Sodboy13

1 minute ago, LMU said:

I think Gary's probably blown so much money on Girls Gone Wild videos over the years that the thought of losing a Sun Belt market at or near a college town makes him dead inside.

Heh-heh, "research triangle."

Alleged new Hurricanes owner Thomas Dundon made the bulk of his fortune four weeks ago in a settlement as part of his severance for screwing up while overseeing a profoundly shady bank's U.S. subprime auto loan division. Seriously, read a little on what Santander's been doing in this country. Seems like a perfect fit for the Hurricanes.

3 minutes ago, Still MIGHTY said:

Jesus...

 

Carolina to Seattle, and Expansion to Quebec? Right? That's what we're going to do here?

Carolina to Carolina and Expansion in Seattle. Gary's got Karmanos' back for eternity, even if he sells, and he's going to sucker Chris Hansen and whoever else out of $600 million.

3 hours ago, the admiral said:

Genius team president Don Waddell is dynamically rethinking gate revenues: it's better not to have people at the games! The last block quote, Jesus Christ, he's been possessed by the ghost of Bill Wirtz! Come to think of it, that would explain the Thrashers trading the best player in their history for a pile of turds.

 

But seriously, I remember reading years ago about how Karmanos charged some of the most expensive ticket prices in the league in Greensboro to demonstrate to a new and fragile market how they weren't devaluing themselves just because they were in a new and fragile market. If you don't know how this went, well, it went exactly how you would think it went. Good to know they've gotten more sophisticated over the last 20 years, huh? I hate this team, I hate this league, these guys are all carnies and a lot of them aren't even particularly good at it.

The internet still pleasantly surprises me sometimes. "No way that rundown of the Hurricanes' early years I read 18 years ago is still online," I thought.

It's still online. Merry Christmas, @the admiral.

Here's a suuuuuuuper-fun excerpt from June of 1998:

Quote

Dean Jordan, the new president of the Canes' holding company, announces several policy changes for the coming season. The team will no longer release season ticket numbers and will not set goals for packages sold. As previously announced, the black curtains, lowered over the ends of the upper deck of the Greensboro Coliseum to cut capacity, will now block out the entire upper deck, cutting seating to 10-12,000; the new twist is that the curtains will not go back up, even if the team could sell more tickets. Jordan claims this is an operational decision; you can't provide quality service in the arena if you don't know whether the crowd will be 19,000 or fewer than 10,000. But most surprising to fans, Jordan says the team will no longer give away free tickets. In 1997-98, the team handed out free ducats as fast as they could print them; speculation ran that Peter Karmanos had changed the name of his company from Compuware to "Comp You"-ware. The rationale was that if they could expose people to the sport, they would eventually shell out money for tickets. But Jordan says it is better to have 5,000 paying spectators. "As far as I'm concerned, there will be zero tickets given away," he says. "At some point in time, you've got to start establishing value. We might as well start establishing it sooner than later." Which of course is what Jim Rutherford said in May, 1997, in announcing ticket prices and saying they would not discount their product.

A $10 million non-refundable deposit every three to five years oughta do the trick.

They're not going to move the storied franchise of Hall Of Fame Hockey Builder Peter F ing Karmanos out to Seattle and kick Chicago east. It'll be Seattle buying in for something north of half a billion in non-HRR, and Arizona being delicately placed in the Central, where it will outlive us all.

The Seattle arena deal is a go, so there's team 32 and the 16th in the West. Enjoy your $500 million, 19,000-seat arena for the Remparts, Québec.

Look, if I'm not getting the chance to actually punch Stoolies, you're not getting my fifty bucks.

Hannibal Lecterns, then you hold Podium Night at the ballpark and everyone has a fit.

Isn't the problem that Penn State isn't interested in hosting the event and/or wants to put a bunch of onerous conditions on it?

Not only is it an easy shot east on I-90, but there's commuter rail right out of downtown Chicago to South Bend with dedicated shuttle bus service to and from Notre Dame Stadium.

Speaking of which, redo one of these posters for hockey and take my damn money.

5 hours ago, Bucfan56 said:

 

Fun fact: I got the worst food poisoning of my entire life from that JR's during the absolute WORST date I've ever been on. It was still more fun than an actual Coyotes game, though!

More like Johnny Rockets Out Your Butthole

Houston would make for a much better aligned 8th team in the Central than Arizona would, once Seattle comes along. That said, this is all talk, nothing but, and Gary's dug in on Glendale until the last penny is gone.

Disrupting Labor Compensation

Jeezus, Andrew, if you've got a hard-on for union-busting and stiffing your employees on their wages, buy a newspaper, not a hockey team.

It's been too long since this league had direct involvement in a Ponzi scheme. NHL Goaltending Supervisor Kay Whitmore, come on down!

It is. Wonder what made him change that last word. It's a stumper!

i wouldn't underestimate the ability or the extent of someone like him to fall upward.

When I find a good active volcano with reasonable airfare, I plan on sharing the good news with everyone whom I respect and/or care about.

I read Drew Magary's piece today, and it dovetailed with the thoughts below I meant to post last night, but forgot.

What Portnoy is doing now is, to me, one of the more dire effects of the idea that "The Internet Never Forgets" that I don't know any of us grasped until people started screenshotting tweets and making the world their public burn books. As I mentioned in another thread, there's thirteen years of me on this board. That's slightly more than a third of my life, highlighted in over 10,000 mainly-pointless blurbs of who the hell knows what. I didn't have my current job then. I was still a year-and-a-half away from meeting the woman I'm now married to with two kids. And I bet I've said a lot of things on this board that present-day me wouldn't support or would recoil at with regret. Does that give anyone who doesn't like what I say in a given instance the right to go dredging and say "Ah HA! You used to think this other way! You have ceded moral high ground for eternity"? I mean, in the current climate, I guess it does, but to me, all that does is lead to a resistance to self-change or self-improvement, for fear of being labeled an eternal hypocrite. It's Who Ya Crappin' meets the Rollerball rules committee. It's an approach that threatens to level a playing field in a destructive manner rather than a constructive one, abandoning the hard, frustrating work of building up in favor of tearing others down and saying "See, now we're even."

And on the other side of it, you have Portnoy, proudly unchanging, proclaiming it as virtue. He was a piece of back then, he's a piece of today, and he'll be the man you can count on to be a piece of tomorrow. I find it vile, but I also can't deny that that's what wins nowadays.

In another instance of "We can say anything as long as we say it in French," Mario Tremblay is telling anyone who'll listen that he thinks Alex Galchenyuk has been in drug rehab twice. Move the Habs to Seattle.

26 minutes ago, the admiral said:

Yeah but world-class backbiter Sarah Spain wanted them gone because they're rude and that's a half-hour of TV she could have instead.

I don't like Sarah either, but jeez, dude. At some point it's your problem and not theirs.

ESPN wanted the Pardon My Take duo in a vehicle without the Barstool name.

Portnoy wouldn't allow it.

ESPN acquiesced.

ESPN acts stunned that there was blowback on promoting the Barstool brand, axes the show.

In the end, ESPN looks bad to everyone who thinks Barstool is trash for greenlighting the show, and subjects themselves to the numbnuts Clay Travis contingent for canceling it and giving in to the no-good liberal PC SJWs #DBAP. If ESPN keeps picking exactly the wrong way to go about doing things, they'll land the NHL broadcast deal in no time.

It's because you've been visiting porn sites.

Oh, jeez. It looks like a February Tuesday in there. That's stunning.

Lou Lamiorello accidentally explains why the NHL will never have widespread popularity: