Penguins Get Arena Deal Done

[xyzzyva]

Maybe the Devils should move back to KC. It seems that New Jersey can't fill seats with a first place team.

1. New Jersey's moving into a new building next year. That should boost attendance.

2. The Devils were farther out I-70. They came from Colorado, not Kansas City.

And the Colorado Rockies came from Kansas City.

[leedsunited]

Though it is refreshing that the commissioner cares at all. Quebec City, Winnipeg, and Hartford should've been so lucky.

Well Bettman wanted QC and Winnipeg gone. Hartford basically faced the same situation Pittsburgh's facing now; great fan support, but no arena. Why Bettman didn't interject himself there is a good question to ask. Can't say I have an answer.

The belief was that American markets in nontraditional hockey markets could actually take off and really work. San Jose was a success, the Panthers were selling out regularly, and the Quebec to Denver move was the poster child for NHL relocation at that point.

That's probably why Bettman barely blinked when Hartford packed up.

[_RH_]

Any word on the meeting tonight?

[rams80]

Any word on the meeting tonight?

Progress made. Meet again next Wednesday.

Lemieux Group is also reportedly meeting with AEG in Kansas City on Saturday.

I guess the trust is (sort of) still there.

[Rampart]

Maybe the Devils should move back to KC. It seems that New Jersey can't fill seats with a first place team.

1. New Jersey's moving into a new building next year. That should boost attendance.

The Penguins seem to be selling out the oldest arena in the NHL. The venue should be no excuse for the lack of fan support to see a division leader.

[BBTV]

I'm actually pulling for the Pens to head out west to KC rather then stay in a city that obviously doesn't want them, traditional market or not.

Based on their attendance I'd say the fans want 'em to stick around... it seems to be the Pittsburgh / Pennsylvania Governments who are the ones that don't necessarily care whether they stay or go.

I'm not sure it's fair to say that the governments don't care - but there is only so much that can be done. The package that has been put together is already unprecedented in PA for this type of project.

[CC97]

Maybe the Devils should move back to KC. It seems that New Jersey can't fill seats with a first place team.

1. New Jersey's moving into a new building next year. That should boost attendance.

The Penguins seem to be selling out the oldest arena in the NHL. The venue should be no excuse for the lack of fan support to see a division leader.

Try going to a game at Continental Airlines Arena then get back to me... I abandoned my plans to see a Devils/Caps game because it was impossible just to get to the bloody arena -- and that was the whole point of my trip

[Eye]

Well, that's one of the many reasons, why CAA is usually half empty for Devils and Nets games. The arena is a b**** to get to. In the swampy Meadowlands, inaccessible by train, only can take car/bus etc. Yes, it sucks. I know, I've been to quite a few events at the CAA.

-E.A.R.

[Snazel]

I think the real root of the problem here is the league is losing the traditions it established in the 70's and 80's.

This might seem laughable, so many people think of "tradition" and "history" in hockey and they have visions of Gordie Howe, Maurice Richard and Jacques Plante.

Yet the real growth and maturity of hockey began in the 70's, and I say that with all due respect to the great legends that preceded that decade. Indeed you could argue the 70's and 80's, were really a fine time for the NHL.

How many of the markets and teams that made those decades so central to the league's success have been dismantled, or eroded?

This is a league, that began to think in the short term. They saw how the NBA was "cashing in" with massive expansion fees, and followed suit. Indeed, the more the NHL tried to monkey what the NBA did, the more it started to fail. It all looked great in the balance sheet for a few years, but when the expansion money dried up, and a watered down product, in markets with no hockey tradition was left, well the wheels began to fall off.

This isn't about north vs. south, or "original six", or "expansion six" or any other combination of a team's origin. This is about the hard reality that certain regions in North America adore the sport. They actually play the sport, many of their children play it and they feed the league with talent as a result.

You can't cut those regions out of the picture, and expect your league to thrive.

Of all the new regions to adopt NHL team, I have only heard of Colorado and to some degree Texas, embracing the sport beyond the league itself. This may be a controversial opinion, but if hockey doesn't start to permeate your region, beyond the NHL team itself, then I believe its longevity is suspect.

Longevity, stability and tradition are the central pillars of why people pay attention to sports. You care about the results of a sporting event, because you know there is some permanence to it. People in Calgary still talk about 86 and 89. People in Boston still talk about 72.

It's that connection to previous generations, and the hope that the current iteration of your favorite team can add to that glory that keeps you interested. If you start to erode that mechanism, for the sake of expansion fees and a better deal on parking revenue, you should not be surprised that your league as a whole starts to flounder.

I think the Penguins are making a big mistake. I think the deal they are being offered now, is workable. They can make money on it and they will maintain their tradition and their link to the community. Moving to a new city, only works if that new city sees immediate success with the team. Otherwise, without any ties to the past, and without any real cultural connection to the sport, the initial intrigue withers and dies.

The NHL made a big mistake hiring Bettman. He was a man that saw the NHL only as a product, and did not understand nor want to understand its cultural ties and traditions. He saw those as liabilities when they got in the way of him helping an owner expand to a market with a brighter demographic.

If Bettman inherited the NFL and the NFL was not top dog he would see the Green Bay Packers, and want to move them Los Angeles. Ten years later he'd reward Milwaukee Bay with an expansion team and then wonder why nobody in Wisconsin appears to be interested in seeing the Wisconsin Wizards.

My wooden nickel on the subject, my apologies if this opinion offends anyone.

[jkrdevil]

That's a bad argument when you consider the main reason the sport grew in the 70's was because of rapid expansion in the 70's.

None of the teams in the moved in the 90's had steep tradition or history as far as winning goes. The North Stars were probably the closest with two cup finals runs and that was more of a situation, much like Pittsburgh, where the league was pretty much forced to move from because of arena situation. As soon as that happened the Twin Cities got a new team.

The other 3 teams that moved were WHA teams that were well awful. Each had arena issues but each were also markets the league probably would have never expanded to in the first place had it not been for the WHA merger. It really is no surprise that those markets ended up failing.

The other teams were expansion teams. I don't see how that eroded hockey in the other markets.

This also doesn't mention that Hockey now has the highest attendance now that ever and has more exposure now than ever. Again tell me which American Broadcast network aired the Stanley Cup Finals in the 80's. The Answer is none. This year the Stanley Cup Playoffs will be on network TV Saturday and Sunday and games 3-7 will be on network TV as well. That's the most ever in the history of the league.

Personally I think they should go back to divisional playoffs to get back that rivalries. I think if there has been an erosion that's the reason.

[Snazel]

That's a bad argument when you consider the main reason the sport grew in the 70's was because of rapid expansion in the 70's.

The bulk of the expansion in the 70's, didn't work. Atlanta, KC, Cleveland, Colorado among others were busts. What did work were WHA teams who survived long enough to make the merger.

What made the 70's and 80's a good era for hockey was the franchises that did come aboard, stayed and learned to take good seasons with the bad. I have no facts on this, but if memory serves after the Devils put an end to the wandering minstrel acts in KC and Colorado (82/83 I believe), I think the league suffered no movement at all until the mid-90's.

That is arguably the longest period of stability in the modern era, and not suprisingly, an era where the league enjoyed much better success than they do now.

It's the 90's that start the haywire era, where you have both expansion and relocation going on in large quantity. Expansion to new markets en-masse.

None of the teams in the moved in the 90's had steep tradition or history as far as winning goes.

Minnesota is arguably the state that loves and supports hockey the most - I am not talking NHL, I am talking the sport as a whole. Michigan and New York might disagree with that statement, but Minnesota is easily in the top three.

Quebec and Winnipeg don't have hockey traditions? Did I miss something? I thought Quebec and Manitoba have produced some of the finest hockey players ever known - oh that's right they have. Minnesota has produced some of the best American players to ever play the game.

So no, I don't agree, losing those three cities was a big blow to the NHL. It looked good on paper, but it removed the league from regions where the sport is supported not only at the ticket gate, but culturally as well. That's my point, that a sports league needs this connection to succeed.

I am no expert believe me. I am not even a decent hack. I do think though that a sports team has to form a bond with the city that support it. That bond has to extend beyond just an entertainment product at some point. If it doesn't do that, it will start to suffer at the gate during lean times, it will then atrophy and die.

The NHL expanded to regions too quickly, at the expense of regions that had supported the sport at a cultural level. It looked great on the immediate return, but as time goes on, the very support structure for your league diminishes.

Yes, certain new markets will adopt the sport, but the ones that last (or at least succeed most consistently), are the ones that adopt the sport beyond the pro-franchise itself.

Yes, that means, in my opinion a team in Winnipeg is a better asset than a team in Arizona. The Avalanche however do not fall into that category. Why? Because the state of Colorado has developed systemic interest in the sport itself, beyond just the Avs. Sure Avs attendance will go up and down, but its not as worrisome, because the sport itself has been embraced at some level. You are literally breeding new generations of fans, that love the game, not the product, so I argue you are a healthier franchise in the long run.

I don't think Bettman gets this. Maybe because he's smarter than me and thinks that systemic interest in the sport, doesn't translate into success. I just think at this stage, Bettman is being proven wrong and the NHL is suffering because of it.

EDIT: Let's put it this way. If you look at the 1993 you only see two teams that were not a part of the league ten years earlier: Tampa and San Jose (they were brand new teams).

Ten years later if you compare 2003 to 1993, you have all these teams that were not a part of the league ten years ago: Nash, Col, Ott, Dal, Ana, Pho, Wild, Atl, Car, Fla. That's 9 teams, if you add the other 2 new teams from 93, it means over 36.6% of your league has ten years of tradition or less.

It means on any given matchup, a large amount of them will involve at least one team that has little or no tradition within the overall league. It was a recipe for disaster in my opinion and I think the league's current struggles reflect that.

The product appears unstable and unreliable. Why invest in a team, when the league reinvents 40% of its teams every ten years? This is the pattern we are currently witnessing and I think its caused great harm to the league.

[yh]

The bulk of the expansion in the 70's, didn't work. Atlanta, KC, Cleveland, Colorado among others were busts. What did work were WHA teams who survived long enough to make the merger.

Not to get too nitpicky but if you look at non-merger expansion you couldn't be much more incorrect. The NHL created franchises from scratch in Vancouver, Buffalo, Long Island, Atlanta, Kansas City and Washington, D.C. in the 70's. Only Atlanta and Kansas City failed in their markets while the other four markets did well enough to stick around to the present day. Thus, the "bulk" of the 70's expansion did work. Cleveland was a 67 expansion team originally located in Oakland and Colorado (as you correctly point out) was the relocated KC franchise so they can't be counted but even if they were, you're still talking about a 50% failure rate - hardly qualifies as "bulk".

[Lee.]

It's also interesting to note that Winnipeg wasn't included in the original discussions of merger-expansion.

The NHL had 17 teams at the time, and wanted 20--Edmonton (good market, big building), Quebec (rivalry with Montreal) and Hartford (rivalry with Boston), and that was it. Winnipeg only got in after making huge concessions to the rest of the league and promising to renovate or build a new arena.

Another theory is, since Winnipeg had arguably one of the best hockey teams around in the mid-70's, the NHL was afraid of the Jets coming in and making a huge splash. Decimating the WHA teams would have easily prevented that from happening.

[rams80]

It's also interesting to note that Winnipeg wasn't included in the original discussions of merger-expansion.

The NHL had 17 teams at the time, and wanted 20--Edmonton (good market, big building), Quebec (rivalry with Montreal) and Hartford (rivalry with Boston), and that was it. Winnipeg only got in after making huge concessions to the rest of the league and promising to renovate or build a new arena.

Another theory is, since Winnipeg had arguably one of the best hockey teams around in the mid-70's, the NHL was afraid of the Jets coming in and making a huge splash. Decimating the WHA teams would have easily prevented that from happening.

Didn't the merger pretty much kill every single WHA's roster? I recall seing somewhere that the merger was quite one-sided.

To add my 2 cents on the matter, I think the NHL expansion teams in the 70s might have fared much better if there hadn't been a WHA. That way the salaries wouldn't have risen so drastically and the NHL might not have felt this compulsion to rush expansion. BTW...Atlanta didn't fail so much as the local housing market went in the toilet forcing the now bankrupt owner to sell the team to anyone who would buy. That anyone happened to hail from Calgary.

Also, I'm gonna say this...the networks have no interest in showing games in a league that has such markets as Winnipeg, Hartford, and Quebec. If the NHL wants to get national attention in the United States, if the NHL wants to have a prayer at a tv deal and tv money, the Sun Belt expansion was necessary. BTW, in addition to the straight out success of Dallas and Colorado, San Jose, Atlanta, Tampa Bay, and Anaheim all seem to be doing reasonably well to great. You just need to give it time.

[Guest]

Didn't the merger pretty much kill every single WHA's roster? I recall seing somewhere that the merger was quite one-sided.

You recall correctly. The WHA 4 were only allowed to protect two players, and anyone else was fair game in an expansion draft. It was more a conquest than a merger.

As for the NHL getting national TV with Winnipeg and Quebec City, of course they could. I think they would definitely need San Francisco, Denver, Minneapolis, and Dallas, but to say that the league needed Raleigh-Durham, Nashville, and Tampa Bay to secure a national broadcast deal is silly.

[Snazel]

50% failure rate doesn't justify "bulk of expansion"?

I was really noting that KC, Atlanta, Colorado, Cleveland all failed in the 70's. So I guess I was including expansion and relocation in the 70's, and failed to consider Buff and Vanc, so point taken. I always think of Vancouver as an expansion six, because they really should have been, it was Canadian politics that prevented them being selected, and Oakland being awarded the franchise.

The league persisted though and thrived, because by 1978, only 3 teams had less than ten years of history, as opposed to 2002, where 10 of the teams did.

I argue, that maintaining league stability is necessary, or your league falters. You can expand, but you have to expand slowly and you have to build bridges along the way, to each new franchise. You have to develop natural rivals for them, and you have to integrate "new teams" into the league at the fringes of your league.

The only other time a lack of history was so pervasive, as it is now, was when the expansion six came along. The expansion six is an interesting case study. You can argue it was largely successful, with only Oakland as the real dog in the bunch. Why it worked (for the most part), I think shows to some extent why expansion did not work in the 90's.

The WHA merger brought success to the league. Why? Again for reasons that are unique to the study of the merger, that also contrast with how the league grabbed every dollar of expansion money and transfer-money it could in the 90's.

Whether you agree with me or not, I think all of this discussion illustrates Bettman has mismanged the product - and he has mismanaged it badly. The NHL should not be in this sorry state. There is no excuse for it. The product is good, the sport is well liked in many regions of North America, the sport is still played actively by kids, and the league still has some of its traditions and ties to the community intact.

It's this last part though, that I think Bettman has ignored and I argue its one of the contributing factors to the league's decay.

And if I come across as a snot here, or just arguing for the sake of arguing forgive me, I think everyone has made really interesting points here and my opinion, lets face it, is uneducated. I am just shooting from the hip, as a fan who is watching a sport he's admired for decades descend into the abyss.

[IronChefShark]

You can't blame the NHL for wanting to go the bay area in the 60's, however you CAN blame them for choosing Oakland as that host city.

The only reason why Oakland was chosen was because at the time, they had the modern venue, the Oakland Coliseum Arena. San Francisco has had WHL teams in the past that have been very sucessful both on the ice and at the gate, and would have by far been the more logical choice for a bay area NHL team to call home. However, San Francisco's venue was the small, not to mention inaccessible Cow Palace down on Geneva Street just across the San Francisco-Daly City city limit, which is by no means a hospitable neighborhood. At the time the newer, larger, more accessible venue was in Oakland, in a complex surrounded by freeway off ramps, lots of parking, and a BART station that almost drops you off at the doorstep. Therefore, that was where the Oakland Seals/California Golden Seals set up shop.

Of course, eventually, they moved to Cleveland and became the Barons, whom then were soon merged with the exsisting Minnesota North Stars, with the latter absorbing the rights to all the players within the system once belonging to the Seals/Barons franchise.

So in the late 80's, with Wayne Gretzky putting the Los Angeles Kings and the league as a whole on the national radar in the US about as much as it has ever been, the NHL decided to give a second run at putting a club in the bay area. May I add that this occured before Gary Bettman came into power as commisioner. Originaly the league wanted the club to be in San Francisco, a city that has had its share of recent sports sucesses with the Giants going to the World Series in 89 and the 49ers coming off back to back Super Bowl titles. However, the city, as was much of the bay area, was still somewhat recovering from the Loma Prieta Quake and in San Francisco understandably the more immediate need was to rebuild and repair damaged infrastructure rather than spend that money on a new sports arena. Oakland was not an option, as the now 20 plus year old facility there was undergoing a massive renovation with the specific needs of basketball in mind and not hockey.

San Jose however, had the land and money to provide the venue. As a result, San Jose got the chance to host the bay area's representative NHL club, one that has had substanible sucess at the gate and is now beginning to translate that to sucess on the ice.

It is often mentioned by many hockey historians that, since the original San Jose Sharks roster was compiled through a dispersal draft that took place in the de-merging of the North Stars and Barons franchises that the San Jose Sharks are not really an expansion team, but the re-incarnation of the old California Golden Seals. In theory it makes sense, although it was never made official.

[rams80]

50% failure rate doesn't justify "bulk of expansion"?

I was really noting that KC, Atlanta, Colorado, Cleveland all failed in the 70's. So I guess I was including expansion and relocation in the 70's, and failed to consider Buff and Vanc, so point taken. I always think of Vancouver as an expansion six, because they really should have been, it was Canadian politics that prevented them being selected, and Oakland being awarded the franchise.

The league persisted though and thrived, because by 1978, only 3 teams had less than ten years of history, as opposed to 2002, where 10 of the teams did.

Minor nitpick...the number you're looking for is 6 or 7 (Vancouver, Buffalo, KC/Colorado, Atlanta, NY Islanders, Washington, and I forget when Cleveland merged with/saved Minnesota), and of the other 11, 5 had little more than ten years of history. Most of the league was fairly new at that time (which admittedly hurt rather than helped against the WHA)

I argue, that maintaining league stability is necessary, or your league falters. You can expand, but you have to expand slowly and you have to build bridges along the way, to each new franchise. You have to develop natural rivals for them, and you have to integrate "new teams" into the league at the fringes of your league.

The only other time a lack of history was so pervasive, as it is now, was when the expansion six came along. The expansion six is an interesting case study. You can argue it was largely successful, with only Oakland as the real dog in the bunch. Why it worked (for the most part), I think shows to some extent why expansion did not work in the 90's.

See above about the North Stars. That and the Kings drew what? a couple thousand? Thank God Cooke loved hockey. You'll note they did rapidly expand in the 70s to keep the WHA out of markets, and that wasn't helpful for the greater good of the league (that and in the mid-70s there were more teams in the NHL and WHA than there are now and they were drawing from a much smaller talent pool-Euros were thought to be "pansies" for lack of a better word).

I'll say that the NHL's two advantages here were 1) the league was small enough that it could pick markets that would be decent as opposed to later and 2) segregating the new teams so the fans wouldn't get turned off when the Original 6 teams came to town and demolished the n00bs.

The WHA merger brought success to the league. Why? Again for reasons that are unique to the study of the merger, that also contrast with how the league grabbed every dollar of expansion money and transfer-money it could in the 90's.

The immediate goal after the merger for the NHL was survival and consolidation (WHA came closer to killing the NHL than you'd figure). Ergo...no expansion, just trying to stabilize. (That and it helps to have a nice young demigod start to take off).

Whether you agree with me or not, I think all of this discussion illustrates Bettman has mismanged the product - and he has mismanaged it badly. The NHL should not be in this sorry state. There is no excuse for it. The product is good, the sport is well liked in many regions of North America, the sport is still played actively by kids, and the league still has some of its traditions and ties to the community intact.

It's this last part though, that I think Bettman has ignored and I argue its one of the contributing factors to the league's decay.

For the record...the only expansion franchises that Bettman awarded were Nashville, Atlanta, Minnesota and Columbus. Two "non-traditional", two "traditional". Quebec to Colorado was the first "move" (in the WHA exodus) and the Avalanche were an immediate success, much like how Dallas was succeeding. (No real disaster model yet...) So, when Winnipeg and Hartford were unable to get arenas, Bettman doesn't really have any incentive (or empirical evidence) to say that moving existing teams South to larger markets is "bad". As for the South, I continually insist...GIVE IT TIME, BUILD THE TRADITION from the ground up.

[Lee.]

Didn't the merger pretty much kill every single WHA's roster? I recall seing somewhere that the merger was quite one-sided.

You recall correctly. The WHA 4 were only allowed to protect two players, and anyone else was fair game in an expansion draft. It was more a conquest than a merger.

Adding to the nonsense, we kept Scott Campbell and Morris Lukowich.

Also, John Ferguson brought his old Ranger uniforms to Winnipeg, ditching our teeny stripes, hand-made chenille crests, and red pants.

Damn you, Fergie.

[NJTank]

You can't blame the NHL for wanting to go the bay area in the 60's, however you CAN blame them for choosing Oakland as that host city.

The only reason why Oakland was chosen was because at the time, they had the modern venue, the Oakland Coliseum Arena. San Francisco has had WHL teams in the past that have been very sucessful both on the ice and at the gate, and would have by far been the more logical choice for a bay area NHL team to call home. However, San Francisco's venue was the small, not to mention inaccessible Cow Palace down on Geneva Street just across the San Francisco-Daly City city limit, which is by no means a hospitable neighborhood. At the time the newer, larger, more accessible venue was in Oakland, in a complex surrounded by freeway off ramps, lots of parking, and a BART station that almost drops you off at the doorstep. Therefore, that was where the Oakland Seals/California Golden Seals set up shop.

Of course, eventually, they moved to Cleveland and became the Barons, whom then were soon merged with the exsisting Minnesota North Stars, with the latter absorbing the rights to all the players within the system once belonging to the Seals/Barons franchise.

So in the late 80's, with Wayne Gretzky putting the Los Angeles Kings and the league as a whole on the national radar in the US about as much as it has ever been, the NHL decided to give a second run at putting a club in the bay area. May I add that this occured before Gary Bettman came into power as commisioner. Originaly the league wanted the club to be in San Francisco, a city that has had its share of recent sports sucesses with the Giants going to the World Series in 89 and the 49ers coming off back to back Super Bowl titles. However, the city, as was much of the bay area, was still somewhat recovering from the Loma Prieta Quake and in San Francisco understandably the more immediate need was to rebuild and repair damaged infrastructure rather than spend that money on a new sports arena. Oakland was not an option, as the now 20 plus year old facility there was undergoing a massive renovation with the specific needs of basketball in mind and not hockey.

San Jose however, had the land and money to provide the venue. As a result, San Jose got the chance to host the bay area's representative NHL club, one that has had substanible sucess at the gate and is now beginning to translate that to sucess on the ice.

It is often mentioned by many hockey historians that, since the original San Jose Sharks roster was compiled through a dispersal draft that took place in the de-merging of the North Stars and Barons franchises that the San Jose Sharks are not really an expansion team, but the re-incarnation of the old California Golden Seals. In theory it makes sense, although it was never made official.

Well the NHL kinda lucked out because now San Jose is the better of all the cities by the bay thanks to the Computer Chips I know Shark you don't want them and the Giants are trying to block it but the best thing for all Bay Area Teams would be if the A's move down to San Jose, and perhaps the Warriors too.