How to fix the NHL

[MDE3 0]

One of the major falacies in the whole mess is the constant chant that only winners create fan interest....it;s not true...excitement creates fan interest...winning is only one form of excitement. Having the possibility of winning helps, but reverting to any defensive system that promotes interference to create wins becomes totally counterproductive. It takes the excitement out of the winning.

I have not had a chance to get behind the team I have backed since I was old enough to watch "Hockey Night in Canada" for years,......the Canadiens....but I still love the game...why? It's not the teams that keep my interest, but the game itself...the adreniline that it promotes when a good hard fought game is being played. I think most true fans of the game have this intinsinc love of the sport itself, and having a favorite team adds fuel to the fire, but the love of the game does not go away when your team does.

The length of the season has a lot to do with the type of defensive systems used, as even more does the job longevity of coaches and team management..their success is more measured in wins than fan interest or monetary success...if they aren't winning the fan interest increasingly becomes in whom the team is going to fire, and with whom they will be replaced...ie the Rangers. So they play the game that suits their needs.

To play 2- 4 games per week for seven months or more, a high flying hard hitting game must be avoided..players cannot recuperate fast enough to sustain the pace either physically or emotionally..so the game settles down into the sluggish grind matches that we become familiar with during the majority of the season.

Fewer teams and fewer games would help grow the sport...whether it can be effected or not. The important growth is NOT in the number of fans who come to the games, but in the number of fans who want to find the game on the boob tube. There are fans of the sport all over the country who cannot either afford the time or the money to attend the NHL games in person....these are the hard core fans that the game has been losing..not the minority who can afford to actually attend.

If you give up 30% total physical attendance(through fewer teams and fewer game both), but gain 50% more television fans due to more exciting and better games....couldn't this translate into a financial gain in the larger picture?

[Jim Bob 0]

Well, here we are. The players are locked out. It is NOT a player strike as many of the uninformed like to think. How are we going to get out of this before Sydney Crosby's grandchildren take to the ice? Here is my top-ten list of suggestions:

1) Fire Gary Bettman, preferably publically humiliating him at the same time. He obviously knows nothing about promoting hockey in the US and even less about labor negotiations. Just because you build it, doesn't mean that they'll come. Force-feeding hockey to places like Nashville, Carolina, and South Florida isn't going to get anyone an NFL-like TV contract.

2) Fold ten teams. I won't provide a list of teams, so as not to offend anyone who might be a fan. But, I think it is pretty obvious which teams need to go. Just think back to that old post about the fact that 75% of the losses were incurred by six teams and it is pretty clear that contraction is absolutely necessary to save this league. This will also have the effect of concentrating the talent pool, meaning less teams will have to resort to the trap (hopefully).

3) Forget the words "salary cap". Its time to wake up and smell the cost certainty. There is nothing that a salary cap won't accomplish that a luxury tax combined with revenue sharing and sensible spending on the part of the owners won't accomplish. Besides, even if a cap of $30 mil means that teams like Edmonton and Pittsburg would still be barely breaking even. But, if those teams were receiving an additional $10-$15 million apiece (which I think is perfectly reasonable, giving the amount of money that big-market teams like Detroit, NY, and Toronto make, and remember, this is a 20 team NHL I'm thinking about) they could sign big-name talent, make the playoffs consistenly, and increase their own revenue in that way. A salary cap would just mean that the Ranger's owners would be pocketing about $50 million more than they are right now, big deal. This whole lockout is basically for nothing, which just makes me hate Bettman more.

4) Go to international-sized ice, put in as many international rules as the owners and GMs will agree to.

5) Grant an exemption for one or two "marquee players" to be exempt from any restrictions on salary, provided that those players were drafted by the team and developed in that team's system. This will allow players like Joe Sakic and Yzerman to stay with the same team for 22 years. There is no reason to punish teams for drafting well, like would be done under a salary cap.

6) Forget ever getting a big national TV contract in the US. Focus on regional contracts that the teams themselves would negotiate. Philly, Detroit, New York, etc have never had a problem with revenue have they?

7) Institute a rule for illegal defense in regards to the trap (this would be tough, but there must be some way)

8) Shorten to a seventy game season, while increasing intra-conference and intra-division games to foster rivalries.

9) The NHL can't survive without Canada. Ensure the financial health of the Canadian NHL teams by instituting a revenue sharing program whereby the shortfall caused by conversion of the Canadian dollar is made-up for by the league.

10) Eight percent rollback in player salaries, institute a "dead drop" date 2-3 weeks into the season so that there are no holdouts (basically, if you don't have a contract by a certain time in the season you ain't playin at all that year), modify the entry level system so that players cannot re-enter the draft if they remain unsigned, and so that their total pay (including all bonuses, in any form) does not exceed a certain percentage of the luxury tax limit on payroll. Also, teams should be able to bring players to arbitration, and qualifying offers make to restricted free agents should be as high or low as the player likes, but an independent mediator could decide if the offer is unreasonably low, in which case the player could be granted immediate unrestricted free agency.

Sorry this is so long, but I think that we can have a good discussion about these and other points. These are all just my opinion, so please take them as that and feel free to correct me if you think I'm wrong.

1) Expansion wasn't Gary Bettman's brainchild. The NHL had started down the path to having a 30 team league before Bettman was hired. He was brought on board merely to see it through to the end. If you hate a 30 team league, then blame the greedy owners that wanted the quick cash from expansion fees and not merely the guy that did what his bosses told him to do.

2) To fold a team will cost the owners in the area of $75 to 100 million per team. To contract a team the league has to buy the team from the owner and then fold it. Sorry, but I don't see the 20 owners that would remain handing over $750 million to $1 billion to see that happen.

3) If the owners can't control themselves in the current system, what makes you think that they just wouldn't go George Steinbrenner in a system with a luxury tax? The only way a luxury tax will work is if it has serious teeth, like the proposal that Brian Burke has made. But, the NHLPA has already hinted that a system such as Burke's is merely a salary cap in disguise and the NHLPA won't even consider something like that.

4) International ice won't happen because of money. The cost to retrofit the current arenas will be too much for owners to bare. What they should have done was made the new wave of arenas have larger ice surfaces. Although, I'm not convinced that larger ice surfaces automatically open the game up. But, I think there is a happy medium to be found somewhere between the current dimensions and the olympic sized sheet of ice.

5) That move would enable stupid owners to spend like drunken sailors. To me, that's a bad idea.

6) Agreed. But, they should do something about improving the quality of the coverage that they are getting in the US. And they should push to bring back NHL2Nite. Or, perhaps they should look at what the NFL has gotten in the NFL Network and really build up the NHL Network both in Canada and the US.

7) I know there has been talk of having rules against how many players can skate backwards when the puck is in the attacking zone. Personally, I'd love to see some rules that force teams to forecheck and pressure the puck carrier more.

8) Call me crazy, but I'm starting to warm up to the idea of splitting things up so the East only plays the East and the West only plays the West. A set up like that never hurt MLB much in the past. And I'd love to get back to a system where you played division rivals in the 1st round of the playoffs like back in the day.

9) The Canadian Assistance Plan is already in effect. But, they could expand it a bit. But, it's not like Toronto, Montreal, or perhaps even Vancouver need the help.

10) I'd make the drop dead date the start of training camp. If a player isn't signed by the time camp opens up, then he's sitting for the year.

[MDE3 0]

The problem with the game is the obvious waning of fan interest. We can blame the condition of the current game, and the long and often tedious season, but the fundamental problem, is the limited fan base. The sport is not really undergoing a growth spurt at the youth participant levels. The growth of the sport at USA hockey has dramatically tapered off since the year 2000. Marketing of the sport to those who have never played any version of the sport, is a waste of money in my opinion. What needs to happen is that the sport must get played at the street levels again.

Baseball has always had "stickball" and "sand lot ball" which assured that most kids have played some version of the sport and shared some fantasies about s future,

Basketball has had street ball for years.

Football has been played between friends in the parks on sundays and Saturdays as "touch or flag football" for years.

Interestingly the greatest "expansion" in NHL history coincided with the growth of street hockey..played widely in the early nineties in local disco roller rinks and outdoor parks across the USA...and yes even in the streets. In the years after 1992, and up until the year 1999 USA hockey saw a growth in the number of particpants greater than 25% per year(ice hockey).

For the last 6 years the growth of inline hockey has stagnated, as the elite dedicated arenas with "sport court" grew up, but the grass roots, "street" versions of the sport all but dissapeared. NHL Breakout was an attempt to reignite this, but it was a lackluster and non concerted effort. For the last 5 years (approximately) the growth of particpants in USA hockey(ice) has dropped to about 2-5% per year.

Conclusion: without the growth in the numbers of youth players..in some version of the sport, the interest in hockey will stagnate, and with the current lack of promotion at the pro levels, significantly decline. The only place that a broad base of players can be drawn back into the sport, is at the least expensive level....street roller hockey(today's equivalent of "pond hockey", street b-ball, sand lot baseball, and park football)...trying to grow participants where parents must pay thousands of $ per year for their kids to play, is the wrong place to promote it. (in house, or travel ice and inline hockey)

There is no other "marketing miracle" that can make this happen....you must grow your fans from the "street" up....

[bulletproof_funk 0]

What needs to happen is that the sport must get played at the street levels again.

I agree with you there. Even though I missed out on playing pond hockey while growing up, I enjoy it the most now even as an adult. I think for me at least, it reinforces my love of the game. Achieving this in the US maybe tough though. Most Canadians grew up with an outdoor winter rink a 5-10 minute walk away from their homes. It has alot to do with community priorities. Maybe ball hockey in an empty lot or rented gym is a good starting point to get people more in tune with hockey even at a basic level (inexpensive, fairly convenient).

This article I found on TSN points out three major transactions that skyrocketed salaries out of control under the former CBA:

http://tsn.ca/nhl/news_story.asp?ID=99378&hubName=nhl

As for more immediate solutions, I too am for fewer games a season. Every regular season game would have more meaning to the players, teams and fans. And there are many people don't have the time to watch two or three games a week around a floating schedule. Besides, alot of people just want to get to the playoffs anyway. Anywhere from 68-72 games a season would be a good number.

[jay 1]

Here's an article as sort of a rebuttal to the one you posted...

http://www.tsn.ca/columnists/bob_mckenzie.asp

Both make some very interesting points. The main thing I get from them is that no matter what kind of agreement these guys might ever come to, there will end up being numerous unforseeable situations that could cause the same type of future labor issues. Yes, "cost certainty" (as douchebag :cough: Bettman likes to put it) is there to essentially protect the owners from themselves but I can also see it as a way to protect the owners from the unforseeable loopholes that can arrise in the system.

[Chadd 916]

The current arbitration system is a major part of the problem, McKenzie is 100% correct on that.

[MDE3 0]

Here's a thought....restructure all player salaries off an escalating but modest base salary, with all additional earnings being entirely performance related.

Each team get's a percentage of the gate for a win and half that for a loss.

IE..so much per goal, so much per assist (equal to the pay for a goal) so much for a positive +/-/per game and a season end bonus as well. So much deducted for penalties from the bonus, so much for the first, second and third star of the game.

At the end of each game the earnings from the game are split with players getting a fixed percentage each, as well as the coaches etc. a discretionary bonus of say 2%(or whatever is appropriate) would be voted by the players for their own pick (secret ballot but cannot vote for yourself) of player of the game.

A radical concept, but one which supports team play, and one which will prevent the foolishness of paying huge salaries to players whose performance seems to go down in inverse relationship to their change in pay.

[MDE3 0]

It's pretty embarrassing when one's last post gets so little response that you feel obliged to answer it yourself...

The current perception of players recieving excessive salaries is compounded by the fact that a sport is judged(viewed or not viewed) not necessarily by the quality of play alone, but by the "star" power that certain players enjoy. The very fact that a name player shows up on the roster, is understood by the team owners and the media to have some fan drawing value ..both for the live as well as the media fans. Unfortunately this star power was orginally based on the players performance, but after a while, the name of the player takes on a life of it's own, and these players continue to negotiate based on their theoretical drawing influence, rather than their explicit performance contributions.

Some of these players have now made the mental transition from star player, to "star", and mentally often feel like all they have to do is "show up" with or without their game in order to justify their paycheck.

A performance based, prize money type system, would insure that all players showed up for every game, and if seemed they were lagging, the team itself would effect sanctions, as well as the fact that by not "bringing it" every day, they directly hurt their own earnings, as well as the teams'.

The concept of the "superdraw" player has outlived it's merits in the NHL..hockey is too "real" a sport for a player to "dog it" too long before the star label is more lip service than reality, and the fans recognise this long before the "establishment" does. Hence the scratching of heads by knowledgable fans when huge salaries are extorted by "marguis " players long past their "marquis performance" years.

Really want to fix the sport....let the players make their money the old fashioned way......where the question "what have you done for me lately?" has some serious teeth

[Chadd 916]

Just got an SI with some scary poll numbers...

On a favorite sport to play poll, hockey was not listed.

On favorite sports to watch, hockey came in 5th with 6%. Behind the big 3 and Auto racing.

Hockey has the ugliest players in another poll, lol.

On the plus side, Gretzky was voted best hockey player crushing the others at 67%.

Just food for thought.

SI has almost no hockey fans as readers anymore because of their poor coverage for so many years. The same media that is crowing about the lack of interest in hockey is partially responsible for it. It's hard to be a casual fan when you have to search so hard for information.

[Chadd 916]

I had a subscription for years and I only miss one issue a year.

[Jim Bob 0]

Just got an SI with some scary poll numbers...

On a favorite sport to play poll, hockey was not listed.

On favorite sports to watch, hockey came in 5th with 6%.  Behind the big 3 and Auto racing.

Hockey has the ugliest players in another poll, lol.

On the plus side, Gretzky was voted best hockey player crushing the others at 67%.

Just food for thought.

SI has almost no hockey fans as readers anymore because of their poor coverage for so many years. The same media that is crowing about the lack of interest in hockey is partially responsible for it. It's hard to be a casual fan when you have to search so hard for information.

That's a chicken or the egg argument.

Is the coverage poor because their isn't a huge fanbase or is hte fanbase not huge because of the lack of coverage.

To me, you have to earn media attention. And the NHL hasn't done that.

Plus, there was a time when SI put on their cover that the NHL had passed the NBA. But that was right before the work stoppage in 1994. And we have all seen how things have gone since then...............................