Football got it done last year no reason why Hockey cant get this done. The popularity of the game is great and growing. This will be a real deal breaker for both the owners and players and i think they both know that. At least I hope they both know that.
- mvp0207

they know it. it will work out.

the NHL has been killing itself for a long while now.
1. the greedy owners need to have better revenue sharing
2. the players need to realize that they are killing the league
3. the NHL needs to have better televised coverage in america. the NHL network is a joke. yes i am a hockey fan but i cant watch repeated games during prime time. they do a good job with 36hours and oil change but those new good shows are few and far between. then i watch NBC and my team is the sabres and were playing boston yet all i hear about is sidney crosby. like really....just do play by play.

the sport is awesome and people in america will watch and fall in love with hockey if they broadcast it properly. just look at the olympics ratings. people were watching rowing and cayaking and other stuff that is not as cool as hockey.

the NHL has been killing itself for a long while now.
1. the greedy owners need to have better revenue sharing
2. the players need to realize that they are killing the league
3. the NHL needs to have better televised coverage in america. the NHL network is a joke. yes i am a hockey fan but i cant watch repeated games during prime time. they do a good job with 36hours and oil change but those new good shows are few and far between. then i watch NBC and my team is the sabres and were playing boston yet all i hear about is sidney crosby. like really....just do play by play.

the sport is awesome and people in america will watch and fall in love with hockey if they broadcast it properly. just look at the olympics ratings. people were watching rowing and cayaking and other stuff that is not as cool as hockey.
- joshs

yeah, damn the players who make the sport great.

explain how players are killing the sport. Explain how Quick's run in the playoffs killed the sport. Explain how Stamkos's 60 goal season(only 2nd one since the lockout) killed the sport. Explain how Malkin is killing the sport with his great talent. Without the players the sport doesn't exist.

When the owners agree to not pay these guys that kind of money and suddenly free agents aren't able to get these contracts from anyone.

That is when the collusion charges start. This happened in baseball. It could just as easily happen in hockey.

The "owners are the problem" arguement is not as cut and dried as it first appears.
- NightTrain_AlMo

It is only collusion if they "set a number"... if you set a team budget and go on the line of ok, here is what I have to spend on a position/player there is no problem in my eyes. Look at the money those idiots are throwing around this summer and crying the blues, if they were all on the same page, they would have said "no we can not do this anymore, there will be no extensions from anyone till the new CBA is signed, period!" but no, they are throwing around $100 million dollar contracts like its monopoly money, Will it ever change, NO... it takes money to make money

UPDATE:

The NHL met with Fehr for 45 mins before he left the NHL office to go and brief the players who are in NY. The other players are being briefed via email. more to come. The fact the sides will continue to talk today can be viewed with "cautious optimism" according to a source...

***********************************

Ok. Players aren't killing the league but player SALARIES sure are!

I can understand how most of us are frustrated by both sides in this, but the majority of us should be hoping that the owners come out on top this CBA.

People talk about growing revenues = bigger pie = just split it up! It's really not as simple as that. The cap and floor are directly tied to revenue and the larger market teams both by making more $$$ and also growing their revenue faster, quickly quickly inflate the cap and floor for the lower tier teams.

Put it this way, under the current CBA if the league was just Toronto + St. Louis (hey! Leafs would make the playoffs!) then based on their revenue last year 193M and 78M respectively that the 2012-13 floor and cap would be roughly 65M/81M!

The next year regardless of whether teams made profit or not, chances are revenue would grow more and tend to grow far more rapidly in the bigger markets with bigger TV deals etc. So Leafs revenue would probably grow a substantial amount... St. Louis just a little bit... and *wham* the cap would rise for the Blues far disproportionately to how their revenue grew...

This is a simplified two team example but you can see how "Uh-oh STL lost ~3M last year and now the cap is spiking again and... oh shiite!"

This is the problem. Teams do not make even similar revenue and obviously they don't put it all in a pot and redistribute profits... so revenue sharing in a league with such disperse revenue as this does not work well at all. However if the players % were to be drastically lower at least it helps keep salary cap inflation in check a bit.

Owners spending upwards of 50 to 60 million in player salaries should not walk away with only 3M profit (Ottawa) or just exactly break slightly less than even (Pittsburgh) (numbers according to Forbes report).

How would you like to spend all that money and assume all that risk every year only to make less that most of the players?

This is why the league is currently in a bad state, and it's not just 2 or 4 teams. Again according to Forbes which we all know wouldn't be 100% accurate... 22 out of 30 teams made max 3.2M profit where 13 of those team lost at LEAST 5 million! And this year under the old CBA the cap would have gone up probably another 5 or 6 million!

If that doesn't raise alarm bells for everyone here except the elite handful of teams who would love to get to spend piles more in a luxury tax scenario in order just to buy a Cup then I don't know what else to say!

The parity in the league has been great, but the health of the majority of franchises not at all! If I were an average owner, I'd want to scrap cap inflation through revenue sharing altogether by setting a hard floor/cap in the next CBA. 40M/60M.

It's the way Twiigs rounds the numbers. They always round down to the nearest number. If you scroll your cursor to the percentage line on each voting choice, you can get the actual number of votes for it.
- bmeltzer

1. the greedy owners need to have better revenue sharing
- joshs

Yes, and no. While revenue sharing does need to be improved, better revenue sharing doesn't fix the fact that the cap is still growing faster than low-revenue teams can keep up with; if you don't fix this, you simply make the need for revenue sharing greater every year.

2. the players need to realize that they are killing the league
- joshs

See someone else's comment above.

3. the NHL needs to have better televised coverage in america. the NHL network is a joke.
- joshs

Yeah, they should go back to ESPN where they'd be ignored except on ESPN2, between the hours of 1am and 6am when no one is watching anyway. Besides, if you want to see a joke of a sports network, try watching the NBA for a day without gouging your eyes out.

then i watch NBC and my team is the sabres and were playing boston yet all i hear about is sidney crosby. like really....just do play by play.
- joshs

Probably because the casual hockey fan has little to no idea who Jason Pominville and Thomas Vanek are, but they do know who that Crosby guy is.

the sport is awesome and people in america will watch and fall in love with hockey if they broadcast it properly.
- joshs

So ... don't hold back the details, explain how the sport should be broadcast properly as opposed to how it's being done now.

UPDATE:

The NHL met with Fehr for 45 mins before he left the NHL office to go and brief the players who are in NY. The other players are being briefed via email. more to come. The fact the sides will continue to talk today can be viewed with "cautious optimism" according to a source...

***********************************
- Eklund

Lets hope.... God Knows I dont want have to watch the Drama League ( NFL ) anymore then I have too

yeah, damn the players who make the sport great.

explain how players are killing the sport. Explain how Quick's run in the playoffs killed the sport. Explain how Stamkos's 60 goal season(only 2nd one since the lockout) killed the sport. Explain how Malkin is killing the sport with his great talent. Without the players the sport doesn't exist.
- blacksheep1

because they are too busy franchise building. big name UFA's could help smaller maket teams sell the product but instead of players take less money to go to already established big markets. yes its their choice but then we wonder why no one watches columbus games. free agency is a huge failure in the NHL. i am not advocating that they should do away with it but i am just stating a fact.

Ok. Players aren't killing the league but player SALARIES sure are!

I can understand how most of us are frustrated by both sides in this, but the majority of us should be hoping that the owners come out on top this CBA.

People talk about growing revenues = bigger pie = just split it up! It's really not as simple as that. The cap and floor are directly tied to revenue and the larger market teams both by making more $$$ and also growing their revenue faster, quickly quickly inflate the cap and floor for the lower tier teams.

Put it this way, under the current CBA if the league was just Toronto + St. Louis (hey! Leafs would make the playoffs!) then based on their revenue last year 193M and 78M respectively that the 2012-13 floor and cap would be roughly 65M/81M!

The next year regardless of whether teams made profit or not, chances are revenue would grow more and tend to grow far more rapidly in the bigger markets with bigger TV deals etc. So Leafs revenue would probably grow a substantial amount... St. Louis just a little bit... and *wham* the cap would rise for the Blues far disproportionately to how their revenue grew...

This is a simplified two team example but you can see how "Uh-oh STL lost ~3M last year and now the cap is spiking again and... oh shiite!"

This is the problem. Teams do not make even similar revenue and obviously they don't put it all in a pot and redistribute profits... so revenue sharing in a league with such disperse revenue as this does not work well at all. However if the players % were to be drastically lower at least it helps keep salary cap inflation in check a bit.

Owners spending upwards of 50 to 60 million in player salaries should not walk away with only 3M profit (Ottawa) or just exactly break slightly less than even (Pittsburgh) (numbers according to Forbes report).

How would you like to spend all that money and assume all that risk every year only to make less that most of the players?

This is why the league is currently in a bad state, and it's not just 2 or 4 teams. Again according to Forbes which we all know wouldn't be 100% accurate... 22 out of 30 teams made max 3.2M profit where 13 of those team lost at LEAST 5 million! And this year under the old CBA the cap would have gone up probably another 5 or 6 million!

If that doesn't raise alarm bells for everyone here except the elite handful of teams who would love to get to spend piles more in a luxury tax scenario in order just to buy a Cup then I don't know what else to say!

The parity in the league has been great, but the health of the majority of franchises not at all! If I were an average owner, I'd want to scrap cap inflation through revenue sharing altogether by setting a hard floor/cap in the next CBA. 40M/60M.
- Senators2112

Excellent, excellent illustration of the problem with the increasing cap [which I've explained numerous times, without the simple example]. However, your last sentence has as much chance of happening as the owners asking the players to take 33% of revenues and the players gladly accepting it - not to mention, the high-revenue teams are going to want to blow way past $60 million the first chance they get.

Yes, and no. While revenue sharing does need to be improved, better revenue sharing doesn't fix the fact that the cap is still growing faster than low-revenue teams can keep up with; if you don't fix this, you simply make the need for revenue sharing greater every year.

- Irish Blues

In not so many words this is exactly what I was saying. I'm sure the owners felt a ~40M cap the first year of the last CBA was workable but I'm pretty sure they didn't see it spiral by 33M in seven years!

because they are too busy franchise building. big name UFA's could help smaller maket teams sell the product but instead of players take less money to go to already established big markets. yes its their choice but then we wonder why no one watches columbus games. free agency is a huge failure in the NHL. i am not advocating that they should do away with it but i am just stating a fact.
- joshs

Yes, and no. While revenue sharing does need to be improved, better revenue sharing doesn't fix the fact that the cap is still growing faster than low-revenue teams can keep up with; if you don't fix this, you simply make the need for revenue sharing greater every year.


See someone else's comment above.



- Irish BluesYeah, they should go back to ESPN where they'd be ignored except on ESPN2, between the hours of 1am and 6am when no one is watching anyway. Besides, if you want to see a joke of a sports network, try watching the NBA for a day without gouging your eyes out.

Probably because the casual hockey fan has little to no idea who Jason Pominville and Thomas Vanek are, but they do know who that Crosby guy is.

So ... don't hold back the details, explain how the sport should be broadcast properly as opposed to how it's being done now.

im saying less color analysys and more play by play.

for starters the NHL network should bring in more programs like NHL36, oilchange during primetime. the NHLnetwork is like 3 hours of programming on repeat all summer long. im dropping the sports package because the channel is substandard IMO.

the players are killing the league because they franchise build. demanding to be traded to big markets, taking less money to go to big markets etc etc. no way minnesota should have 5 big UFA's on their team. havlat (turned into heatley), koivu, parise, suter and backstrom. yes its their choice to do what they want but thats why i say they are killing they league.

im saying less color analysys and more play by play.

for starters the NHL network should bring in more programs like NHL36, oilchange during primetime. the NHLnetwork is like 3 hours of programming on repeat all summer long. im dropping the sports package because the channel is substandard IMO.

the players are killing the league because they franchise build. demanding to be traded to big markets, taking less money to go to big markets etc etc. no way minnesota should have 5 big UFA's on their team. havlat (turned into heatley), koivu, parise, suter and backstrom. yes its their choice to do what they want but thats why i say they are killing they league.
- joshs

what players took less money to go to big markets?

edit: so you consider the wild a big market team? parise and suter were offered 98 million dollars to sign with them. how did they take less money?

Screw cautious optimism.....NHL sucks!

Fans everywhere should strike!

question for joshs, what teams do you consider to be big market teams?

So explain why the Leafs, Canadiens, Rangers, Flyers, Bruins, Red Wings and Canucks would be willing to share their profits with the Coyotes, Blue Jackets, Blues, Islanders, Panthers, Sabres and Capitals. What are they getting in return? An increased ability to spend to their heart's content? An increased voice in how everyone else operates? They're not just going to hand over profits for the greater good - they're only going to do it if they get something that specifically benefits them at everyone else's expense; what exactly is that?

EDIT: you partially answered with this ...


Do you really think low-revenue teams are going to hand over control of their team to the high-revenue teams in exchange for a small share of profits? If high-revenue teams can dictate how low-revenue teams operate, what's to stop them from saying "we're going to spend to the moon, the rest of you can only spend crumbs - and guess what? Even if we lose money and you manage to make it, you get to subsidize our free-spending ways?"

At least you admit it's never going to happen - and you're absolutely right about that. It won't for a variety of reasons, the least of which are outlined above.
- Irish Blues

Teams like the Islanders don't qualify for revenue sharing

Teams like the Islanders don't qualify for revenue sharing
- brodydog29

nor should they, they have all the means in the world because of their billionaire owner he refuse to put an ounce of winning effort into the team.

what players took less money to go to big markets?

edit: so you consider the wild a big market team? parise and suter were offered 98 million dollars to sign with them. how did they take less money?
- blacksheep1

off the top of my head brad richards, paul kariya. dont act like this does not happen

question for joshs, what teams do you consider to be big market teams?
- blacksheep1

rangers, colorado avalance back in the early 2000's, toronto, montreal, pitsburgh, philly, chicago. i mean big cities that have no problem selling tickets or teams that are already cup contenders.

UPDATE:

The NHL met with Fehr for 45 mins before he left the NHL office to go and brief the players who are in NY. The other players are being briefed via email. more to come. The fact the sides will continue to talk today can be viewed with "cautious optimism" according to a source...

***********************************
- Eklund

I said the same thing on page 3

nor should they, they have all the means in the world because of their billionaire owner he refuse to put an ounce of winning effort into the team.
- blacksheep1

Not going to fight for Wang, I don't care for him. But, he bought the team in hopes of developing the real estate in and around the arena. The county has denied every attempt at building/renovating so he has chosen to not spend until his lease expires. Can't blame him

My original point is you cannot bag the Islanders in the excuse of owners doing little and profitting from revenue sharing of the bigger, more successful teams.

I cant see how i can suport a lockout..
all my NHL JUNK is in the closet untill this garbage is over.
All fans should do the same.

Don't forget Stanley Cup Final TV ratings are on a downward trend Mr. Buttman. You're so clearly managing the growth of the game... Maybe it's you and your lawyerly friends who are trying to dictate to the economics how they "should" work (in your opinion) when you pay no attention to how they actually work.