The_Admiral

I was thinking the four they have now and then a circuit of TCs, Madison, Chicago, and Detroit. The Blackhawks are building that new community ice complex next door to the United Center, which would be an ideal site. Detroit and the Cities have no shortage of rinks in the burbs.

1 hour ago, TRoyConcepts said:

I never liked the NWHL and now I hate them.

 

I think some people went overboard in praising the league's virtues just for existing, especially in the wake of the Kane false accusation (lots of "Blackhawks are evil, I'll only support the NWHL now!" from the bien-pensants) but I don't think anyone should hate them. It's good to see women's hockey have a professional league, and I hope they can expand to the midwest soon. It seems to be doing well so far, and hasn't suffered from a fraction of the derision that the WNBA has.

1) John Scott has never played well in any year. If anything, this season has been his worst, barely dressing for games and clearing waivers a couple times.

2) So they can win the draft lottery; the other part of adopting the NBA's system with the top three picks in play is the part where the league rigs it.

3) He's still with St. John's, which is at least quaint. The Coyotes' AHL affiliate is Springfield Mass, the lesser Hartford.

Guy at the league office should have asked John Scott if his daughters would be proud of him starting a fight with Phil Kessel in a preseason game. If he's the sensitive and cerebral man his ghostwriter is making him out to be, he probably would have said "no, come to think of it, they wouldn't, would they." 

tl;dr:

 

- John Scott never wanted to be an enforcer but he had to be one to play, also he is deceptively smart, a second-verse-same-as-the-first Stu Grimson

 

- John Scott successfully reproduced

 

- Having to move to Newfoundland is inconvenient

 

- One of Bettman's cronies tried to shame John Scott out of the All-Star Game by implying that he was disgracing his family

 

- He may have been voted in as a joke, but at least he cracked the NHL in the first place, though he did so in a way that was the basis for being voted in as a joke

 

I'm just not feelin' the sympathy. The Internet Hockey Consensus got this one wrong. Better stick to UNSUSTAINABLE CORSI until we get ourselves back on our feet again.

 

39 minutes ago, LMU said:

Scott is the equivalent of the nerd voted Homecoming King. I'm half expecting him to receive wedgies and wet willies during the game.

 

Am I supposed to feel bad after reading this? The people who voted him into the game to make a stand against his existence should feel bad.

The immediate neighborhood or lack thereof is probably a bigger concern than the arena itself: I think it's just a bunch of bus stops and train stations underneath overpasses. Just about every major American city has expressway viaducts, but there's something about the ones around downtown St. Louis that just make the whole area feel so grim.

So Melnyk is proposing a new Senators arena at Lebreton Flats (a parcel of land in downtown Ottawa that no one is doing anything with). If he's using his own money to do it, okay, whatever, cool, probably good for the Senators and the city. Where it gets weird is that a competing group that doesn't own the Senators is also proposing a new arena at the site, with this group being backed by the Desmarais family, one of a few that more or less runs Quebec. My suspicion is that this is being done ultimately to squeeze Melnyk out of the league and finally capitalize, if you'll pardon the expression, on the Senateurs as a bilingual team, thereby leaving no room for Quebec City.

Also, "aging Scottrade Center"? It's not even 22 years old! Now I know by Atlanta Braves standards, this makes it the Polo Grounds, but that's nothing with proper upkeep. Whatever we're supposed to call the Ice Palace this year is just under 20 years old and Lightning ownership has it looking state-of-the-art. The United Center is the same age and looks to be in great shape. Maybe Dave Peacock can ramrod a National Car Rental Arena through the legislature and the Blues can move to the riverfront.

Couple mildly interesting notes here:

 

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/hockey/professional/blues-may-benefit-most-from-rams-departure/article_d0030b9b-5fb8-504c-b3b5-4791f6c2a8c0.html

 

Quote

The Blues have made strides in strengthening the organization since Tom Stillman’s local ownership group took the reins in 2012 and added Zimmerman in 2014. Among other moves, they restructured their business operations, allowing the organization to limit its losses.

 

“I think we’ve made a lot of progress,” Stillman said. “Initially it was like stabilizing the patient. Then from there, it’s been improving performance. I think we’ve made a lot of progress down that road. Now we’ve got a chance. We’ve got the opportunity to be viable, to be healthy, to be competitive. We are in a better position, but we want and need to go quite a bit further.”

 

To do so, the Blues need to maximize and create new revenue streams in order to keep up with the rest of the NHL. The average revenue among the 30 teams last season was $133 million, according to Forbes.com, and the Blues were below that at $111 million. Despite that fact, the Blues have the highest salary-cap hit in the league this season, according to Generalfanager.com, at $73.5 million (including injured players).

 

“Success is a completely different zone here from the NFL and our amazing, iconic baseball team (the Cardinals),” Zimmerman said. “We have to fight to hang with the big boys (in the NHL). We’re spending the same amount and yet have $100 million less than Montreal, and Toronto and Chicago. We’re not crying poor at all, but this is about a constant fight just to stay competitive.”

 

It’s a challenge that is further complicated by several self-inflicted business decisions by previous owner Dave Checketts, along with an aging Scottrade Center.

 

Stillman’s ownership group inherited a concession contract with Levy Restaurants that in 2008 paid Checketts $10 million in a front-loaded 20-year agreement. The Blues do receive commissions, which are in line with other clubs, but the income would be more substantial if not for the upfront payment. A similar situation exists with the team’s broadcast agreement with Fox Sports Midwest, a deal that included a large advance and doesn’t expire until after the 2019-20 season.

 

Additionally, because of an agreement between Checketts and the city to refurbish the Peabody Opera House, the Blues remain on the hook in a roundabout way for the five percent “amusement” tax on ticket sales. The team no longer pays the tax per se, but instead funds an equal amount to service the Opera House bonds.

 

That would seem to eliminate the chance of a tax break such as the Cardinals received in 2002, when city aldermen approved the complete abatement of ticket taxes and 25 years of real estate tax relief. (The Rams did pay the amusement tax, amounting to $1.8 million annually).

 

 

- "Restructured their business operations" is a nice way of saying that they got so cash-poor that they had to hock their Peoria affiliate, helping to cede downstate Illinois to the Blackhawks

 

- They can't just call the Cardinals the Cardinals, huh? Are people in St. Louis required to heap adjectives on the Cardinals before mentioning them, like how you always have to tell your wife she looks nice before you go out?

 

- That the Blues are mostly running a solid middle-market operation and still bleeding money in payroll costs is a dynamite argument for widening the salary range. Owners clawed back 7% of revenue and it's still not enough for a team in the middle? This could also be a sign that once this Steen/Backes window closes, payroll cuts are coming if...

 

- Just like the Brewers, the Blues are locked into a TV contract that can't properly reflect any gains in viewership. That Levy contract sounds like a doozy, too, though if I'm not mistaken the Blackhawks did something similar when the United Center switched from Bismarck (a division of WirtzCorp) to Levy, and the Blackhawks seem to be doing fine if you don't listen to the lying owner and the newspapers he owns or influences.

 

All that being said, I hope the loss of the Rams does direct some money the Blues' way, because I'm all about strengthening hockey in the midwest (even though St. Louis is kind of the midwest's weird bastard half-brother) and I want a healthy, vibrant, competitive Blues team for the Blackhawks to kick around.

You're still missing the point. The Raiders sell continuity -- not just that the logo and uniforms have remained virtually unchanged through championships and relocations, but a wholesale philosophy that everyone else can embrace trends, but they're going to do things the way they've always done things. It's like when people make concepts to make the team look "more badass," except the Raiders invented our popular conception of "looking badass" in sports, so you're just ripping off the people who ripped you off in the first place. They don't need to change with the times because changing with the times is for people who didn't get it right the first time. The Vertical Game will reign supreme once more!

 

Show me an updated Raider shield that not only looks better but justifies the change in the marketplace after 50+ years. I have to see it to believe it, because I can't conceive of one myself. 

On 1/21/2016 at 1:01 PM, Quillz said:

I really think the Raiders logo could stand to be cleaned up and modernized a bit. Much like the Vikings old primary, the Raiders logo has lots of intricate little lines and details that just don't look good at various sizes. The Vikings did a great job of modernizing their old primary, keeping the same general look but tightening up the lines, leaving out some unnecessary detail... I think the Raiders could do the same.

 

People have said the same thing about another team of mine, the Chicago Bulls, and I've watched the Concepts folder go 0-for-forever on both.

 

As for the 49ers, I like the '90s set a lot. I like the classic set even more.

We got The Ugliest Bathroom back but it's the entire board. How very O Henry.

FIRE BAD

 

CIRCULAR AVATARS WORSE

Could the Blackhawks banners get any uglier? You'd think with 3 championships in 6 years they'd at least get the colours of their logo correct on one of them...

salty, salty. The banners are correct. The sweaters are correct. It's the image files that are wrong.

Revenue sharing, which the Jets had to pay into for a while, will cover any shortcomings at the gate. The Jets won't fail no matter how much the enlightened segment of the hockey internet may want them to.

I didn't think the Kings' mid-2000s gold alts were as awful as everybody else thought (full disclosure: I like shiny things):

Okay in and of themselves, but they of all teams had no business dressing like the Lakers.

I wish the Skating Penguin had kept his scarf into the updated version. It somehow makes the logo both more dynamic and more quaint.

Please post thoughts

Jesus, you first

I like the sleeves and hems, but not the shoulders. I'd have put Robo-Pen on the shoulders, the Skating Penguin up front where it belongs, and put some grey (call it a dual reference to the Steel City and the two Stanley Cups) between the white and gold. That would have been a nice update, I feel.

If someone says the New York Sack Exchange was a thing, I might melt like the Wicked Witch of the West.

I told you guys it'd be a thing.

No!

Not sure about having Austin (Round Rock) and San Antonio both in AAA.

By the way, I took a wheelbarrow of crap for criticizing that logo and the idea of italicizing a building and I'm still very sour over the whole incident. I feel slightly vindicated, but certainly not vindicated enough.

So news from local Amarillo, TX sources state that the newly rebranded San Antonio Missions are looking to relocate.

http://www.myhighplains.com/news/amarillo-pursuing-aa-baseball-team

Interesting...

I guess that's why the Alamo was italicized, it was running away!