Thoughts on Spezza and The Bottom Line

At the risk of turning this space into daily updates on Jason Spezza's latest and greatest trade suitor, there's not a whole lot going on in Ottawa right now and local and national media types alike continue to drop hints about the future of El Capità¡n. So, uh, bear with me on this little point for a little.

Two national guys, Darren Dreger and Elliotte Friedman, weighed in on the Jason Spezza situation in the last twenty-four hours. First, a quote from Dreger, courtesy the great Hope Smoke:

It's hard to even know where to begin with this sentence, but here's a novel thought: this time around, let's try and be a little more honest, and a little more candid with a fan base that's growing rapidly concerned with the team's bleak financial outlook and the role its playing with respect to old promises of chasing a Stanley Cup.

The thing about ownership's concern about the PR nightmare of Ottawa purging their second captain in as many years is that it doesn't really have to be like that. With Daniel Alfredsson, the organization needlessly and senselessly nickel-and-dimed the guy to death. Team executives lied, and lied, and lied about how contract negotiations went down, until Daniel Alfredsson drove a stake right through their best spin efforts. The fallout, honestly, was far worse than the actual loss. I think, generally speaking, people were less concerned with losing a decent top-six talent, and more concerned with (a) how the organization basically had no money to retain the most prominent player in franchise history; and (b) how they tried to cover it all up, after they had realized their mistake.

The Spezza trade doesn't have to be like this. I have no idea why it would be like this. There are plenty of reasons to keep Jason Spezza, but there are just as many -- if not more -- to shuffle him along for the right package. Look around the blogosphere, and you'll find many an argument in support of moving on from the thirty year-old -- the vast majority of which are laced in quantitative analysis, with extensive thought into the matter.

This trade, too, is about money. But, there's a 3,000 mile difference between giving an icon a fairly-generous two-year deal, and moving away from an injury-plagued, 30+ centerman who is going to look for max-term and a whole lot of dollar on his next deal. The latter is just extremely risky, and probably not dollar-smart. Plus, everyone and their mother knows that this team's going to clock in at or below their $56MM internal budget for next season.

It's clear that, for whatever reason, the team wants to move on from another captain. Now, it's their job to find suitable talent from whichever team steps up on the trade front.

Speaking of which! Elliotte Friedman spoke this morning on local radio, offering a couple of thoughts of his own on the matter. We've heard him hint strongly at a trade in the past. His brief spot -- starting at 12:00 -- Friedman talks about the delicate situation that is dealing a player who has some choice in his next destination, and what potential markets could step up. Friedman noted St. Louis (I think a fairly-definitive front-runner at this point), but also noted that Nashville -- a team in dire need of offense and with plenty of cap space available -- could step up to the plate.

Nashville's an interesting one. Like a lot of the southern market teams, there's a whole lot of room between where they're spending and the projected cap ceiling. (I note that Nashville out-spent Ottawa last year, and almost certainly will next year, too.)

Segue! JR Lind wrote an interesting piece yesterday, providing all of the juicy bottom-line details for the 2013-2014 Nashville Predators. Weirdly, due to the terms of the team's arena lease, they have to make public all of this stuff. In pertinent part:

Revenue-wise, the Predators generated $29.3 million at the box office (after discounting taxes and the seat-user fee), an average of $715,167 per game. The team cracked $1 million on two occasions, both against Chicago (once in November and again in the season's final game).

Per ticket sold, the post-tax and fee revenue averaged $45.97. According to Hoag, that's down from $48.63 last season, but is ahead of previous years ($40.42 in 11-12, $37.73 in 10-11, $37.70 in 09-10 and $42.53 in 08-09).

That $29.3 million ticket revenue covers roughly half of the Predators' salary obligations. According to CapGeek, the Predators salaries totaled $58.74 million at the end of the season.

So, before even accounting for any of the other profit areas -- like, say, all of the concerts and other attractions that played at Bridgestone Arena -- the team covered half of their salary payroll. For a team that pulled 15k attendance, sold tickets on the cheap, papered the arena, and didn't make the playoffs in a fairly-small hockey market, that's probably not all that bad.

Which is to say, you wonder how a team like Ottawa is struggling this badly. This team pulled 18k+ attendance at higher per-ticket costs, maintained an even smaller payroll on both the player and scout/hockey ops front, benefited from plenty of high-grossing games against geographic rivals, and pull plenty more (relative) through their broadcasting and partnership deals. That's just touching the surface of this, too.

The answer is probably the massive debt and heavily burdensome interest rates. Either way, it's not encouraging.

Thanks for reading!