded to too many non-traditional cities simultaneously (where simultaneous is defined by the amount of time it takes to know whether a hockey market can be grown in the city in question). It's great to experiment with expanding your market: that's how capitalism works. Just don't do it based on the presumption that every expansion will be successful, and in the process dig yourself into a salary hole you won't be able to get out of when the bubble bursts.

[q]The league may have overexpanded generally, but I don't think the choice of cities is the problem; it seems to me that the problem caused by expansion, if there is one, is that the average talent level has gone down from the high scoring '80s.[/q]

This is but one of the many problems I cited.

[q]I certainly don't want to go back to the goon days of the 70s. Whether raising the average talent level by contracting teams and causing players to lose jobs will help, I'm not so sure (defensive systems like the left-wing lock and the neutral zone trap should continue to be effective, ever against a greater number of skilled players). But I do know the NHLPA will not sign up for its members losing jobs.[/q]

Which is why I argue the NHL will die, and the soon-to-be-former members of the NHLPA will shortly eagerly compete for jobs at a 90% pay cut. The professional hockey player market is now overdue for a correction.

FWIW, most of you are supporting my thesis, not effectively rebutting it.

Cheers,
Kyle

[q]FWIW, most of you are supporting my thesis, not effectively rebutting it[/q]If your thesis is that the NHL has problems now due to the run up of salaries and that expansion to many non-traditional markets has not been a success in terms of generating the revenue that Bettman and Co. hoped for, then I think of most of us are with you. The NHL is certainly facing a crisis. It's not as clear that the change in playing style is a result of expansion and thinning of the talent pool. Some here probably disagree that the sport can never be successful outside of its tradtional markets. Some will certainly disagree that the right "solution" is for the NHL to go bankrupt and be replaced by a new smaller league

There's also your seeming glee at the current situation in the NHL (sorry if I'm misrepresenting you here). I can understand this from a certain capitalist perspective - the market may succeed in correcting what you see as mistakes mae by the NHL. But is kind of grating.

[Q]KeithK Wrote:
If your thesis is that the NHL has problems now due to the run up of salaries and that expansion to many non-traditional markets has not been a success in terms of generating the revenue that Bettman and Co. hoped for, then I think of most of us are with you.[/q]
That's a large part of it.
[q]The NHL is certainly facing a crisis. It's not as clear that the change in playing style is a result of expansion and thinning of the talent pool.[/q]
It's not been proven, but it hasn't been disproven either, and I think the evidence points to it. However, I honestly don't care enough to go do a big multi-month research project to determine the truth of the matter: I'm just armchair quarterbacking (centering? goaltending?).
[q]Some here probably disagree that the sport can never be successful outside of its tradtional markets.[/q]
A statement I never made, and one that is demonstrably false (q.v., Dallas, LA). I made the argument that expanding so rapidly to so many places with no hockey history was foolish. The concurrent rapidly rising salaries resulting from irrational exuberance only added to the problem. Didn't the inability to attract a national TV audience raise some red flags in any of the NHL management?
[q]Some will certainly disagree that the right "solution" is for the NHL to go bankrupt and be replaced by a new smaller league

There's also your seeming glee at the current situation in the NHL (sorry if I'm misrepresenting you here). I can understand this from a certain capitalist perspective - the market may succeed in correcting what you see as mistakes mae by the NHL. But is kind of grating.[/q]
I have no love for the NHL management: they are the reason professional hockey is in the state it is today. Something will happen to correct this mess, and in my considered opinion the NHL going bust is the only way that could happen. Sure, an equivalent solution would be completely new management slashing teams with little to no potential for profit and forcing reduced salaries down the players' necks; but it's not clear there's any difference between that and simply starting up an entirely new league with selected existing NHL teams.

Cheers,
Kyle

[Q]My criticism is that the league expanded to too many non-traditional cities simultaneously (where simultaneous is defined by the amount of time it takes to know whether a hockey market can be grown in the city in question).[/Q]

Simultaneous expansion has nothing to do with success within an individual market, unless two new markets are located in proximity. It seems to me that simultaneous expansion is a potential problem only if you assume that expansion will not be successful somewhere (an assumption that Kyle seems to believe should have been made at the time) and that having multiple failures at the same time will impact the sport continent-wide. Of course, despite what some may think, the assumption going into any expansion is that it will be successful and typically that assumption is backed by feasibility studies by the league and potential owners of the new franchise and lenders thereto. You, as an individual, may believe it is a mistake to expand someplace in particular, but the decision to expand is not taken lightly by any of the leagues and the success of the expansion is often tied to the management of the team, rather than the "local market".

No doubt part of the impetus for expansion was the desire to establish a meaningful nationwide presence and benefit from the media moneys associated with that presence. A major U.S. national media contract is how most of the leagues have funded the salary increases of the past 20 years and, in some cases, padded the pockets of ownership. So, in a sense, "success" of an expansion, or even an existing franchise, may be defined by whether there is significant money available from media contracts (since salaries are dictated by the leaguewide market as a whole, not by the individual market). The difference between the NHL and, say, the NFL or NBA, is that the NFL and NBA have a salary cap tied to revenues (mostly media moneys) and the NHL does not. Of course, the problem for the NHL is that its national media money is small relative to other leagues, so having a salary cap based on the same doesn't make sense and having one based on an arbitrary number is hard to sell to the NHLPA (the same is true of MLB).

I'm not in favor of a contracted league, with no national TV contract or one similar to MLS's (a necessary result of a contracted league). Hockey can, and should be, a nationwide sport. It faces some of the same problems MLB has (disparity between top and bottom player salaries; total salaries and costs exceeding revenues) but should have owners and players willing to sacrifice to make it work like in the NBA (soft salary cap, with limits on how much a player's contract can increase; revenue sharing to a degree).

"stickhandling" hockey 101 textbook
also see: "puckhandling"

[Q]CUlater 89 Wrote:

Simultaneous expansion has nothing to do with success within an individual market, unless two new markets are located in proximity.[/q]
False. Simultaneous expansion made the good players relatively scarce, which drove up their value and consequently caused salaries to rise significantly once a critical threshold was passed. This is a large part of the reason why salaries have gone up so much: the irrational exuberance of the expected TV contract frenzy was the other major component.

Since the rest of this paragraph is predicated on a false statement, I'll skip to the next one.
[q]The difference between the NHL and, say, the NFL or NBA, is that the NFL and NBA have a salary cap tied to revenues (mostly media moneys) and the NHL does not. Of course, the problem for the NHL is that its national media money is small relative to other leagues, so having a salary cap based on the same doesn't make sense and having one based on an arbitrary number is hard to sell to the NHLPA (the same is true of MLB).[/q]
Well, I guess we'll see if the NHLPA members value their jobs enough to accept terms more favorable to the survival of the sport.
[q]I'm not in favor of a contracted league, with no national TV contract or one similar to MLS's (a necessary result of a contracted league). Hockey can, and should be, a nationwide sport.[/q]
Wishing hockey will be successful nationally won't make it so: there are hard steps that will have to be taken by the NHL leadership as simple prerequisites, and if they are unwilling or unable to do it, someone else will step in and try to do a better job. Only after these steps have been taken will we then be able to observe the sport for a sufficient amount of time to tell whether hockey is able to attract the same kind of national audience as football, basketball, and baseball or not.

Cheers,
Kyle

[Q]The Rancor Wrote:

"stickhandling" hockey 101 textbook
also see: "puckhandling"
Edited 1 times. Last edit at 06/09/04 11:28AM by The Rancor.[/q]

Yeah, that's what I thought he was talking about, although the description above makes it sound more like pulling the puck along beside you without actually stickhandling.

I've just never heard anyone call it dribbling before. To me, dribbling is either a basketball skill or something babies do a lot. Now where's the dribbling smiley face when you need it?

"dribbling" is used in soccer as well.

You're absolutely right. Never was able to control the ball in soccer, so maybe that's why I didn't think of it.

[Q]DisplacedCornellian Wrote:

I don't think the talent pool is thinning significantly, Kyle. The fact that the league has expanded and is reaching new markets undoubtedly increases the net size of the talent pool as talent is being found in previously untapped areas (see McKee, David), so it sort of balances out. ...[/q]

Expanding the talent pool that way takes time. You have to build a youth program, attract good athletes away from football, basketball, wrestling, baseball, soccer, and the other sports. Find good coaches. Raise the level of local competition to the point where the kids can go off to play junior hockey. Until the second, or third, or fourth generation of pee-wee hockey players start to dribble into the NHL ten or twenty years later, the talent pool has been diluted by the expansion.

There are vastly more Europeans in the NHL right now than there were before the recent wave of NHL expansion, i.e. 12 years. Way more than enough to fill 9 teams.

Adam:

Are you suggesting that the NHL should contract some cities here, and start a few franchises in Europe (like Stockholm, Helsinki , Prague and Moscow), It would be a bitch for TV coverage, but I think that would be a great idea. Can you just picture them parading the Cup through Red Square?

I don't think it'll happen in my lifetime, but it would be neat to see.

JH

I don't think Adam is suggesting that the NHL move franchises the Europe. His point was that the talent level likely was not diluted, since at the same time that expansion occurred and the number of job increased, there has been an influx of workers from outside North America, workers who generally are more skilled than the North Americans.

If the Rangers have the greatest value as a team, it goes to show big markets don't always guarantee the highest winning percentages. What: One Stanley Cup since the Depression ended? That's almost Red Sox territory.

To play devil's advocate, one might even suggest that expansion is necessary to increase the size of the talent and fan pool. Would McKee be playing now if his only exposure to the sport was watching the Rangers on cable? I doubt it.

Kyle makes some good points about NFL and NBA salaries being tied to the size of tv revenue packages and that the NHL suffers in comparison in its broadcast exposure. However, I doubt hockey will ever be able to rely as much on tv revenue as other major sports. The major problem is that tv doesn't capture the essence of the sport well at all. I shouldn't have to belabor the point with this crew. You have to see the whole sheet to see how offenses and defenses set up and to appreciate the speed of the game. Televised hockey, for those who haven't seen the real thing, just won't appeal. It's possible that HDTV with full ice shots might go some distance in addressing this problem, but we're not there yet.

HDTV is made for hockey. And lacrosse. Lax also benefits from being shot from the end zone up high; from the sidelines, you get less sense of how who's left and right of the goal.

Also golf. And swimsuit issues.

Of course. I missed it because I skipped around the thread over the past few days. D'oh!

JH

[Q]KeithK Wrote:

Sorry about the comment, Age. It is obviously an exaggeration. But I would argue that you see a lot more people walking around in NYC wearing baseball, football or basketball paraphernalia than you do hockey. [/q]The only thing you should apologize for, Keith, is that you wrote "NY" instead of "NYC". That is how I've always heard the expression, and how I usually think about it. I met far more Rangers fans from upstate NY (using the NYC definition of "upstate" in my first semester at SUNY-Albany than I did among the city residents during four years at an NYC high school.

The Rangers may have a large TV fan base, but the local fan base was historically built from a small cadre of die hards. This changed quite a bit recently when (a) the Rangers FINALLY won the Cup and (b) tickets to Ranger games became insanely expensive. I wish I had been more of a fan when the phrase "blue seats" meant something. I'd have loved to be a part of that vibe. I may have even ended up a Ranger fan.