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Lockout


Bear55

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Well, Bettman certainly isn't a very warm and fuzzy guy, he definitely has the snake-oil salesman feel to him, but you can't argue with 7% growth on average over 8 years. Fact of the matter is, he's grown the league well and the sport is gaining recognition. On the other hand, he's had his screw ups to with clubs like Poenix, Columbus, and Atlanta.

8 years ago, we got the cap in place and the NHL is in a much better position than what it was heading towards without it. The cap now is to the point that the owners can really hurt themselves with super long, expensive contracts (I'm talking about you Craig Leopold). If the leagues lets that cap grow faster than the owners can afford, we wind up in the same position.

Yeah, it sucks, but the players need to understand that if the owners aren't making money now, the players won't make money in the future. If they can come up with something that makes the players take a smaller percentage of a larger number (overall revenue), they will ake more money in the future than they are now.

To sum it up, I would rather take 50% of $4Billion than 57% of $3.5Billion. I think that's the message the league is trying to send the players. Though, there are other points like the contract lengths and RFA numbers like you stated.

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Yeah, it sucks, but the players need to understand that if the owners aren't making money now, the players won't make money in the future.

OnAFly hit the nail on the head. Revenues may be up but so are expenses.

The article I just read said that in 2009-2010 16 teams lost money. Sure they could have played this season on the old contract but we would just be where we are next year. Just comes a year sooner.

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Please explain to me if all these teams are losing money, why are they siging long term contracts with much of the money on the front end? They maybe losing money on paper, but my guess is the owners didn't become rich by spending their own money. With the depreciation of players and related expenses I doubt that any of them have put personal money into their team. They have a salary cap now and are finding loopholes in how to get around it!

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In sports if your team is losing money there are probably only 2 ways to fix it, either spend less or put a better product out there.

Spending less does okay in the short term but how does it affect your fan base in the long term? I also believe there is a salary cap minimum but I'm not positive.

Most sports owner try and improve their product (and bring in better players) to increase fan support. In hockey it's very tough to improve your product quickly when you are drafting 16 and 17 year old players through the draft. However as the Wild's former GM proved you can pretty much decimate your young talent by drafting poorly.

So now your going after players in which other teams are offering long term contracts. How are you supposed to land those players?

The only way to insure it is to have rules in place that all the owners will abide by.

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The loopholes are one of the things needing to be fixed. Contacts like Kovalchuck's initial contract which took him out to playing when he would be 45 and getting paid $100K are obviously there to undermine the cap. We did it with Suter and Parise, Vancouver did it with Luongo. Lot of teams have done it and it needs to stop.

As for the owners spending tons of money that they might not necessarily be fully responsible for, does it matter? If the team has no money the team has no money, regardless of who it's backed by.

At the end of the day if the players want to make money, the teams have to make money.

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Owners need rules to control themselves, they can be their own worst enemies. Its hard to blame the players for accepting large bloated contracts, and it is also hard to blame the owners for spending insain money to improve their team in an attempt to win the cup. The Wild did what I believe they had to do and spent crazy money to land some big time players, the players took home huge cash, everyone kind of wins until things get too crazy (now) and we end up in a lockout. They need to find some long term middle ground.

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Interesting thread, as one of those mostly casual fans who only watches hockey consistently (except for the Wild) near the end of the season, I'm quite disappointed that--with the new talent we signed--we'll potentially not be skating this year. I don't know enough about this issue to take a side--and I don't want to read a bunch of articles to figure out which side I'm on smile -- but it's definitely a bummer. I'm just hoping for the best.

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It will be nearly 2 weeks between talks when the two sides get together on Friday. It's a good thing there is a sense of urgency here crazymadfrown

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I haven't read all the comments... But does anyone else kind of get frustrated with these strikes happening in all sports in general? Its just stp.

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As has been said by many angry hockey fans, it's millionaires fighting with billionaires over dollars and the fans are the ones getting punished.

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I'm at a point of boycotting any professional sport that has a lock out now. There's always college to get my fix. Maybe a little crazy in my thinking.

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I honestly looked into getting a package to stream AHL games...they want ~$300. You've got to be kidding me.

Maybe I'll look into streaming OHL or QJMHL games instead.

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That's the thing. The people that are into the NHL will be into the NHL regardless. The people that are casual fans will stop watching. Once it resumes, they won't just jump back to watching. They will have found something else to fill that void. I hope the NHL and PA realize this. Having a lockout every 8th year is going to inhibit the growth of the sport, which is a huge deal to the NHL, players and owners.

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Parise and Suter are geniuses. They have signed big deals just before each lockout. And the rookie deals pre lockout were significantly better than what they would have received the following year.

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Regarding the casual fans, a lot of these are in warm weather geopgraphy locations (Florida, Carolina, etc). These are the same teams that are losing money today. You lose more of these fans and the slope gets steeper yet. When I was last in Miami, I saw ticket deals for the Panthers of buy 1, get 3 free. The strategy of pulling teams away from Canada and move to beach locations has always baffled me.

I do agree that the Toronto's, Vancouver's, Detroit's, and Philly's of the league will have fans return when the lockout ends. Minnesota too for the most part.

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At least the pro's have more time on their hands.....

Sidney Crosby was in Blaine the weekend watching his sister in a tournament. My son got a picture and some autographs.

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I was listening to KFAN yesterday afternoon, the Common Man show. (He iritates me most of the time). He said he has an inside source with knowledge the lockout will end on Wed 10/3. Hope he has a CRI on this.

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He said he has an inside source with knowledge the lockout will end on Wed 10/3. Hope he has a CRI on this.

Man---I hope so!! laugh

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Jeez I hope so.. Let's get this thing done.. MN finally has high hopes going into a season and this happens.

I am not an NHL fan, I am a Wild fan, I stopped being a fan of the NHL when they moved all the playoff games to Versus and when they started handing out fines and suspensions and the Red Wings became the model team. I could care less on what happens in the rest of the league. Weeknight games give me something to do in the winter when I can't ice fish and catching a game when I am down in the cities always makes the trip more worth while.

Quote:
The strategy of pulling teams away from Canada and move to beach locations has always baffled me.

completely agree, it just doesn't feel right walking into the arena in a t- shirt and shorts in Feb. The people down there are bandwagon fans in general and then when you give them a game they didn't grow up with, they just don't care. I have heard of some good minor league hockey down in FL that has a strong following tho.

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Lets hope so, it does sound like they have been talking for a few days now so lets hope something gets ironed out. What I hope for most of all is for them to set the framework for all future negotiations and we never have a lockout or strike again.

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That guy is a moron, along with most of those radio guys. He's just on there to say things that get people excited, nothing else.

According to Wayne, the lockout should end by Jan 1. Who knows what will happen. Sounds like the league will start moving games back by mid-week. When games start getting cancelled, that's when we'll see real movement as players and owners are losing money at that point.

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Pretty solid line up for Houston! It will be interesting to see how some of these guys do.

Forwards: Joel Broda, Brett Bulmer, Charlie Coyle, Kris Foucault, Justin Fontaine, Mikael Granlund, Johan Larsson, David McIntyre, Carson McMillan, Jarod Palmer, Nick Palmieri, Zack Phillips, Chad Rau, Jason Zucker.

Defense: Drew Bagnall, Jonas Brodin, Brian Connelly, Tyler Cuma, Kris Fredheim, Chay Genoway, Steven Kampfer, Marco Scandella.

Goalies: Mike Brodeur, John Curry, Matt Hackett, Darcy Kuemper.

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I quite watching hockey after the last lockout a few years back. Then they took hockey of espn and put it on OLN lol. thats was the final blow. hockey sux

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He must be a soccer or WNBA fan. grin

Or hockey players are stealing the ice time from his curling game smile

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