CSI: Hockey - How Owners Destroyed the NHL

[AmericanErrorist]

''Reprinted in full by permission.''

CSI: Hockey - How Owners Destroyed the NHL
By Dave Zirin
http://www.edgeofsports.com

There's nothing left but the autopsy and it doesn't
take William Peterson - or even David Caruso - to
decipher who killed the National Hockey League. The
season is cancelled. The accusations are flying. But
the most deafening sound is silence. There is no
outcry in the streets. There has been no Million
Hockey Fan March. 77% of Canadians said
in a poll they could care less. Substitute shows on
ESPN2 are twice as popular as last year's NHL games,
which garnered a miserable 0.2 rating, just below the
Black Israelites and anything with Tucker Carlson.
"It's not a good sign when your replacement
programming is outperforming the NHL," said one ESPN
executive. The sport - in short - is a corpse.

The media - as per usual in a sports/labor conflict -
has chosen to heap blame on both sides, saying this is
a case of "greedy billionaires vs. greedy
millionaires." Now I should confess before writing
that I stand with the players in union fights. I would
link arms with them even if their demand was for the
owner to be body-checked by Scott Stevens at center
ice before every home game. All demands are reasonable
because it's their sweat that keeps the puck moving.

But in this particular case, it is empirically the NHL
bosses that have destroyed this beautiful game. The
National Hockey League owners have taken a
terrifically exciting sport - nothing is better live -
with reservoirs of support in the Northern US and
Canada, and turned it into something grotesque. The
NHL’s journey is like DeNiro's Jake Lamotta in Raging
Bull. At the beginning he's rough around the edges,
but also magnetic, lean, and lethal. By the end, he's
a bulbous, repellent, gassy, clown - a human car
wreck. This - in all its ugliness - is the NHL.

Their road to Armageddon began thirteen years ago when
they hired a slick NBA marketing whiz named Gary
Bettman to be their commissioner. Bettman stated
proudly that he had never set foot in an NHL arena,
but knew how to "grow" the sport. Unfortunately he
knew zero about hockey, probably thinking Guy Lafleur
was a Toronto based escort service.

Bettman took one look at this blue-collar league built
on the backs of hardscrabble French Canadians,
toothless grins, and rabid fans, and recoiled. He
examined its base in northern de-industrializing
cities and shook his head at the absence of revenue
streams to suck dry.

He saw the future of ice hockey and, unfathomably, saw
Dixie. Bettman expanded the league to thirty teams,
putting the sport in places like Nashville, Atlanta,
Raleigh. Phoenix and Columbus. The NHL owners sat back
and collected hundreds of millions of dollars in
expansion fees, giving out fat contracts along the
way, with no thought to the long-term consequences.
Predictably, these new revenue streams were shockingly
shallow. The big national TV contract Bettman promised
never came and the NHL was left with unknowable new
teams like the Hurricanes, Coyotes, and Predators
playing in half empty arenas.

As sportswriter Dan Wetzel put it, "There is no
denying that under stewardship the NHL has
been run into the grave. The league has been
mismanaged, misplaced, overexpanded and overpriced,
all because Bettman turned his back on the core fans -
believing there was a pot of television and corporate
(fool's) gold at the end of the small market rainbow."

The money wasn't there. The attendance, which
accounted for 80% of revenues, was down. The new
territory was showing as much chance of success as an
ice rink in hell. None of this was helped by a
defense-oriented style of play that limited scoring to
historic lows. Bettman, who as stated, doesn't know a
hockey puck from a sausage patty, has been clueless,
unlike NBA commissioner David Stern, on how to tweak
rules to present a more exciting, offensive-minded
product. As Sports Illustrated pointed out, the top
scoring team in 2003-2004 would have ranked 21st in
1985-86.

Now with the sport in hideous shape, the owners after
a decade of overspending on marketing, arenas, and
players, are desperately looking for their profit
margins. They are looking in the pockets of the
players.

Even though the union offered an unheard of 24% pay
cut across the board to save the season, this was not
enough. The owners have decided to risk the league on
what is called a "hard cap". A "hard cap" is when
owners decry the evil - for the first time in their
lives - of the free market and demand external
restraints on their ability to spend. This is an
outrage players have every right to stand against. Why
should there be a cap on what owners can pay them?
This would be unacceptable to the owners and their ilk
in every other walk of life. We don't see a hard cap
on the price of a computer or car or a fancy meal.
When it comes to our spending, we get credit cards,
interest rates and the right to bankruptcy court.
They, on the other hand, want formal limitations on
what players can earn.

NHL union chief Bob Goodenow caved on the hard cap at
the end - to the anger of many players - but Bettman
snubbed him, more concerned with making sure the
season stayed cancelled than saving it with an 11th
hour deal. Why not? After all, several owners have
said that the sport hemorrhages so much cash they
actually lose less money with game shut down than if
they were paying salaries. Caring nothing for the
tradition of the game, these southern-fried
bottom-liners would sooner rent out their arenas for
Toby Keith concerts than nurture the sport back to
health.

Where this goes from here is difficult to say. The
owners have been left with dusty jerseys, melting ice,
and a panglossian belief that everything will be
alright once they get their precious hard cap.
Unfortunately they may find that if a hockey puck
falls on the ice and no one is there to see it, it
will fail to make a sound.

Dave Zirin's new book "What's My Name Fool? Sports and
Resistance in the United States will be in stores in
June 2005. You can receive his column Edge of Sports,
every week by e-mailing
[e-mail]. Contact him at
[e-mail].

[chicagojoe]

1. As a lifelong fan,

I say some investors get together, say "fuck the NHL", and start a new league. Another option would be for the AHL, the premier minor league, could absorb the NHL players and become the new top league.

As a Chicagoan, I say FUCK YOU, BILL WIRTZ!!!! (Blackhawks owner)

[Sinistrous]

2. I agree.

New league. Current NHL owners frozen out. Maybe 12 cities, max.

Montreal
Toronto
Ottawa
Vancouver
Calgary
Edmonton
Boston
New York
Detroit
Chicago
Pittsburgh
Buffalo
(after fielding the "Broad Street Bullies", Philadelphia should be banned in perpetuity.)

[Telly Savalas]

3. Add Minneapolis/St. Paul and Quebec City

and make 'em publicly owned like the Packers.

[northernsoul]

9. sounds good to me

When the North Stars moved from Minnesota to Dallas (of all the god-forsaken shitpile places), I knew the NHL was headed for trouble.

I like the Wild, but I'd rather we had our North Stars back and there were no hockey teams in Texas at all.

[chicagojoe]

4. How 'bout Wisconsin--Milwaukee or Madison? n/t

[MrSlayer]

6. The Flyers were the top draw in the league back then.

Pittsburgh and Buffalo before Philly? Are you Insane? What do you want to watch, the Ice Capades? The reason they drew so well is because people love the fights. To say otherwise is ridiculous. And don't forget they had they had big time scorers in Leech, MacLeish, Barber and Clarke, one of the best goalies in Bernie Parent and bad ass defensemen in Barry Ashbee, Moose Dupont and Ed Van Impe. Hell, Dave Schultz had 20 goals one of those years in addition to 400+ penalty minutes. What made the "Big, Bad Bruins" anymore palatable than the Bullies? They were just as intimidating and vicious. The games between them and the Flyers were legendary. You have no clue what you are talking about. Maybe you should watch the sissy Euro league where you can carry eggs in your pocket and never have them broken.

[Ravenseye]

5. Not To Disagree Here

But I disagree...

Look Bettman is mildly retarded, and most of the expansions were dumb. Not doing anything about the quality of the play, enforcing the existing rules, increasing scoring, etc. That's all league rule stuff they could have done. Making the rinks international size would be next to impossible, but you could move the nets out, make them bigger, reduce the goalie equipment, and elminate all checking of non puck carying players and you'd double the number of goals scored in a game.

That aside...the whole concept that a salary cap is against free market principles is complete bullshit and belies a lack of understanding of how sports leagues work at their core.

The core of a league is competition. Teams need to be competetive with each other. How successfull would a league be if it consisted of the New York Yankees and 29 high school teams to take the argument to an extreme? Each and every team having the ability to compete with each and every other team is key. The ability to compete does not equate with actually competeing equally, but allows them the chance to.

The second aspect is thinking of each team individually as a business instead of thinking of the league as a business. Each team is a franchise of one company....in this case the NHL. Setting a cap on the salary for players is consistent with free market business. The majority of businesses set budgets for internal departments. If you have a company that creates widgets, that company will determine a budget for the production of the widgets and paying the people who make them. If the workers unionize, and collectively bargain, the company will generally be forced to pay these workers a higher salary, a larger percentage of the overall revenues. This is a good thing.

The problems come when the union workers receive so much money that the entire business becomes untenable. Whether it takes the forms of a strike and the workers asking for more money, or a lockout with the owners asking the workers to take less, the results are the same.

A Salary Cap, particularly one tied to revenues, not only is good free market business practice, but if done well is better for the players, league and team.

The NHL's problems are that each franchise governs their own salary, and this affects each other franchise and it's value.

Imagine if you owned a McDonald's restaurant and you hired some good kids. It was doing well, but there was a McDonald's across town that you competed with for 'best McD's franchise' every year. They keep hiring your best kids away when their contracts are done for double what you can afford to pay them. Other kids you have working the counters start making more money when they go into salary abritration because a couple of insane franchise owners are driving up pay. Next thing you know you're losing money every year with a large portion of it going to salary. A number of the smaller franchises around you are going bankrupt.

The entertainment vialbilty lies entirely within the NHL and the lack of intitiatives, or poor implemenation of initiatives by Bettman. The financial viability of the league though lies with a salary cap and salaries tied to revenues.

[Sorwen]

16. I totally agree

I'm not a hockey fan, but I'm a baseball, football, and basketball fan, and I think you're 100% right about the salary cap. Every business has its own salary cap that they set, and a sports league needs to be thought of as one business, not 30 different businesses.

[MrSlayer]

7. The owners had a big hand in it but Bettman deserves most of the blame.

He is a buffoon. When he first came into the league they gave him a puck and he spent a week trying to open it. Without a doubt he is the worst commissioner ever in any sport and hastened it's demise with mindless expansion, stupid rule changes, the Olympics and countless other minor foibles. The first thing they should do is get rid of him. Shrink the league back to 21 teams and get rid of the instigator rule. This will give every team several stars, eliminate the clutching and grabbing, let the players police themselves and bring back the combination of breathtaking grace and brutal physical play. I despise Bettman for what he has done to my beloved game.

[ThorsHammer]

10. Your second sentence might be one of the funniest things I've ever seen

(EDIT - hit the enter button too early)

I'm not a fan of the Southern expansion, especially at the expense of Canadian teams. I'd like to see a smaller league, which would help address the dilution of talent. Having a more open game would also be a start to getting fans back. I do think hockey can have a future here, but it will take a lot of work.

[mark414]

8. haha i love this line:

"I would link arms with them even if their demand was for the owner to be body-checked by Scott Stevens at center ice before every home game."

[Lexingtonian]

11. sounds right to me

One way or another, the league has to contract and start up again a lot humbler.

[jakefrep]

12. The union is more responsible for blowing this thing up

JMHO. Goodenow is a bigger idiot than Bettman.

[kick-ass-bob]

13. How?

Offer some evidence please. We've got some backing for the owners fault side, what is yours?

[jakefrep]

14. Simple

The union refused a deal that would have essentially assured them an average salary roughly equivalent to that of the NFL in a league that has appreciably less TV revenue. That makes them idiots IMHO.

Nevermind that I think that the notion of unions for professional athletes is a sick joke, and I applaud any effort to blow them to smithereens.

[kick-ass-bob]

15. So the union caused the owners to

keep inflating the costs of labor to beyond their own capacity, and want the union to bail them out??? I don't think so.
Offer sheets of $10M per year are what led to the whole disaster in the first place (P. Karmanos to Federov as an example.)

I'm sorry, if they hadn't started that, we wouldn't be having this discussion today.

[hasbro]

17. Actualy yes

Goody did everything he could to ensure that the asking price went up advising players to holdout like Staurt and Nabakov and was irate when players took less money like Bourque did for most of his career.

And if the whole premise is that ownership just raised salaries of their free will why the problem with bringing them down.

[ProfessorGAC]

18. Boy, Do I Disagree With This

The core fanbase of the game was too small to sustain the game in the long run. The options were to force expansion or contract. Like any other business, contraction is merely a slow path to death of the enterprise.

Bettman had no choice but to EXPAND the base. We can question the tactics and decisions made as to how and where, but the idea of rapid expansion is basically all he had.

Too many troglodytes in management positions of many teams who will NOT clean up the game. Will not let the best athletes be the best athletes. They think, like some here, that the most dedicated hockey fans NEED the rough play and fights. But, even those that like them, even in Canada, watch every second of every World Cup or Olympic games despite the fact that there's NO fighting allowed and much harsher penalties and stricter calls against rough play.

Failure to clean up the game and make sure the fans regularly saw the fastest, most skillful exhibition of the sport is, IMO, the reason why the expansion didn't succeed. Bring boring hockey into a new market and those new fans find it boring.

Too much dump and rush. Too much going on behind the net. Too much rough stuff. If people want to see fighting they can watch WWE. At least those guys can get leverage on their punches 'cuz they're not standing on ice! And, since the outcome of the game almost never really depends upon rough stuff, or intimidation, the fights are superfluous nonsense anyway.

Bettman's failure was not to push the troglodytes to the side and INSIST that rules changes be made to speed the game up, make the coaches less important to the action, and reduce the rough stuff. Then, maybe places like Phoenix, Dallas, Carolina, or Florida would have embraced the sport more.

But, it's not because Bettman turned his back on the Canadian fan base. That's just chauvinistic nonsense.
The Professor