Let's Go Blues

glen a richter wrote:

WaukeeBlues wrote:Just had a thought today: If we lose the whole year the Oilers could conceivably win their 4th straight first overall draft selection for 2013.

Scary. But anyway...

Nonsense. Buttman would rig the draft for the Penguins again.

Nope. Penguins are on solid footing now. Your first overall selection for 2013 goes to the...Phoenix Coyotes!

Also, did we mention Phoenix will home to the Coyotes for infinity-ever!

Seriously, if Bettman is going to rig the draft, he's got too much time invested in the 'Yotes NOT to give them the pick. I say this all tongue-in-cheek. I am not a conspiracy theorist when it comes to Bettman.

So, when the lockout ends, how many teams will be left in the NHL, and will the Blues be one of them?

sseagle wrote:So, when the lockout ends, how many teams will be left in the NHL, and will the Blues be one of them?

No. It'll just be Detroit, NY Rangers and Pittsburgh.

ViPeRx007 wrote:

sseagle wrote:So, when the lockout ends, how many teams will be left in the NHL, and will the Blues be one of them?

No. It'll just be Detroit, NY Rangers and Pittsburgh.

So you're saying the only teams that will be disbanded are the Capitals and Flyers?

ViPeRx007 wrote:

sseagle wrote:So, when the lockout ends, how many teams will be left in the NHL, and will the Blues be one of them?

No. It'll just be Detroit, NY Rangers and Pittsburgh.

I think Bettman has enough room in his mouth to hold Chicago and Phoenix. Because God forbid the 'Yotes move location.

WaukeeBlues wrote:Just had a thought today: If we lose the whole year the Oilers could conceivably win their 4th straight first overall draft selection for 2013.

Scary. But anyway...

And they would still suck.

cprice12 wrote:

WaukeeBlues wrote:Just had a thought today: If we lose the whole year the Oilers could conceivably win their 4th straight first overall draft selection for 2013.

Scary. But anyway...

And they would still suck.

Not for long

What gets me in all of this is how either organization, the NHL or NHLPA don't get that players will eventually get tired of this strike one year, three to five seasons of hockey, strike again cycle that's perpetuating here. If I was a player and this kept being the case, I would surely not sign with the NHL and play overseas or in the beer leagues and say to heck with it. You may not make as much, but the money is there, it's stable and if you play in the right places, so is the support and fans. The NHL and NHLPA win nothing in this but to help undermine the very people that make them their living.

Something occured to me earlier today. Bettman continues saying the competition, WHAT competition? Baseball? Basketball? Football? Soccer? How is this competition for the NHL? It doesn't deter HOCKEY fans from going to a Hockey game, nor steals the money that these fans would spend on a HOCKEY game. High ticket prices, labor stoppages or threats of them and the inequality between teams perpetuated by the NHL on the other hand, could cause a fan to look into a minor league alternative or, in extreme cases, say to heck with it and change sports. Makes you wonder why more people don't try a Hockey game, huh?

Hockey will always languish behind the other sports in popularity simply because it's so complex, comparatively speaking.

Baseball is fairly easy to understand with the biggest confusion coming about when determining what counts as an infield fly, football is easy to understand in every aspect of the sport, basketball? Extremely simple--you run back and forth, keep fewer than 3 guys in the paint and try to score in under 24 seconds. Soccer, you run around for 90 minutes and kick the ball a few times. But hockey has so many intricate rules which the last lockout attempted to minimize (with the removal of the center ice line) in order to make it easier to understand for non-fans. So unless they just wipe out every rule and turn it into basketball on ice, the NHL will never ever ever be competitive with any of the other sports no matter how many times they lock out the players. Work on keeping the fans you have, Bettman.

I'm not so sure about that.

I don't think hockey is any more or less easy to understand than any of the other sports. The nitty gritty details of any of the sports are pretty confusing.

The big difference is it doesn't transfer to TV as well as other sports. Plus, it's really expensive to play.

I think the main reason football is so popular is that they only play 16 games a year. If they played 16 baseball games a year, it would be just as much of an event.

So they wait forever between meetings, then when they plan to have a meeting it gets cancelled (hence today). I don't understand why they aren't just locked in a room together 24/7? Do they even want to fix this or not?

ViPeRx007 wrote:So they wait forever between meetings, then when they plan to have a meeting it gets cancelled (hence today). I don't understand why they aren't just locked in a room together 24/7? Do they even want to fix this or not?

As I understood it, it was more of a re-scheduling for tomorrow morning.

But on the heels of that, Aaron Ward is quoted as saying "we are nowhere" and that a lockout is pretty much a certainty at this point.

Last time, the players ended up taking a worse deal than they were initially offered after losing an entire season of pay. The biggest factor for players is that you don't get that year back physically and therefore financially. It is most important for 3rd/4th line guys because every year they get older, the pile of younger guys with more upside grows to push them out of the league.

While I think the players have valid concerns, I just don't think they have any leverage in this negotiation unless they somehow act together to create a new league and petition for the cup around the NHL and bettman. If the talent leaves in droves, it forces owners to look at the value of their business differently.

Absent that, billionaires always beat millionaires in a money fight.

The league has little to no incentive to compromise in any real sense.

The final result is that we are unlikely to have hockey any time soon unless the players move a great deal closer to the owners position.

kodos wrote:I'm not so sure about that.

I don't think hockey is any more or less easy to understand than any of the other sports. The nitty gritty details of any of the sports are pretty confusing.

The big difference is it doesn't transfer to TV as well as other sports. Plus, it's really expensive to play.

I think the main reason football is so popular is that they only play 16 games a year. If they played 16 baseball games a year, it would be just as much of an event.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that most folks in the USA, and especially in the southern portion of this country, have never played ice hockey.
If you play a sport, you tend to understand it better.

To me, hockey is a very simple game.
The NFL is a much more complex game than the NHL is.

That's kind of along the lines I was getting at. Odds are unless someone has a passion for hockey, they never played it before on account of it being such an expensive game to play. So naturally they'll find it harder to understand some of the rules. Baseball, soccer, basketball and football span much larger fan bases because they're cheaper to play so more people have played them, and on account of that more people understand those sports better than they understand hockey.

not_a_wings_fan wrote:Last time, the players ended up taking a worse deal than they were initially offered after losing an entire season of pay. The biggest factor for players is that you don't get that year back physically and therefore financially. It is most important for 3rd/4th line guys because every year they get older, the pile of younger guys with more upside grows to push them out of the league.

While I think the players have valid concerns, I just don't think they have any leverage in this negotiation unless they somehow act together to create a new league and petition for the cup around the NHL and bettman. If the talent leaves in droves, it forces owners to look at the value of their business differently.

Absent that, billionaires always beat millionaires in a money fight.

The league has little to no incentive to compromise in any real sense.

The final result is that we are unlikely to have hockey any time soon unless the players move a great deal closer to the owners position.

Have to agree. What do the owners lose if the season goes out the window? For the ones losing money every year (more than a few) it might actually be a GOOD thing. And as just mentioned, if the season gets cancelled, the players are forced into a position like 2005 where they end up caving.

The threat/reality of a lockout is Bettman and the owners' Ace in the hole.

WaukeeBlues wrote:

not_a_wings_fan wrote:Last time, the players ended up taking a worse deal than they were initially offered after losing an entire season of pay. The biggest factor for players is that you don't get that year back physically and therefore financially. It is most important for 3rd/4th line guys because every year they get older, the pile of younger guys with more upside grows to push them out of the league.

While I think the players have valid concerns, I just don't think they have any leverage in this negotiation unless they somehow act together to create a new league and petition for the cup around the NHL and bettman. If the talent leaves in droves, it forces owners to look at the value of their business differently.

Absent that, billionaires always beat millionaires in a money fight.

The league has little to no incentive to compromise in any real sense.

The final result is that we are unlikely to have hockey any time soon unless the players move a great deal closer to the owners position.

Have to agree. What do the owners lose if the season goes out the window? For the ones losing money every year (more than a few) it might actually be a GOOD thing. And as just mentioned, if the season gets cancelled, the players are forced into a position like 2005 where they end up caving.

The threat/reality of a lockout is Bettman and the owners' Ace in the hole.

Bad as this sounds, I have to side with the owners moreso than the players on this.

Fact is, teams are bleeding money badly. Sure, Minnesota can spend 98m on one guy for however many years, but how healthy is that to your team's bottom line? Just because you can spend to the cap doesn't mean you can afford it and players salaries is the biggest hit on your operating statement/bottom line for your team. Put simply, if you are in a small market and make small money and spend big money, you're going to bleed fast and go bankrupt. But to have a competative team in order to get people into your stadium, you need to spend money to acquire talent, and the more you spend, the higher 'quality' player you get, which if you're in a small market making small money means you're going to go bankrupt, but what do you do?

Screw salaries, this sport isn't strong enough to support the ridiculous contracts and money the NHLPA wants for their players. They're bankrupting themselves. The owners are screwing themselves over by not implementing a even-money profit sharing model that will bring all the franchises to an equal level finanacially. The biggest challenge in this will be the Canadian teams due to Canada's tax structure and money. The league can no longer exist on the Bigger Teams = Bigger Money strategy unless they intend to have only the Bigger Teams which is fine - if Bettman would just say that. He's too worried about keeping markets that can't even spell Hockey, let alone know exactly what it is.

They need to first figure out their money situation and once they do and devise a way of making the teams permanently solvent by the money they know is coming in, they can devise a cap that will allow teams to subsist on ticket sales and merchandising and perhaps then it can make the owners some manner of profit. Truth is, how many owners who have shelled hundreds of millions into your team ever sold for a profit? That's why they invest in the team, they don't do it for philosophical reasons, unless you're R. Hal Dean, that is.

There has to be a middle ground to all of this, and Bettman isn't the one that will get us there.

I can't agree with the owners right now. The league is complaining about salaries and circumventing the cap. Guess who is doing this? OWNERS willing to pay for it. Get the OWNERS under control. The problem - the Owners do not have a watchdog whereas Bettman's only job is to represent the Owner's interests. No way in hell is he going to blame the owners for the ridiculous contracts and blatant cap circumvention happening in them. Instead, the players have to give in - again - after the Owners supposedly won (the players were considered to have lost on almost every count last time) a landmark CBA which would set the league up for long term success.

I am mixed on issues - some I think the players have good points, some the owners.

1.) Contracts should be no more than the shorter of 7 years or the player's 35th birthday. Max contract 35 and older is 2 years.

2.) Yearly salaries can't vary by more than 25% across the life of the contract. A deal that pays $4mil in year one can't pay more than 5 or less than 3 over the life of the contract.

3.) Your cap hit is what you pay the player in the given year. No averaging, no bullshit.

4.) The players need to take a lower share of revenue.

5.) No revenue is protected from the players. If it's hockey income, it goes in the pile to be divided.

6.) Revenue should be shared through disproportionate allocation of tv and licensing revenues, not by payments from clubs to the league and then back. The goal is leveling the field so that all teams have nearly identical payrolls, the major difference is scouting, drafting, coaching, and player performance - not pocket depth.

7.) All of this makes too much sense and lawyers, agent, and league-hanger-onners will never make enough money to be on board with a system that makes simple sense.

theohall wrote:I can't agree with the owners right now. The league is complaining about salaries and circumventing the cap. Guess who is doing this? OWNERS willing to pay for it. Get the OWNERS under control. The problem - the Owners do not have a watchdog whereas Bettman's only job is to represent the Owner's interests. No way in hell is he going to blame the owners for the ridiculous contracts and blatant cap circumvention happening in them. Instead, the players have to give in - again - after the Owners supposedly won (the players were considered to have lost on almost every count last time) a landmark CBA which would set the league up for long term success.

The owners are kind of forced to circumvent the cap and high salaries due to big market teams allowed to do this, which is entirely Bettman's fault, who caters to the 'big' (money) teams. If you're an owner in a small market, you HAVE to circumvent and borrow against the team for a shot to stay relevant. That's the big problem. The system as it is is wrong and I can understand the owners holding on tightly to have the ability to cheat the cap because for a lot of teams it's the only way to hold together a team to make the playoffs and sell seats. That's not entirely their fault, though it is their fault that they can't sit together, get off their high perch and try to make it fair and level-grounded, but since when has the 'old guard owners' - Detroit, New York, Toronto, etc. ever wanted to play fair, they didn't when the league was expanded into 12 teams, they sure as hell aren't going to do it now.

And the inability to do something about that I put directly into Bettman's lap.