The Lockout

[bigunreal]

The lack of media coverage about this subject on ESPN is really
puzzling. They still have a contract, I think, to televise a whole lot
of hockey games. Even where the Caste system is concerned, money always
talks, so why they don't even appear to be interested in this as a
business proposition is beyond me. One would expect to see hockey guys
like Darren Pang and Bill Clement on other ESPN shows like "PTI" and
"Around The Horn," so that they could express their concerns and update
the public. Oh, for the glory days of Gretzy and high scoring games
back in the early 1980s!

 

[Realgeorge]

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<TD =yspsctnhdln>Forgive me for re-posting a national article, but Mr. Wetzel takes some shots at Commissioner Gary Bettman. Well deserved and accurate shots. In fact, the immediate resignation of Mr. Bettmann is quite called for. But I stick to my guns -- the players are the ultimate klutzes for pressing for immense riches when they KNEW that the out-of-control expansion Gravy Train would eventually derail</TD></TR>
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<TD>by Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports
January 19, 2005



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<TD>http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/expertsarchive?author=Dan+Wetzel</TD></TR>
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<TD></TD></TR></T></TABLE></TD></TR></T></TABLE></TD></TR></T></TABLE>The hockey folks had a meeting Wednesday in Chicago, and neither NHL commissioner Gary Bettman nor union head Bob Goodenow were invited.If we could make their exclusion from the game permanent, then maybe something good would come out of this lockout after all. But that isn't going to happen and neither, it seems, is the NHL season, a sobering stomach punch to the sport's core fans just as the season should be heating up.


Much has been made about how few people in the United States really care that the NHL is locked out, but there still are plenty of us who do. A spring without the Stanley Cup playoffs is not a pleasant thought, no matter how clutch-and-grab and neutral-zone-trapped the game has become. Most disturbing is why this battle is being fought in the first place. It's not just your traditional billionaire vs. millionaire fight. And it is not just because Bettman and Goodenow are incapable of agreeing on whether it was cold in Minnesota this week.


The hockey season is about to die because the game's leadership has driven the league into the ground and still refuses to take its foot off the pedal.Gary Bettman's insistence on cost certainty in the labor agreement is based on the need to create a welfare system that keeps weak franchises afloat. This would be a noble goal, except most of the weak franchises were added during Bettman's grand (and failed) experiment with expansion in the 1990s.


In essence, the Atlanta Thrashers can't continue to operate - let alone compete with Detroit, Colorado and Toronto - unless payrolls are severely limited. That's because the market for hockey in Atlanta can't compete with the market for hockey in Detroit, Denver and Toronto. Expansion will be bumbling Bettman's legacy, once his tenure mercifully ends. He gambled the NHL's future on the concept that bringing the league to the South would draw in enough fans to make the league truly national. It was a sucker's bet and now the chips are due. And if you are a loyal hockey fan, you are about to pay for it with one (or maybe two) lost Stanley Cup chases. I could deal with missing a season if there were any hope that real solutions to the ailing league would come from it. Like if I knew half a dozen franchises would fold. Or if I thought the new collective bargaining agreement was about the NHL getting stronger and more efficient and not merely socializing salaries to maintain the preposterous status quo.


Or maybe if part of the deal included rule changes that would open the game back up and, we can dream, return the traditional hockey names to the conferences and divisions (the Wales Conference, Norris Division, and so on). But it isn't. Bettman is loath to admit his expansion policy was a mistake that failed to expand hockey's fan base by the necessary numbers. He refuses to admit that expansion watered down the talent base, killed off traditional rivals and confused longtime fans. He brushes off the fact the NHL's new deal with NBC is the same as the network has for arena football. He doesn't agree that the league is divided into markets that can sustain hockey and markets that can't, even if it is as obvious as a turnstile count.


Twelve years into his disastrous tenure, Bettman still thinks he's the smartest guy at the rink. He insists on a salary cap that will save franchises which only need saving because they have too few fans who, barring a run to the Cup finals, actually care. So people who love hockey aren't getting hockey as part of the pipe dream that people who don't get hockey might one day love hockey. So bad is business that Bettman insists the only way it can work is by offering the NHLPA the worst contract in sports, a 55-percent cap. The NFL's will be 65.5 percent next season. The NBA has a soft cap at 63 percent.


Yes, the players need to make real-world concessions, bite the bullet and realize the gravy train days are over. But longtime fans shouldn't have had to concede anything. Not that this commissioner has ever cared about longtime fans. They supported the league long before Bettman came along and played mad scientist with it. They shouldn't have to lose their sport because he can't let a free marketplace fix his failures.


Dan Wetzel is Yahoo! Sports' national columnist. Send him a question or comment for potential use in a future column or webcast. </TD></TR></T></TABLE>

 

[speedster]

Thereare a number of teams that don't draw 17,000 or anywhere close to that a night.Hockey does have their millionaires and they have owners whose teams lose millions every year.There are other sports that athletes make millions like nascar,golf and tennis whose performers are far more visible to the American public.Every sports fan knows Andre Agassi,but who knows and cares about Mike Modano.Why should the media care about the NHL,it's only been in the U.S.for 80 years and never been huge so why give it ink.Even if they did,what would it matter to some kid in Alabama weened on football.I'm sure there lot's of skating rinks out there.Surveys always show hockey way down there on list of popular sports in the States.As mentioned,national ratings stink,but so what if local ratings are a little better,that just shows it's mostly the hardcores who follow hockey.Footspeed doesn't translate into skating speed.And finally,race has everything to do with it?You got to be kidding.There are plenty of blacks in baseball but that didn't stop the World Series from being canceled.Hockey can't be multiculturalized so it needs to be wiped out by the powers that be?Oh,my gosh.Do you really believe that and that there is a caste system in hockey too? I can't begin to tell you how silly that sounds.I've had enough.

 

[Don Wassall]

The average NHL attendance per game last season was 16,534. If you want a team by team breakdown, go here: http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/attendance?year=2004

The average NBA game drew 16,793: http://www.insidehoops.com/attendance.shtml

New York alone supports three hockey teams. That means there is a huge amount of hockey fans just in New York. For every fan with the bucks to buy season tickets there are probably at least 10 who can't and most likely more than that. There are many others who watch on TV or otherwise follow their favorite team.

Most hockey teams have a season ticket base comparable to NBA and MLB teams. When the Pittsburgh Penguins won their Stanley Cups, there were hundreds of thousands of people who came out for their victory parades. The same thing takes place in other cities too. By all accounts, Tampa went bonkers during the Lightning's Stanley Cup run last season. If hockey was played in arenas the size of baseball stadiums, and the tickets were priced similarly, hockey might outdraw baseball. The NHL is a major league just as much as the NBA and MLB are. And at 80+ years old it is older than the NBA and about as old as the NFL.

I didn't say hockey players had better foot speed, but that the sport possesses speed in abundance, which it does.

"Hockey can't be multiculturalized so it needs to be wiped out by the powers that be? Oh, my gosh. Do you really believe that and that there is a caste system in hockey too? I can't begin to tell you how silly that sounds."

I didn't write that and it does sound silly the way you phrase it. If casual sports fans know who Shaq and Kobe are, but not Modano and Yzerman and Lemieux, why is that? Does it have anything to do with what sports and players ESPN and other sports media cover and how they cover them?

It's a matter of which came first, the chicken or the egg. An essential part of the caste system is the role of the media. Individual black players are hyped more and receive more corporate endorsements than do white players. Black dominated sports are hyped more than white dominated sports.

The media coverage (or lack thereof) of the lockout, and the attitude taken toward it, is far different than lockouts/strikes have been covered in baseball, football and basketball. Donald Fehr was on our television screens constantly in 1994; when was the last time you saw the NHL players' negotiator on the boob tube?

The media didn't cause the lockout. It came about because of legitimate business factors, not as a preconceived plan to "wipe out the league by the powers that be." But the media doesn't seem unhappy in the least about it.Edited by: Don Wassall

 

[speedster]

The NHL average attendance would be higher if weren't for the bottom feeder American teams.Shortly after the N.Y.Islanders championship run of the 80's there attendance dwindled and there was talk they could become no more.The Islanders are still around,but they are not thriving,just surviving.After all the success the New Jersey Devils have had,they have a hard time selling out,plenty of empty seats.That was the case for them right at the start and continues at present.The New York area supports one team,the Rangers.The Tampa Bay Lightning suffered with bad attendance until recently because of their Cup win.If they turn bad again so will their attendance.As far as going bonkers for the Lightning's victory parade,I don't put much into that.Parades are just a day off work or school,it's the place to be,to be seen and heard.Many people there aren't even fans,never been to a game in their lives.Another example would be the Pittsburgh Penguins.Here is team that has been in trouble on and off their entire history.They won a couple of championships and people came out to scream and yell at their little parades and now they are in trouble again.It is a good thing there are a lot of Canadians living in Florida ,California and Arizona because teams in those states would be worse off then they are since Canadians make up a lot of their fan base.In fact Detroit benefits by being so close to the Ontario border since plenty of their support is Canadian,particularly from Windsor,same thing for Buffalo,plenty of Canadian border support and yet they are still in trouble.The NHL is for sure a major league and an old league,but not a very popular league to many Americans.As I have said before the media doesn't talk much about the strike or about hockey in general when they are playing is because of the lack of public interest.As far as white sports not getting pub,you forgot about golf.

 

[Don Wassall]

Golf pub = 90 percent Tiger Woods + 10 percent everyone else.

 

[speedster]

Maybe you got a point.

 

[Don Wassall]

The latest is that the league may cancel the season today or tomorrow. If that happens the NHL will most likely become a minor league after the lockout ends, because a lot of fans won't come back. Then even with a salary cap the players will still be overpaid and ticket prices will still be way too high, and there still will be little TV revenue. Even if they settle tomorrow and play a 25 game schedule, how many fans would be up for that, and what kind of crowds would the playoff games draw? A very pathetic situation.

 

[jaxvid]

I think hockey will recover more then one may think. Hockey is a niche sport. It will never be popular in some places unless a lot of Northern people have transplanted there. It's hard to make a go of a hockey franchise anyway. Look at Minnesota and Winnepeg for crying out loud. If you can't sell hockey in those places then forget about Florida and Texas. Just give me the original six anyway!

 

[bigunreal]

As Don said, this is really a pathetic situation. It does illustrate,
however, the power of the media in preventing something of this nature,
and their absolute refusal to even try and prevent this. During all of
Major League Baseball's numerous strikes, the sports "journalists"
would increasingly blame "both sides" and bemoan the process, but they
put unrelenting pressure on the owners and players to make some kind of
a deal. It was clear that each of these "journalists" would be very sad
indeed if baseball were to go away as a sport. While the NFL hasn't had
a strike in a while, you can bet that if they had one again, the
reaction from the media would be very intense, and there would be no
question that every single one of these lame, wanna-be comedians was a
die-hard fan and would desperately miss pro football. Remember how
disconsolate the media was when they canceled the World Series; imagine
how they'd react if they canceled the Super Bowl. The same thing would
happen if the NBA went on strike. With the NHL, however, the media
simply doesn't care, because none of these "journalists" are hockey
fans. I would think it's obvious just WHY they aren't hockey fans.



I agree with Don; if the season is canceled, the NHL will be forever
after a minor sport. It was heading in that direction, anyhow, having
been surpassed by NASCAR during the past decade or so, and still
lagging far behind the NFL, NBA and MLB. Unless things change
drastically in our society, the only way to make the NHL into a major
sport again is to force "diversity" upon it, so it looks just like the
big three sports. In Don King's America, the public just doesn't have
any interest in watching a bunch of white guys skaing around on ice.
They need constant showboating and trash talking from loud black
players. They're conditioned to expect this, and are totally confused
by the game of hockey, which doesn't feature any of the stuff they've
come to love.

 

[Realgeorge]

Lament! Lament! The NHL is doomed just as Don and Speedster say


The smell of caste conspiracy is in the air. The sabres of this strike have been rattling for at least six years. All hockey fans and followers could see it coming. The day of reckoning arrives, and the NHL has no plan? except to meet quarterly with the Union and snarl "I hate you" across the table?


Yes, Rev. Bettman was hand-picked as the Angel of Death for the the white NHL. He has performed his part admirably. First, he encouraged the game's speed to grind to a halt. Then he negotiated wimpy TV deals for the league to sludge its revenue.Afterwards came the lethal policyto overexpand the league into guaranteed-fail non-hockey territory.


But his prime job was to assure a Train Wreck at the expiration of the CBA. We COULD have had a plan in place to immediately switch to replacement players at the Reckoning Day. The Plan COULD have included a "draft" from the minor leagues and colleges. With a little energy, a "Whole New NHL" COULD have been ready to float on 01 September 2004. New young players, new young ticket prices, a new young TV contract, new young on-ice rules, even -- gasp -- new young colorful uniforms to replace all the damned black "Darth Vader" outfits that so many teams had adpoted, all of this COULD have been prepared.


But no. The plan all along has been to drive a stake into the heart of the NHL and guarantee its splintering and eventual demise. And the always moronic NHL players are the perfect patsys for the plan. Every last one of them, from Jagr and Yzerman to the lowliest slug on the fourth line of the last-place team, deserv the bilious slice of humble pie that they are about to be served.


The book should be entitled, "How I Spiked the NHL," by Rev. Gary Bettman, with preface by Donald Fehr and George SorosEdited by: Realgeorge

 

[speedster]

I think the NHL really has to downsize.The original six is a good idea,but you will need a number of more teams.I feel 16 teams would be a good number.The original six plus Philly,all the Canadian teams as well as getting teams back in Winnipeg and Quebec City.Those two cities are the heartland of hockey and you need them back in the fold.A salary cap will go a long way in keeping those two hockey centers functioning.Add L.A. to the mix only because they are a big market not because it is a hotbed of hockey.The other two teams could be St.Louis and Colorado who are hot at the moment.Have these teams split in two eight team divisions,an east and a west division.The top four teams in each division make the playoffs,so you will have a quarter,semi and final rounds.A perliminary round is not needed because it just waters the playoffs down and eight of sixteen teams making it to post season is just about right.Having said all this,guess what? It will never happen

 

[Don Wassall]

Indoor hockey rinks can help make hockey popular anywhere. Baseball has always been as popular in the north as the south even though the playing season is much shorter in the north. I think the geography thing with hockey is overdone, though the league took the easy way out, choosing to create too many expansion teams in the South, because of the easy money that each club gets each time the league expands, instead of facing its financial problems head-on.

I don't necessarily think the NHL is doomed to permanent minor league status after the lockout ever ends; it will probably recover eventually, though attendance will be down and the media will cover it even less than it does now for some time.

Another unknown factor is what the European players choose to do. The NHL will always be the league that Canadians and Americans want to play in, but the top leagues in Europe and Russia pay good money to top players, and may be able to do so more in the future because of the influx of NHL players now over there.

Peter Forsberg had already talked about leaving the NHL to play back in Sweden. I doubt many of us appreciate how difficult it is for young guys to leave their homelands and play in North America, especially the ones who come from countries that speak Slavic languages, which are so different from English. It is a huge transition to make, and if they can make say $500,000 or $1 million in Europe instead of $1,500,000 or $2 million in the NHL, some players may choose to stay put. Hockey has great rivalries on the international stage between countries as well, which might be sufficient interaction with North American players for some.

 

[jaxvid]

Why doesn't some rich guy ala Vince McMahon of the XFL get 20 millionaires together and set up franchises in 20 cities and sign up all the unsigned hockey players and totally screw the NHL out of its ill managed monopoly?

It would be so easy to do and you know there is a great market out there for the game, but no capitalist seems to want to tap it. It doesn't make sense. In the 1970s the WHA started up when hockey was much less popular and had to compete with the NHL.

 

[Don Wassall]

An incipient rival league or arrangement of some kind could be established here and may well if the season is a total loss. The highest-paid players themselves are now capable of starting an impromptu league that could grow into a rival. If a league of super-rich owners and rich players let the NHL disintegrate it would be one of the all time great joint acts of self-destruction.Edited by: Don Wassall

 

[jaxvid]

Good point, the highest paid players could start up teams. That is how professional baseball got started. Ironically one of the impediments to that is so many of the players are European and may have no interest in setting up such a venture as that. Some of the older North American guys might have the money but another reason they wouldn't do it is because with all the cash they have made over the years why put up with the hassle of ownership?

 

[speedster]

The old WHA was set to make a comback this past fall capitalizing on the NHL lockout.Led buy their main man Bobby Hull,if you remember was the original WHA's biggest signing in their first year which pevented him playing for Team Canada in the '72 summit series against the Soviet Union.Does anyone remember that series? I didn't think so.I'm getting off topic here.Anways the new WHA apparently had a number of teams in place,a good marketing strategy and where going to try to lure some NHL players into their fold during the lockout.All this was mapped out in their inaugral press conference with Bobby Hull doing a lot of the talking.But they just didn't get off the ground for whatever reason.I just heard recently that they still want to get this going,but it doesn' seem likely now.

 

[Realgeorge]

Don, Speedster, Jaxvid, ALL ENGINES STOP!


I gotta weigh in here -- Rich players stopping the league? The rank-and-file NHL players are at fault. To me it's easy as pie -- I'm a rank-and-file player, Idrop the Union like a hot potato and go to work, tough poop for the rich players. What is the Union going to do -- check me into the boards?


This strike seems every bit as senseless as the major NFL and MLB strikes, except here the players are bargaining from a huge position of weakness. Morons!


Peter Bondra was in our workout club the other day. He passed unnoticed except for me (thought some of the women in the club would mug him for an autograph). I asked how he liked the strike, he just sighed. Said he was a free-agent, not belonging to Ottawa anymore. Then I thanked him for his ten excellent years in Washington. He shook my hand. I was thinking -- but didn't say -- you idiot, go back to work! You have a wife and kids! and an expensive American mortgage! You have nobody to blame but yourself.


Saw this post today on WashingtonCaps.com:


"Memo to NHLPA: Dear locked-out players: I want NO mustard on my sammich."


I must the the neanderthal of our posting group. I still can't see why the NHL owners didn't immediately dump the morons and hire the next echelon and college kids. They could put on at least as good a show as the spoiled pampered idiots of the NHL.


I'm sorry guys, but college-educated white men cannot be excused for this egregious and asinine behavior. Somebody is paying you a million dollars a year to play hockey. End of argument! Get back to work!


End of rantEdited by: Realgeorge

 

[bigunreal]

Realgeorge,



You're exactly right. The NHL players are completely deluded, and the
owners are completely clueless. This is the situation that exists in
all pro sports now, with one crucial difference; only a very few fans
in Don King's America care at all about hockey players. The players
just don't get that. The owners should indeed have fielded replacement
teams, and why they haven't done that is incomprehensible. I hope that
somehow the NHL comes to its senses and finds a way to salvage this
season, but that looks really unlikely now. If and when the NHL ever
resumes play, I think they will become a second-tier sport, somewhat
like professional soccer.

 

[speedster]

Speaking about how difficult it must be for Europeans to come over to North America to play hockey with the language barrier and all,just think how tough it must be for Euro basketball players to come over to play in the NBA.The language they speak on most NBA teams is ebonics.Coming over from a predominantly white culture to the black-cultured NBA must be doubly tough.I think about Arvydas Sabonis when he played with Portland.By the time he came to the NBA he was already a little older and I could not see how he could fit in socially,particularly when he retired then came back for year.Portland had become the Jailblazers by then so I think Sabonis spent a lot of time by himself.

 

[Realgeorge]

Mr. Daly, the NHL rep for Commissioner Bettman, gave interview yesterday on ESPN-2. Said the season is cancelled, the league will declare "impasse" and mooch up to the courts, and that Replacement Players are a possibility. The interviewer was a bit less hostile to NHL rep than in past months, where interviewer would treat Daly or Bettman or a substitute as if he were the leader of the National Tiddly-winks Institute. He looked forward to meeting of the "NHL Board of Governors" that would convene next month and solve everything.


My bitter note of the day is College Hockey coverage -- the total lack of it this year. Each of the past five years, various of the minor sports networks have provided a smattering of collge hockey games when there was a thin night of NHL games. Sometimes my "Dish" network would carry two of them. This year nada, nothing. No doubt a double head-smack to the white hockey fan by the nice gents who run sports networks.

 

[jaxvid]

They'll be plenty of WNBA games to watch though.

 

[Don Wassall]

ESPN's website is currently running a poll that asks simply "Do you care that the NHL season is going to be cancelled?" As of now the tally is 69.3% yes, 30.6% no. Though it is not a "scientific" survey, it certainly shows that a lot of people do follow hockey and care about it rather than just a handful of people in a few northern cities like the media repeats over and over.

 

[speedster]

The 69.3% must be Canadian.

 

[Don Wassall]

This is the part of it that is the biggest shame:

"Cancellation May Signal End for Aging Stars"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6981598/