NHL Anti-Thread: Bad Business Decision Aggregator

[Coast2CoastAM2006]

Anyway we could speculate about this forever. So I move onto the NHL.

Just found this: http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=378843

I'm just being speculative but I found this in a comment

Tom Gaglardi talked to Hamilton city council 2 years ago about buying & moving the Atlanta Thrashers to Hamilton so it won't surprise me if has the same plans for the stars & is just keeping his mouth shut about moving the team to Hamilton until the deal to buy the stars is done.

Maybe its me getting ahead of myself...

dallas unlike Atlanta and Phoenix draws when they are good. Dallas isn't drawing right now because A)Mavs just won the NBA championship, B)Rangers are in the World Series, C)they have no star power with Modano gone and D)They are in a rebuilding phase. Once the stars start becoming good again they will draw. This isn't Phoenix where BgMac is the only one that shows up for a playoff game, This isn't tampa where 5 fans show up for a Tampa Rays baseball game.

Having Atlanta, eventually Phoenix, Florida and Dallas moving will be an admission of failure that hockey is a failure in the south and will make Bettman look like the worst commish ever.

[NJTank]

Bettman already is the worst ever unless you count Gil Stein whose only act as comish was to put himself in the hall of fame.

[Gothamite]

And yet Bettman's still giving him a run for his money.

[The_Admiral]

dallas unlike Atlanta and Phoenix draws when they are good. Dallas isn't drawing right now because A)Mavs just won the NBA championship, B)Rangers are in the World Series, C)they have no star power with Modano gone and D)They are in a rebuilding phase. Once the stars start becoming good again they will draw.

"The Stars draw well when they pay for big names, win a lot, and don't have to compete with more successful neighbors" isn't exactly a ringing endorsement. Even if they do buy up as many star players (as it were) as the salary cap allows, and win a lot, what happens if entertainment dollars still go to the three teams that are more popular? It took a ridiculous confluence of occurences for the Stars to seem like a success. Their ceiling is low. Not so low as to fail like Atlanta or Phoenix, but they're never going to be more than a niche now. Kind of like Anaheim.

[Lee.]

The Rangers and Cowboys notwithstanding, there's a basketball lockout. The Stars should be doing everything they can to jump on this and get people into the arena, especially when they're off to a strong start like this.

Hell, I'd even use something along the lines of "At least one #9 will have his number retired in Dallas" or something, just to piss off the Cowboys and Romo.

[mattwswfc]

Anyway we could speculate about this forever. So I move onto the NHL.

Just found this: http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=378843

I'm just being speculative but I found this in a comment

Tom Gaglardi talked to Hamilton city council 2 years ago about buying & moving the Atlanta Thrashers to Hamilton so it won't surprise me if has the same plans for the stars & is just keeping his mouth shut about moving the team to Hamilton until the deal to buy the stars is done.

Maybe its me getting ahead of myself...

dallas unlike Atlanta and Phoenix draws when they are good. Dallas isn't drawing right now because A)Mavs just won the NBA championship, B)Rangers are in the World Series, C)they have no star power with Modano gone and D)They are in a rebuilding phase. Once the stars start becoming good again they will draw. This isn't Phoenix where BgMac is the only one that shows up for a playoff game, This isn't tampa where 5 fans show up for a Tampa Rays baseball game.

Having Atlanta, eventually Phoenix, Florida and Dallas moving will be an admission of failure that hockey is a failure in the south and will make Bettman look like the worst commish ever.

Stop defending the Sun belt teams, Toronto have been in a rebuilding phase since 1967! But hey they still draw a sell out crowd.

[ninersdd]

Yeah, I mean a great as the Rangers are playing, their season ends this week. As for the Cowboys, even though they are arguably the most popular team in America, they still only play once per week. (Though with the ups and downs of Romo, it seems like more). The Stars have no excuses to try to market themselves better in their area.

[The_Admiral]

They can cover the whole Metroplex in billboards. It's not gonna make people want to watch a bunch of replacement-level muckers play four men back all night. The "you've heard of Brett Hull and these other teams suck" ad campaign doesn't work when Brett Hull is retired and the other teams don't suck.

[Still MIGHTY]

They can cover the whole Metroplex in billboards. It's not gonna make people want to watch a bunch of replacement-level muckers play four men back all night. The "you've heard of Brett Hull and these other teams suck" ad campaign doesn't work when Brett Hull is retired and the other teams don't suck.

I think that's an interesting point.

Over the past two good years on the ice for Phoenix, yeah they were winning, but it wasn't all that exciting to watch. Yeah Dallas is winning, but watching them, I cursed at my TV [ackbar] "IT'S THE TRAP!" [/ackbar] People see teams like Washington and Pittsburgh on the highlights with all their talents and speed, and they want to see that in hockey. That was the whole point of the post-lockout rules. Fast, high-scoring, exciting hockey to try and get people back into the sport or grab the ever elusive casual fan.

Trying to win over fans that are slow to warm up to hockey in the first place by showing the "the finer points of defensive hockey," is going to be a hard sell. You can see in the paper or the news, oh good they're winning. Then when you sit down to watch, you kinda get lost in it until the final horn sounds with the win. And then people will say, oh good they won.

Admiral used the example earlier of Anaheim. Now while the Ducks aren't exactly a run and gun team, they still have these stars and dynamic players to market. MVP Corey Perry, Ryan Getzlaf, Bobby Ryan, atletic goalie in Jonas Hiller, hockey legend in Teemu Selanne, personality and mustache in George Parros ( ). The Ducks have become a more up tempo team than in the past, and, when they aren't purposefully trying to sludge themselves, they can be a dynamic scoring team. They have the assets to market, and they actually market them quite well. (Side Note: I agree with your earlier point, Admiral. The Ducks are never going to be tops in the market, but they have their niche and they fill it well. They can even go over that limit with a great team or the right situation. Playoffs, Cup Run, bad Angel years, overall frustration with the Angels.)

Dallas and Phoenix don't really have that. Both lost arguably their best player/biggest star. (Brad Richards/Ilya Bryzgalov) Both play primarily defensive systems. Dallas has Mike Ribeiro and... I guess Brendan Morrow. Jamie Benn is really good, but he has almost no name recognition at this point. They have some decent players, but no one that a guy on the street would know. Phoenix is still riding the laurels of Shane Doan as their top guy. Keith Yandle is a dman good d-man, but who is even going to know Keith Yandle? Marketing a d-man isn't usually your best bet. You can market the twitter sensation of BizNasty all you want, but he's only out for 4 or so minutes a night and you're not getting on the ice what he's selling off of it. I actually like their ad campaign ("Hockey The Hard Way") because it does work for their situation, but not for the actual team. (Although they're trying their damndest. They've got billboards all over the Valley.)

These teams have an opportunity to grab, but they are hard teams to market and try and get people excited about them, even if they do win.

[The_Admiral]

One of the things I hate about the sport I love is how easy it still is to obfuscate your way to success with markedly inferior talent. What I love about the NBA is that much more often than not, talent ultimately prevails over dragging the game down into the muck. Let's be honest: even "defensive fundamentals" teams like the mid-'00s Pistons and Spurs were using those defensive fundamentals with multiple lottery picks and/or Hall of Fame players. Teams like the Coyotes and Predators can still BS their way into good records without necessarily having talented skaters, and I don't think that does the sport any favors. I'd love to see a crackdown on the sort of benign obstruction that allows bad teams to succeed, so that their clutching and grabbing either leads to power play goals or a fear of power play goals that hogties them into failure, where they belong.

[Sodboy13]

The Rangers and Cowboys notwithstanding, there's a basketball lockout. The Stars should be doing everything they can to jump on this and get people into the arena, especially when they're off to a strong start like this.

Ever since they declined to release their already-made new third jersey, which is, as we know, a license to print money, I've been convinced that whoever is running the Stars right now is tanking them. Even if the team succeeds on the ice, they seem bound and determined to make that success not translate into success on the business side.

[Coast2CoastAM2006]

Anyway we could speculate about this forever. So I move onto the NHL.

Just found this: http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=378843

I'm just being speculative but I found this in a comment

Tom Gaglardi talked to Hamilton city council 2 years ago about buying & moving the Atlanta Thrashers to Hamilton so it won't surprise me if has the same plans for the stars & is just keeping his mouth shut about moving the team to Hamilton until the deal to buy the stars is done.

Maybe its me getting ahead of myself...

dallas unlike Atlanta and Phoenix draws when they are good. Dallas isn't drawing right now because A)Mavs just won the NBA championship, B)Rangers are in the World Series, C)they have no star power with Modano gone and D)They are in a rebuilding phase. Once the stars start becoming good again they will draw. This isn't Phoenix where BgMac is the only one that shows up for a playoff game, This isn't tampa where 5 fans show up for a Tampa Rays baseball game.

Having Atlanta, eventually Phoenix, Florida and Dallas moving will be an admission of failure that hockey is a failure in the south and will make Bettman look like the worst commish ever.

Stop defending the Sun belt teams, Toronto have been in a rebuilding phase since 1967! But hey they still draw a sell out crowd.

number 1) I could care less about the sunbelt teams. Just leave the Isles alone. (they too could be on the move as well)

Number 2) Toronto is hockey central. Dallas/Fort Worth is football central. big difference. Toronto should draw a sell out crowd ona nightly basis irregardless of the team product. Dallas/fort worth is a fair weather town where who ever not named the cowboys are winning get the attention.

[wildwing64]

Stop defending the Sun belt teams, Toronto have been in a rebuilding phase since 1967! But hey they still draw a sell out crowd.

In fairness, hockey is the number one sport in Canada whereas US based teams are competing with at least three other major pro sports teams per city, and all three of those sports are bigger than hockey; The NHL has however been successful in certain sunbelt markets (Anaheim, San Jose, Dallas, Tampa Bay, maybe Carolina? Maybe Nashville? And of course Los Angeles who never get lumped in with this group for some reason) and has found its niche in these cities. I don't think the Stars are going anywhere anytime soon, and I don't think the future of this franchise should be determined by 4 games of low attendance figures.

But Phoenix, as has been made evident, have not. They've been bleeding money since year one. Their crappy arena lease and their poorly located arena have not helped, and one of the only reasons they're still there is because Glendale needs a tenant for their very expensive Jobing.com arena. It's only getting worse and worse for the Coyotes. They need to get out of there.

[Still MIGHTY]

For those interested, the two forces of the suckily-attended play each other tonight in Glendale. The Coyotes and Stars met in Dallas on a Columbus Day Monday matinee, a thrilling game where the two were scoreless into the 3rd where each scored a goal then finished in a shootout, to an announced crowd of 6,306.

This time it's a Tuesday night at the Jobberdome. I'm excited for the results.

----

Also point of order:

Toronto should draw a sell out crowd ona nightly basis irregardless of the team product.

People, irregardless doesn't mean anything, and is never used correctly. When people say it, they are usually meaning to say "regardless." Regardless means without regard. Irregardless means without without regard... so with regard... If in doubt, use regardless. Please and thank you.

[The_Admiral]

You can also use "irrespective," but you can't split the difference.

I predict 7200 announced, ~3000 AIS for that game. Total shots on goal under 40. This is we're counting on to win over Suns/Mavericks diehards, huh, you rubes?

[Sodboy13]

Announced attendance tonight in Glendale was 6,948. Eagerly awaiting photographic corroboration.

[TruColor]

For those interested, the two forces of the suckily-attended play each other tonight in Glendale. The Coyotes and Stars met in Dallas on a Columbus Day Monday matinee, a thrilling game where the two were scoreless into the 3rd where each scored a goal then finished in a shootout, to an announced crowd of 6,306.

This time it's a Tuesday night at the Jobberdome. I'm excited for the results.

----

Also point of order:

Toronto should draw a sell out crowd ona nightly basis irregardless of the team product.

People, irregardless doesn't mean anything, and is never used correctly. When people say it, they are usually meaning to say "regardless." Regardless means without regard. Irregardless means without without regard... so with regard... If in doubt, use regardless. Please and thank you.

"Irregardless" isn't really a word. Don't ever use it, regardless of how often you hear people say it.

[goalieboy82]

when do you all think they will decide on if the yotes will be getting a new owner (from canada) and will be moving the team to canada. there has to be a cut off date because of the realignment for 12/13 season.

[rvrdgsfn]

I imagine it won't be much longer. The Yotes need to do something & fast if they have a chance of sticking around. The NHL can only take so much of this crud before they realize its getting old, especially with Quebec City building a new arena soon & the reports coming from Seattle.

[The_Admiral]

http://www.sportsnet...shannon_sather/

Circle Nov. 23rd as the date for Tom Gaglardi to officially take over the Dallas Stars, since the deadline for placing a bid for the team has past and he is the only bidder.In St. Louis, Matthew Hulsizer's bid for the Blues continues to plod along. Understand there is no binding agreement between the Hulsizer group and Dave Checketts and the SCP group. One source told me that it still is not clear that the Hulsizer group will be able to complete the purchase. There were reports that former Tampa owner Oren Koules was involved, but in talking to him today, he certainly doesn't sound like he's completely committed to the process. In fact, his most pressing issue this week is his wife giving birth to their baby in Southern California.

In Phoenix, former Sharks president Greg Jamison is still trying to get a group in place to purchase the Coyotes from the league. I've been told that while Jamison has little money of his own in the deal, he is now having trouble with his investors to commit to the project. Meanwhile, Jerry Reinsdorf sits and waits to see if he can still be the answer in the desert.

In Florida, ownership there has been adamant that Dale Tallon must dump some salary, hence the shopping and subsequent trade of David Booth. The Panthers unloaded almost $21 million in committed money for Booth and Steve Reinprecht, while taking on $4.75 million for Mikael Samuelsson and Marco Sturm. But let's remember, the Cats have new entry-level contracts with Erik Gubrandson and Jonathan Huberdeau that could max out at $3.2 million dollars per player a year, over the same time period as the Booth deal. Somehow, it just might make sense. Just how much cash on hand for the team might be indicated if young Gubrandson sticks with the big team this season.

Oh, man, if Hulsizer is relying on Oren Koules to help close the deal, the Blues are about to live in interesting times. What a pair of big shooters there.

What a surprise! The vaunted Greg Jamison group never had money! Of course not, because Greg Jamison is not and never was an independent billionaire, just a businessman playing with OPM. With the recent Trib story about just how disgustingly Reinsdorf is bending Illinois taxpayers over the barrel, maybe there will be some much-needed backlash against him. I hope this plan, like all his other ones, requires tax subsidies that the Goldwater Institute will block, and then we can finally be done.

That's pretty bad if the Panthers' race to the salary floor was immediately followed by an ownership-mandated salary dump. But the Panthers are okay.

NHL ownership, extant and prospective, sucks.