NHL Anti-Thread: Bad Business Decision Aggregator

[throwuascenario]

On 7/8/2024 at 7:09 PM, McCall said:

Steelers-Penguins in the fall, Penguins-Pirates in the spring and even Pirates-Steelers in September.

 

You're verging on Unocal levels of unintelligible ranting. Might want to reel it in before you go over the edge. Just a friendly word of advice.

 

Football and hockey overlap by 2 months. Hockey and baseball by 1 month. Baseball and football by 2 months. 

 

Hockey and basketball overlap by 6 months. But yeah, those are the same thing.

 

On 7/9/2024 at 10:33 AM, gosioux76 said:

 

I might be wrong here, but I've never really had the sense that the league was actively looking for owners in other cities that would move the team. If they were, they'd have cut ties with Phoenix years ago. So this was never a situation where the NHL was shopping for market so much as it was the league facilitating a private sale to a willing buyer with a deal they couldn't pass up. 

 

Like with any deal in any industry, a transaction often comes down to the owner and who it is you want to do business with. I wouldn't be surprised if Ryan Smith was the kind of young, creative and ambitious owner that the league wants in its ownership club. 

 

More than that, I don't think market size really matters as much as it used to, nor does seasonality, especially when you're looking at a growing market that isn't oversaturated with sports brands.  I've always believed that the NHL should embrace the NBA strategy of the 70s and 80s by expanding into smaller growth markets that would embrace the product rather than get lost in all of the competitive noise.  Winnipeg is the perfect NHL city in this respect, as is Quebec City. With only the NBA (I'm excluding MLS for the sake of this argument), the NHL enters a market with a lot of capacity to embrace a second team and grow.

 

A market like that is more likely to generate an enthusiastic fan base even if the team underperforms. 

 

Winnipeg's last few years show that support can still fade in a small market, but it still generated consistently strong crowds in its first 10 years with underperforming teams. 

 

Compare that to the Florida Panthers. Five years ago, they were second-to-last in average NHL attendance, averaging just over 13,000 a game.  This season, with a Stanley Cup-winning team, they ranked No. 9, but had the highest year-over-year increase of any team in the NHL at more than 11%. They averaged 18,600 a game.  

 

They needed a winning team to fight through the noise of a crowded market.  That never happened in Atlanta. The only seasons in which the Thrashers surpassed 16,000 fans a game was its inaugural year and the only year it made the playoffs, 2006-07.

 

It would be the same thing in Houston. But I don't think you'd need a winning team to generate fan support in a smaller market without as much competition. 

 

Yes the fact that the team was never shopped is exactly what I mean by "it was rushed".

 

And you're 100% right about the fact that having a city to yourself in terms of pro sports teams is a huge advantage from a business standpoint.

 

Where you're wrong is that you throw the Jazz aside as being "almost to themselves". This isn't even close. The Jazz are hugely entrenched in the area and play almost the same season. This is exactly why the market doesn't work. If the Jazz didn't exist, it would be a pretty decent market.

 

On 7/9/2024 at 10:57 AM, spartacat_12 said:

 

So you looked into your crystal ball and can see the franchise automatically failing in SLC? Care to share any winning lottery numbers with the board since you can see the future?

 

At the All Star Game this year Bettman mentioned that they've heard from places like Houston, Atlanta, KC, and Cincinnati about expansion. If any of them were serious I'm sure they would have been considered for the Coyotes relocation, but obviously Smith's group was in a much better position.

 

 

It didn't become obvious until the Yotes lost the vote in Tempe for the new arena. Prior to that the league was never going to unilaterally relocate a team that was in the process of securing a new, privately-funded arena (the other owners would never want to set that precedent). 

 

The league's biggest mistake was not immediately exploring relocation last summer after the Tempe rink died. But realistically I don't think that would've changed much, other than the Utah group having a longer runway to get their branding ready.

 

Yes, my crystal ball says not to buy a lottery ticket. Your odds of winning are astronomically low. I know this because of logic. The very same I used to assess the Utah situation.

 

On 7/9/2024 at 11:17 AM, The_Admiral said:

You're correct, they were not. Every sale they explored was predicated on keeping the team in Glendale: Jerry Reinsdorf, Ice Edge guys, Matthew Hulsizer, Greg Jamison (remember that one?), Ice Edge guys again plus George Gosbee. TNSE and Quebecor both inquired, but used TNSE to deal with the Thrashers and stopped returning Quebecor's calls altogether. Same goes for the ownership groups after the league sold the team. The only time the league actively explored a relocation was when they were going to move the team to Seattle in 2013 and then look for a new owner there.

 

Okay, so which is it? They explored other options besides Utah or they rushed it and went with Utah as soon as they gave up on Arizona?

[The_Admiral]

They never tried to sell the team to someone who would move it from 2009-2013.

 

You're not wrong. Salt Lake City is not an ideal market. But they couldn't continue in Phoenix, they hate Quebec, and no one else was ready. They're making the best of a bad situation, but they can't say that.

[Sport]

I wonder how the NBA feels about one of their own bringing a direct competitor into one of their smallest markets. Can't imagine they're thrilled as they like to be the only game in town in those mid-sized markets (OKC, SLC, Portland, etc). But I also question how much crossover there really is between NBA fans and NHL fans. In cities with both, granted much larger cities, it feels like you're either one or the other. 

 

 

[CS85]

10 minutes ago, Sport said:

I wonder how the NBA feels about one of their own bringing a direct competitor into one of their smallest markets. Can't imagine they're thrilled as they like to be the only game in town in those mid-sized markets (OKC, SLC, Portland, etc). But I also question how much crossover there really is between NBA fans and NHL fans. In cities with both, granted much larger cities, it feels like you're either one or the other. 

 

 

 

I'd say there's more NBA fans that are NHL fans than NHL fans that are NBA fans, and unless the NHL team has a megastar, there's not going to be much crossover at all.

 

 

 

[spartacat_12]

20 hours ago, Sport said:

I've asked this a few times online in a few places and nobody answers. What did capfriendly do that someone else couldn't just replicate? What proprietary thing did the Capitals buy? Aren't all NHL contracts publicly available information that another person could also compile and organize into a team-by-team salary info resource? 

 

It sounds like it was more about acquiring the talent behind CapFriendly than the actual site itself, although CF did have some premium tools that were valuable. Apparently the league does have its own internal salary tracking system, but it's much worse than the ones others have created.

 

CapFriendly wasn't the first site of its kind, and there's already replacements out there. PuckPedia seems to be the one poised to fill the void for now, and I just discovered CapWages, which is essentially copying the CF layout.

 

11 hours ago, throwuascenario said:

Yes, my crystal ball says not to buy a lottery ticket. Your odds of winning are astronomically low. I know this because of logic. The very same I used to assess the Utah situation.

 

I mean your logic basically boils down to, "the league rushed the relocation" and "the market is too small for the NBA & NHL". The Thrashers relocation to Winnipeg was rushed, and that has worked out just fine. MLS has managed to find success in similar-sized markets like Cincinnati & St. Louis where they're in direct competition with the MLB season, so the idea that SLC can't simultaneously support the Jazz & the hockey team doesn't carry much water either. 

[The_Admiral]

1 hour ago, Sport said:

I wonder how the NBA feels about one of their own bringing a direct competitor into one of their smallest markets. Can't imagine they're thrilled as they like to be the only game in town in those mid-sized markets (OKC, SLC, Portland, etc).

Probably not too pleased. There has always seemed to be a mutual non-aggression pact around most mid-size markets--think Stern dragging his feet on the Grizzlies moving to St. Louis, or the NBA's total lack of interest in Pittsburgh. 

 

I think the overlap does matter here. As I've said, you have a population which but for the existence of the Utah Jazz and basketball's special relationship to the local theocracy would be a very NHL market: white, middle-class, moderate disposable income, lacking the NBA's socioeconomic extremes at both ends. You could almost mistake Salt Lake City for being in Alberta. 

 

It's not hard to imagine the two teams stretching the market a little thin. If the Jazz get good and the UHC keep doing Phoenix Coyotes things, well, they won't really get off the ground. If the UHC finally become a contender after years of cap suppression and become the hot new thing in town, maybe the Jazz suffer. We haven't seen a situation like this before and I think it's been for very good reasons.

[LMU]

Seven ownership groups (including the league itself)... sure, putting the team back on billionaire Craigslist would have solved everything.  And sure, the situation was so incredibly rushed nearly a decade and a half after the Johnny Rockets manager convinced Glendale to fleece itself and potentially going into Year 3 of skating next to a dorm with no end in sight.  Kicking the can down the road another 17 or so times would have done the trick.

 

They could have been in Quebec or Hamilton already.  Bettman nixed those plans so we are where we are.

[gosioux76]

4 hours ago, The_Admiral said:

Probably not too pleased. There has always seemed to be a mutual non-aggression pact around most mid-size markets--think Stern dragging his feet on the Grizzlies moving to St. Louis, or the NBA's total lack of interest in Pittsburgh. 

 

I think the overlap does matter here. As I've said, you have a population which but for the existence of the Utah Jazz and basketball's special relationship to the local theocracy would be a very NHL market: white, middle-class, moderate disposable income, lacking the NBA's socioeconomic extremes at both ends. You could almost mistake Salt Lake City for being in Alberta. 

 

It's not hard to imagine the two teams stretching the market a little thin. If the Jazz get good and the UHC keep doing Phoenix Coyotes things, well, they won't really get off the ground. If the UHC finally become a contender after years of cap suppression and become the hot new thing in town, maybe the Jazz suffer. We haven't seen a situation like this before and I think it's been for very good reasons.

 

But it has to be different in a case like this in which the owner of both franchises is the same guy.  The examples with the Grizzlies to St. Louis or putting a team in Pittsburgh would have almost certainly involved putting an owner into a position of becoming the tenant of a hockey team rather than a sibling franchise that shares the same owner.  The NBA franchise would almost immediately be at a financial disadvantage. 

 

Two franchises with overlapping seasons might spread the market thin, but it's one owner bearing the losses and gains for either team. It's not pitting two owners from competing leagues against each other. 

[Sport]

1 minute ago, spartacat_12 said:

 

It sounds like it was more about acquiring the talent behind CapFriendly than the actual site itself, although CF did have some premium tools that were valuable. Apparently the league does have its own internal salary tracking system, but it's much worse than the ones others have created.

 

CapFriendly wasn't the first site of its kind, and there's already replacements out there. PuckPedia seems to be the one poised to fill the void for now, and I just discovered CapWages, which is essentially copying the CF layout.

 

 

Thanks. I ask because there was this outpouring of eulogies for the website the last few weeks as if nobody else will ever replace it and I found the reaction silly. Capfriendly was the replacement for capgeek after the founder sadly passed away, after all. I was unsure why people were acting like there will never be another NHL salary cap tracking website. 

 

1 hour ago, CS85 said:

 

I'd say there's more NBA fans that are NHL fans than NHL fans that are NBA fans, and unless the NHL team has a megastar, there's not going to be much crossover at all.

 

 

 

I'd argue the opposite. NHL fans can be accidentally aware of the NBA because the sport is so over-covered. In my experience I can BS about basketball with NBA fans and pass the sniff test, but most of them rarely know anything about hockey. Like couldn't tell you basic rules like what the blue line does. You can easily ignore the NHL entirely without even trying. 

 

 

[gosioux76]

15 hours ago, throwuascenario said:

Yes the fact that the team was never shopped is exactly what I mean by "it was rushed".

 

You seem to be assuming that the league was actively looking for an owner. But based on everything we know, and from what's been publicly reported, the league seemed uninterested in giving up on the Phoenix market. Assuming that were the truth, why would they go shopping for an owner, let alone be "rushed" into selling it? 

 

This has all the hallmarks of a deal that came together solely because a buyer wanted it badly enough to buy the NHL out of the mess it created.  If the NHL was motivated by anything, it was the convenience of the opportunity. 

 

 

15 hours ago, throwuascenario said:

And you're 100% right about the fact that having a city to yourself in terms of pro sports teams is a huge advantage from a business standpoint.

 

Where you're wrong is that you throw the Jazz aside as being "almost to themselves". This isn't even close. The Jazz are hugely entrenched in the area and play almost the same season. This is exactly why the market doesn't work. If the Jazz didn't exist, it would be a pretty decent market.

 

For arguments sake, what would be the ideal situation for this franchise had the league opted to shop around in search of an ideal market?  If Salt Lake City isn't ideal, which market would be? What other market would have the right mix of wealthy owners, access to (and preferably ownership of) a venue and a palatable amount of sports competition?  

 

I presume most of us would say Quebec City, a hockey-loving small market thirsting to get its team back with an ownership group and venue in place. It would be Winnipeg all over again, only in French. 

 

After that, the list is pretty small. 

 

 

[kolob]

3 hours ago, gosioux76 said:

Two franchises with overlapping season might spread the market thin, but it's one owner bearing the losses and gains for either team. It's not pitting two owners from two competing leagues against each other. 

 

I think this is the key. In fact, the Coyotes would have probably worked in Arizona if they were co-owned by the Suns.

[Digby]

Not just pitting teams against each other, but you don't have to worry about one team having to be paying rent, the sponsorship dollars (which are probably a larger issue than hypothetical fan overlap) can be packaged together neatly instead of competing, all kinds of corporate synergistic stuff.

[The_Admiral]

2 hours ago, gosioux76 said:

For arguments sake, what would be the ideal situation for this franchise had the league opted to shop around in search of an ideal market?  If Salt Lake City isn't ideal, which market would be? What other market would have the right mix of wealthy owners, access to (and preferably ownership of) a venue and a palatable amount of sports competition?  

 

I presume most of us would say Quebec City, a hockey-loving small market thirsting to get its team back with an ownership group and venue in place. It would be Winnipeg all over again, only in French. 

 

After that, the list is pretty small. 

 

Yeah, that's the one. "Winnipeg all over again" wouldn't have even been a bad thing if the Canadian economy weren't fully in the wacky zone like it is now. Winnipeg came in with league-average revenue.

 

I've always wanted Milwaukee in the NHL, but it's lacking fan interest, ownership interest, and a capable arena, which makes it 0 for 3 on prerequisites. It would also be a considerably smaller four-sport market than Denver. Thank God MLS isn't sniffing around.

 

I was thinking about it earlier and the Timberwolves were arguably an incursion into a market that couldn't cover all four sports at once. A big part of the North Stars' demise was that they and the T-Wolves couldn't agree on Coke or Pepsi, which kept them out of the Target Center.

[BrySmalls]

I saw this on YouTube the other day. I don't know how accurately the video sums up the entire Jets 1.0/Coyotes saga, so enjoy it FWTW!
 

 

[BBTV]

On 7/10/2024 at 7:28 PM, The_Admiral said:

I think we'll hear about some deal with the Jets before the summer is over, the Hornets having set that precedent for better or worse. The 1996-2024 team will probably just float in statistical purgatory until they find a hedge fund guy for the Arizona Sphinx (it's in a desert, you see).

 

 

Nothing in sports is real or really matters, so they can do whatever they want with the records.  At the end of the day, it's the fans that decide what records they want to recognize, regardless of what some book says.

 

However, this case might be different than the Bobcats/Hornets situation, since the Jetyoteys are literally dead, with the "franchise" no longer existing.  Again, they can do whatever they want, but to be clean, they'd have to not kill the franchise, maybe merge the franchises (like how the players and front office transferred to the expansion team in Utah, maybe a bag of pucks merges with the Jets pucks) and they have some weird period of time where the Jets had two parallel teams, and Thrashjets records would add on to Old Jets records and continue on, while the new merged Jets would simply continue from the Trashiest (which now includes OG Jets) and move on.

 

from an individual player standpoint, it's clean.  Form a team year-by-year standpoint, it's messy, but neither won anything so who cares?

 

[The_Admiral]

3 hours ago, BBTV said:

However, this case might be different than the Bobcats/Hornets situation, since the Jetyoteys are literally dead, with the "franchise" no longer existing.  Again, they can do whatever they want, but to be clean, they'd have to not kill the franchise, maybe merge the franchises (like how the players and front office transferred to the expansion team in Utah, maybe a bag of pucks merges with the Jets pucks) and they have some weird period of time where the Jets had two parallel teams, and Thrashjets records would add on to Old Jets records and continue on, while the new merged Jets would simply continue from the Trashiest (which now includes OG Jets) and move on

They would do what they're already doing with "Winnipeg NHL" records: active 1979-1996, dormant 1996-2011, active 2011-present. Thrashers are a separate team, Coyotes are a separate team. The only practical outcome, since the Jets are already keeping records on a civic level anyway, might be doing honored numbers for Hull, Steen, Selanne, and Numminen, and retiring 10 for Hawerchuk if it's not already. 

 

As for the video, 

"They've never really had a true home." This applies to wonky old America West but not to Glendale, which was purpose-built and was by all accounts a fine facility with good sightlines and a decent ice plant: certainly no Northlands, but respectable for the climate. They had a true home, they just didn't like where it was and decided to stop paying their bills there.
 

"Its area [Winnipeg Arena] lacked high-dollar amenities like luxury suites." To put a finer point on it, the old Winnipeg Arena was controlled by a murky NFP called Winnipeg Enterprises, which collected ancillary gameday revenues like parking and concessions. Even if they were able to fit some luxury boxes in there, it's likely the money would have gone into paying a board of directors rather than the Jets.
 

The narrator (who sounds like AI) suggests that the Coyotes' trouble started in 2013, which skips over the NHL's ownership completely. At this point I got bored.

[Kevin W.]

So do we set a precedent of separating a team's history from the franchise if they move? Are the Hurricanes no longer allowed to wear Whalers throwbacks? Also, the Flames should have to change their name. That name belongs to Atlanta.

[BBTV]

6 hours ago, Kevin W. said:

So do we set a precedent of separating a team's history from the franchise if they move? Are the Hurricanes no longer allowed to wear Whalers throwbacks? Also, the Flames should have to change their name. That name belongs to Atlanta.

 

My thought is that if a team changes its name, then for record-keeping purposes, it becomes a new franchise (mostly because that name won't be used again while the original team is still in the league, though the Hornets situation breaks that.)

 

So the Calgary Flames are the Atlanta Flames, but the Carolina Hurricanes are not the Hartford Whalers.  The Dodgers are the Brooklyn Dodgers, but the Twins were not the Senators.

 

I think it's much cleaner that way, and the chances of a team keeping its name after moving are incredibly slim these days, so I don't think there'd be another Hornets / Pelicans situation any time soon.

 

It solves the record book issue, it gets rid of the need for a Cleveland Deal, and everybody wins (except for the people who lost their team, but that's going to happen anyway.)

[Sec19Row53]

40 minutes ago, BBTV said:

 

My thought is that if a team changes its name, then for record-keeping purposes, it becomes a new franchise (mostly because that name won't be used again while the original team is still in the league, though the Hornets situation breaks that.)

 

So the Calgary Flames are the Atlanta Flames, but the Carolina Hurricanes are not the Hartford Whalers.  The Dodgers are the Brooklyn Dodgers, but the Twins were not the Senators.

 

I think it's much cleaner that way, and the chances of a team keeping its name after moving are incredibly slim these days, so I don't think there'd be another Hornets / Pelicans situation any time soon.

 

It solves the record book issue, it gets rid of the need for a Cleveland Deal, and everybody wins (except for the people who lost their team, but that's going to happen anyway.)

Add 'moves' into this and I agree. The New York Jets ARE the New York Titans. There is only one NFL Washington Franchise, not 3. Same with Cleveland's recent name change. One franchise.

[The_Admiral]

3 hours ago, BBTV said:

My thought is that if a team changes its name, then for record-keeping purposes, it becomes a new franchise (mostly because that name won't be used again while the original team is still in the league, though the Hornets situation breaks that.)

 

So the Calgary Flames are the Atlanta Flames, but the Carolina Hurricanes are not the Hartford Whalers.  The Dodgers are the Brooklyn Dodgers, but the Twins were not the Senators.

 

This gets into a grey area (well, a green area) with the Minnesota North Stars/Dallas Stars. They moved and changed their name, but they didn't really change their name, and they didn't change their visual identity upon moving, but they did change it in advance of a predicted move. What a mess. Norm Green sucks.