The Rangers head to the Sunshine State for a pair of road games before finishing up their five-game road trip Friday for a matinee game against the Bruins. Tonight is the third game of the roadie, as New York looks to make it three wins in a row away from MSG, keeping in line with their play this season, as they are 8-6 on road but just 4-5 at home. Tonight, their opponent is the Lightning, who are 8-2 at home and 5-4-1 in their last 10.
Tampa Bay is making do with their superstar sniper, Steven Stamkos, heaping additional responsibility on Martin St. Louis. In addition, they will be without Ryan Malone and Radko Gukas, but Nikita Krucherov, who was tearing up the AHL and will play with Alex Killorn, and Dimitry Korobov, a shot to play. I am really looking forward to seeing Kucherov play, given the numbers he was posting in the AHL as a rookie this year.
For the Rangers, it really is status quo again tonight. As you will see by the lineup below, the only change is Henrik Lundqvist is back in for Cam Talbot. Hope he doesn’t screw up compared to what Talbot did on Saturday night versus Nashville ïŠ. This also means that JT Miller and Justin Falk will be out of the lineup again. As we have said recently, Miller needs to play. Keeping him in New York is counterproductive; he needs to get ice time to improve, especially top-six minutes, and he is not getting it above, especially from the press box. I am not going to rehash the Michael Del Zotto trade or no trade question here, I will get to it more in the future, especially if a deal likelihood increases.
Lines: Nash-Richards-Callahan, Kreider-Stepan-Zuccarello Hagelin-Brassard-Pouliot Boyle-DMoore-Dorsett
McDonagh-Girardi, Staal-Stralman, JMoore-MDZ
Lundqvist
Forbes magazine today released their NHL Valuations reports. According to their calculations, and as Tyler Dellow reports in a counter-argument, those have to be taken with a grain of salt, the Rangers are second in the league at current value at $850 million and third in operating income at $27.3 million.
Here is the Top-10: Ranking - Team - Current Value - Revenue - Operating Income 1. Toronto Maple Leafs - $1.15 billion - $142 million - $48.7 million 2. New York Rangers - $850 million - $131 million - $27.3 million 3. Montreal Canadiens - $775 million - $127 million - $29.6 million 4. Vancouver Canucks - $700 million - $101 million - $15.8 million 5. Chicago Blackhawks - $625 million - $115 million - $25.6 million 6. Boston Bruins - $600 million - $114 million - $18.5 million 7. Philadelphia Flyers - $500 million - $95 million - $6.0 million 8. Pittsburgh Penguins - $480 million - $107 million - $20.9 million 9. Detroit Red Wings - $470 million - $96 million - $10.5 million 10. Los Angeles Kings - $450 million - $98 million - $8.2 million What it does show is a few interesting items. First, the big market teams are five of the top-seven in terms of current value. Second, either due to an improved exchange rate or more interest, three Canadian teams are in the top-five, though the ones that are there come as little shock. For further information, Calgary is 11 on the list while Edmonton, Ottawa and Winnipeg are 14-16. At the bottom, most come as little shock, with the Islanders, Carolina, Tampa Bay and Columbus at 26-27 and 29-30. I was mildly surprised at St. Louis at 28 and Minnesota had the worst Operating Income with a loss of 13.9, though part of that might have been the lockout and expensive contracts awarded, but that may be too simplistic of a conversation. The top-18 teams and 20 in total had Operating Income in the black.
As Dellow points out, since Forbes uses a proprietary model to come up with their calculations, and it's probably the same model that they utilize for Baseball, Football etc. That argument holds some water, but I am loathe to totally discredit the calculations regardless of the method used. In the case of the Rangers, Forbes projects the Rangers at $850MM in current value, a +13% increase from one season ago. The one figure that looks really out of whack is that the magazine has the team's Debt/Value ratio at 0%, which based on the recent renovations and the cost associated with it seems kind of specious at best.
The other interesting column per Sports Business Daily is that "the NHL is crafting a series of Canadian television deals that could increase its average annual rights fees to more than $350 million, nearly double the current amount, while creating a Sunday night telecast franchise for the league.
Per the column, "the ongoing negotiations involve five Canadian networks: CBC, TSN, Sportsnet, and French-language broadcasters RDS and TVA. Negotiations are focused on 10-year deals, the same length as the $2 billion agreement between the NHL and NBC Sports Group that was reached in 2011. The forthcoming Canadian deals are expected to escalate in value over the length of the contracts, possibly exceeding a total of $400 million by the end of their terms."
It looks as if the league should be on better ground financially than it was, especially in Canada. Now about those bottom teams in the Forbes valuations…