NHL Anti-Thread: Bad Business Decision Aggregator

[VampyrRabbit]

18 hours ago, Dilbert said:

I get Omaha vibes from the proposed new Omaha arena. Most sports in Omaha are played in suburban venues and not in Omaha proper. The Storm Chasers and Union Omaha are in Papilion. The Lancers and Beef are in Ralston, and the newcomer Iowa Rampage are in Council Bluffs, Iowa across the river. The exceptions are Creighton, UNO, College World Series, and the new Supernovas volleyball team.

I got Cleveland Barons vibes from the location of the planned arena because only an idiot would put a venue that far outside the city, they would struggle to draw flies to a :censored: convention in that location.

[BrySmalls]

On 2/17/2024 at 2:15 PM, Bmac said:

Yesterday Gary Bettman met with the crew trying to bring an NHL expansion team to Omaha.

 

Is it already April Fools Day??

[Bmac]

On 2/17/2024 at 1:15 PM, Bmac said:

Yesterday Gary Bettman met with the crew trying to bring an NHL expansion team to Omaha. This included the potential owner, Rod Yates, and the Nebraska governor, among others.

 

A summary from my friend (with some of my own thoughts mixed in):

 

They're working on building a 18-19k arena that would serve as the USA Volleyball training headquarters (something that is actually far more likely to happen) and house the NHL team. The problem is that this buffoon is trying to place the team in Gretna, a small city half an hour outside downtown Omaha.

 

Yates' financial tech company identified 560k people in the Omaha/Lincoln metro areas who have NHL season tickets or have purchased NHL tickets or meet other data points showing they are NHL fans.

 

Yates pitched the NHL on his company providing data analytic marketing for all NHL franchises, which would be headquartered in Gretna.

 

Apparently he wants to call the team the Nebraska Knight Owls. The use of the Knights nickname by Omaha hockey teams dates back to 1945, but Vegas has already claimed that moniker. Owls is the mascot of the local soccer team, Union Omaha. The former minor league football team used the name Omaha Nighthawks. And utilizing the Nebraska moniker rather than Omaha will piss off thee Omaha fans while pleasing folks in Gretna, Lincoln, etc.

 

Yates is neighbors in Park City, Utah, with Ryan Smith, who wants to move the Coyotes to Salt Lake City.

 

***

 

As much as I'd love to have an NHL team here in Omaha, this whole thing is a joke. This is what happens when delusional wealthy morons have connections.

 

Adding to this after finding out that the meeting was unannounced. As in, the Omaha crew flew to New York and managed to get a meeting with Bettman without an appointment.

 

OITGDNHL

[Cosmic]

6 hours ago, Bmac said:

 

Adding to this after finding out that the meeting was unannounced. As in, the Omaha crew flew to New York and managed to get a meeting with Bettman without an appointment.

 

OITGDNHL

Who do they think they are?! The Yakuza?

[tigerslionspistonshabs]

https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/article/winnipeg-jets-owner-says-attendance-must-improve-to-avoid-future-problems/

 

Omaha Jets? 

[Fowler2]

It's funny how these articles never mention about tickets being expensive. 

[GDAWG]

1 hour ago, tigerslionspistonshabs said:

https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/article/winnipeg-jets-owner-says-attendance-must-improve-to-avoid-future-problems/

 

Omaha Jets? 

 

They won't do anything with the Jets until the Coyotes situation is resolved and who knows when that will be resolved. 

[gosioux76]

4 hours ago, BottomlessPitt said:

It's funny how these articles never mention about tickets being expensive. 

 

Even more annoying is that the story didn't attempt to address the question of "why," whether it be related to cost or something else. It could easily lead you to believe that the people of Winnipeg just don't care about the Jets anymore.

 

Comparing Jets attendance to the Blue Bombers attendance is just as misleading. A cursory look at ticket prices show the lowest-priced tickets for a Jets game at $80, nearly 67% higher than a Blue Bombers ticket, which can be had for $48.  

[Sykotyk]

7 hours ago, GDAWG said:

 

They won't do anything with the Jets until the Coyotes situation is resolved and who knows when that will be resolved. 

Coyotes move to Atlanta. Jets move to Phoenix. In ten years, the Atlanta Coyotes can move to Winnipeg.

 

It's the circle of life.

[who do you think]

16 hours ago, tigerslionspistonshabs said:

https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/article/winnipeg-jets-owner-says-attendance-must-improve-to-avoid-future-problems/

 

Omaha Jets? 

 

How are you gonna relocate the Jets for underwhelming attendance when the Coyotes are still playing at an abandoned Planet Fitness on a "temporary" basis? 9500 season tickets doubles up the latter's whole capacity.

 

I don't live in Canada and don't know anyone who does, so my knowledge of whatever goes on up there is limited to whatever I happen to stumble across either here or on sites like reddit, which could be ChatGPT bots for all I know. But it seems like standard of living isn't great up there right now, by North American standards. And Winnipeg apparently has never been particularly strong in that regard anyway. So people probably just can't afford the price point they're insisting on. The lowest available ticket price being almost double that of the Blue Bombers is silly.

 

> durrrrrr if you cant find money for overpriced tickets during a rough economy I guess youre just not real fans, no shuddup about the coyotes they just need another new arena there are five million people in the phoenix arizona metropolitan area the number you have dialed is not in service

 

Also speaking of the Coyotes, Coyotes terminate Adam Ruzicka after he posts cocaine video on instagram. And definitely read those comments if the phrase "growing the game" makes you feel any kind of way.

[BBTV]

4 hours ago, who do you think said:

But it seems like standard of living isn't great up there right now, by North American standards.

 

Yeah, Canadians are basically living in igloos and yurts, killing their food with their bare hands, and praying to various gods that their diseased children heal quickly before reaching the estimated Canadian life expectancy of 30 (since nobody can afford health care, unlike in the States where everything is affordable and everyone has access to care, nobody's defaulting on loans or living on streets or in subway stations, etc.)  Add in the wars, and yeah - the standard of living all the way up there is awful.

[LaGrandeOrange]

Canadian here, can attest. I just celebrated my 37th birthday and I feel so lonely since none of my friends made it this far.

 

31 minutes ago, BBTV said:

 

Yeah, Canadians are basically living in igloos and yurts, killing their food with their bare hands, and praying to various gods that their diseased children heal quickly before reaching the estimated Canadian life expectancy of 30 (since nobody can afford health care, unlike in the States where everything is affordable and everyone has access to care, nobody's defaulting on loans or living on streets or in subway stations, etc.)  Add in the wars, and yeah - the standard of living all the way up there is awful.

 

[The_Admiral]

45 minutes ago, BBTV said:

 

Yeah, Canadians are basically living in igloos and yurts, killing their food with their bare hands, and praying to various gods that their diseased children heal quickly before reaching the estimated Canadian life expectancy of 30 (since nobody can afford health care, unlike in the States where everything is affordable and everyone has access to care, nobody's defaulting on loans or living on streets or in subway stations, etc.)  Add in the wars, and yeah - the standard of living all the way up there is awful.

 

Good stuff, but there is a cost-of-living crisis going on in Canada even worse than ours. They're dealing with the same price-gouging at the grocery stores and gas stations plus a massive real estate bubble. You can't buy a house, you can't pay the mortgage, you can barely pay rent, it's insane what's going on up there. It's going to hurt a lot of Canadian cities, and the solution won't be to move the Calgary Flames to an office park in Alpharetta.

 

That being said, the Jets aren't off the hook for all this. By their own admission, they took advantage of ridiculous demand at the outset and did f-ck-all with it for the better part of a decade, and now that their sales reps have to be more than just passive order-takers, they realized no one knows how to sell a product. And what product? Kevin Cheveldayoff has been overseeing a rebuild that's been going on since the release of the iPad and has failed to build a team that's reliably in the conversation every single year nor a team that picks a few years to go all-in. I don't think that's because Winnipeg is scary, it's just years' worth of insufficient drafting/development, which, under guaranteed payouts and a hard cap, any organization anywhere needs to get right.

 

I don't think this means Winnipeg fans are bad. Frankly, that they went this long with TNSE running on autopilot is impressive. Loosening up on shared season tickets and getting more corporate sales can help. More than that, so will lowering prices. TNSE has basically captured most of downtown Winnipeg at this point; they're sucking up everyone's money one way or the other. 

[BBTV]

17 minutes ago, The_Admiral said:

You can't buy a house, you can't pay the mortgage, you can barely pay rent, it's insane what's going on up there. It's going to hurt a lot of Canadian cities, and the solution won't be to move the Calgary Flames to an office park in Alpharetta.

 

My first hand Canada knowledge is limited to a few friends that I correspond with on a semi-regular basis, and a few trips within the past year (granted, to Toronto and MTL areas, and not "other Canada"), but the issues I've heard about weren't described to me as anything different or worse than places like SF, NY and other American cities (with a less-visible, but I'm sure still existent homelss population and drug crisis), and what a lot of Americans are dealing with due to relatively-high interest rates and inflation.  Again - verrrrry small sample size that's not representative of an entire nation.  But is "quality of life" any worse than what people are dealing with in many North American and European cities?

 

When I hear "quality of life", I'm thinking of places I've been where there's literally mounds of dirt inside the house, people fishing in tattered rags, people dealing with occupation, etc.  I just thought it was a funny statement.

 

* I did see two protests against some proposed plan to privatize health care, which people did claim (probably rightly so) would have a "quality of life" impact.

 

 

[The_Admiral]

I think homelessness has become a bigger problem in the major cities than it had before, especially in Vancouver, but the issues are with cost of living, not quality of life. Every house in Brampton is like 30 guys named Padjit living cheek-by-jowl, their quality of life probably isn't exceptional, but mostly it's just that everything is prohibitively expensive. Canada has a reputation of crapping out publicly funded sitcoms about handicapped Muslim lesbians but underneath that veneer is capitalism as ruthless as any we have here.

[Digby]

Is it true that the Property Brothers Extended Universe sucked up enough flippable houses in the GTA that it actually contributed to the property value spike?

[tigerslionspistonshabs]

If Atlanta does end up getting a team in the future, do you guys think they'd adopt the Thrashers moniker? I know they weren't exactly a model for success, but it's a great name for a hockey team. I loved that logo too.

[BBTV]

51 minutes ago, tigerslionspistonshabs said:

do you guys think they'd adopt the Thrashers moniker?

 

IMO it was among the worst "ends with s" name in major-league sports.  I don't care that it's a bird, few (if anyone) people outside of ornithologists (and maybe people in Georgia?) knows that, and probably either associate the term with skateboarding or heavy metal.

 

Wasn't a big fan of the logo either.  Looks like the type of overly spiked and shaded thing you'd see in the concepts forum.  Maybe fine for an AHL team, but not NHL.

[who do you think]

14 hours ago, BBTV said:

Yeah, Canadians are basically living in igloos and yurts, killing their food with their bare hands, and praying to various gods that their diseased children heal quickly before reaching the estimated Canadian life expectancy of 30 (since nobody can afford health care, unlike in the States where everything is affordable and everyone has access to care, nobody's defaulting on loans or living on streets or in subway stations, etc.)  Add in the wars, and yeah - the standard of living all the way up there is awful.

 

*posts picture of Joel Embiid's meniscus*

 

9 hours ago, tigerslionspistonshabs said:

If Atlanta does end up getting a team in the future, do you guys think they'd adopt the Thrashers moniker? I know they weren't exactly a model for success, but it's a great name for a hockey team. I loved that logo too.

 

I like Atlanta Strip Malls, Atlanta Nordiques, or Atlanta Saskatoons better.

[Digby]

I'm choosing to consider this an NHL bad decision becuase I assume it's the Jacobs' fault. The Bruins have a new bag policy for home games that bans any bags larger than 6 x 4 x 1.5 inches. Even if they're clear. Only exception is, conveniently, shopping bags for any purchased items from the Garden pro shop in the train station. (I assume this is also in effect for Celtics games and concerts, but I ran into it first via the Bruins.)

 

6 x 4 is absolutely tiny for a bag! I get banning huge backpacks or whatever but come on, this is a nuisance.