64 replies to this topic

[MrSandMan]

want some cheese with ur whine?

No thanks.. just justice. Spread the word, maybe the pressure will help make next year fair with right calls for everyone.

btw, welcome to the boards newbie.... you'll soon learn that trolling isn't tolerated here and it'll get you quick exit on the banned wagon.

So tread lightly my new little friend. Also it'll help if you actually contribute something to the boards. I read about 6 of your posts in the last day and you seem to repeat yourself a lot while saying absolutely nothing.

[StevieY9802]

I think you disagreed with me there and argued my point. And why would rent-a-players want to leave a team they saw huge success in? If they could have stayed, then they probably would have. I think the cap forces players to become rent-a-players. Shanahan was a rent-a-player too. He stayed after the team saw success because the team wasn't limited by a cap. That Red Wings team was able to keep its fans because the players that brought success to the team stayed around and Ilitch could keep resigning them. And I think the Richards signing proves my point exactly.

Doug Weight said he would probably go back to St. Louis anyways so I don't see how the cap has anything to do with that honestly. All the cap does is make you have to be smart with your signings. The Wings will be able to resign Bert with a cap and after some success. Why? Because they aren't over paying guys to have them stick around. You can't go and give a guy like Marty Lapointe 5.2 million anymore and I am quite fine with that. The smart teams will be able to get it done. If you have to let guys walk because they want more money then fine. If you know what you are doing you can find guys to replace them somehow. The spending got out of control. If your players want to stay they will. Datsyuk probably could have gone out and got more than he got here after finally having a good playoff. The Ducks will probably have to let Giggy walk and with Bryzgolov(sp?) behind him I don't think they mind. But him leaving won't hurt them that much because Burke will move pieces in and out to make them successful. Look at the New England Patriots in the NFL. They've let a lot of guys go because of their salary cap and they are still at the top of the league year in and year out because they know what will help them win. You can be successful even with guys leaving if you know what you're doing. And teams had to dump players after success even before the cap. The Wings dumped Mike Vernon after he won the cup because they felt it was better for the teams future.

[TEX-WING]

I don't have a problem with small-market teams winning it. I also don't have a problem with Bettman's goal of expanding hockey by making smaller market teams more competitive. A team with moderate success is going to be more effective at attracting new fans than a team with a snowball's chance in hell at even making the playoffs.

What bothers me is that the cap disassembles all the talent of all of these teams right after they win the cup. The stupidity of Bettman's plan is that after generating interest in the smaller markets, their team falls apart the next season, allowing the fans to return to not caring. It just doesn't make sense. We'll probably see it with the Ducks. Giguere is going to want a lot of money to stay (like Khabibulin did after Tampa won), and as soon as the young stars get older and better, the team won't be able to sustain them anymore. We'll probably see the same thing happen with the Penguins and other developing teams.

That seems more of a problem with the team management than where the team is from. Every team can spend the same amount now, if the GM's can't figure out how to manage their resources then they need to be replaced with some one that can. If When the wings win the cup are they going to have a fire sale the next year. Nobody has a gun to the GM's head making him overpay for a few players. If the player really wants to be there he'll be a little more likely to get creative with the contract to help the team (how many Wings took pay cuts to bring in players they thought would help), Dom's contract this year for example.

The one thing that has helped Dallas is they had a good core and they kept them. The fans were able to see the same players every year which gave the team an identity/personality.(That and they were in the hunt pretty consistantly)A good amount of northern transplants didn't hurt eather.

[Dabura]

edit

Edited by Dabura, 07 June 2007 - 05:11 PM.

[RedRockit]

Per the guys on ESPN this afternoon, NBC is reporting the lowest ever ratings for prime time (I took that to mean "My Mother The Car" was a higher-rated show, but maybe that's a disservice to Mama Car).

So how many commercials were there for the NHL on NBC? By my count: none.

Lot's of 'em for Simon Cowell's latest crapfest, "America's Got Talent".... for "Age Of Love" (most offensive idea EVER for a reality series...heck, even "Poker After Dark" is receiving steady promo! The SCFs? Dead silence.

With so very much to grab a viewer's increasingly short-attention span, the NHL cannot neglect promotion.

On a similar thread to this one, some posters put forth the (rather good) argument that they're fine with hockey being a niche sport, they didn't need it to rival the NBA or MLB or NFL. All good, that, but what happens when niche sports become nil sports? What happens when a sport becomes marginalized? What happens when a little DOESN'T get inspired and beg for skates for Chrissy, because the Next Great One inspired him: simply because said little has never been exposed to the sport via telly?

(and what happens when Centre Ice shuts down because of lack of subscribers? Where is our sport then?)

Edited by RedRockit, 07 June 2007 - 05:24 PM.

[Izzy24]

No one deserves the cup, you either win it or you don't.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who doesn't understand all this "deserve" talk.

[Echolalia]

Holy cow. Well, here goes...

So this is the third year in a row that the most revered trophy in all of sports has been claimed by a non-traditional hockey market with fans who had no clue about the team that won it during the regular season. For the third year in a row, Bettman had a huge smile on his face at the conclusion of the SCF.

So what does it matter that a team who comes from a non-traditional hockey market won the cup? I'm pretty confident that anyone on this board would be ecstatic if ever city was as passionate (or probably slightly less passionate ) as Detroit was over hockey, but America simply isn't interested (or more appropriately, educated) on hockey. If anything comes out of this victory, we're all leaning on increased tv ratings, including you, I'm sure. To be quite honest, I think Anaheim is a fairly decent hockey city. They're playoffs sold out much more efficiently than ours did, and I remember a couple years ago when we swept them how unbelievably energized their crowd was. Go take a look at some Stanley cup videos, you'll see what I mean. The point is they earned it, and even if they come from Mars, they deserve to enjoy the cup this summer.

Has anyone told him what the ratings of the SCF this year were? I didn't think they could get any worse than they did in 04, and then in 06. But apparently, when team from Southern California (which is the worst hockey market on Earth) makes the Finals, interest drops to a whole new low.

Honestly, if we eliminated all the 'bad hockey market teams' we would probably end up with the original 6 teams, and probably 5 or 6 others, which would definitely decrease ratings, as the season would get repetitive and old, and the finals would only be like 2 rounds.

I remember an article saying that the best thing for hockey would be to have a Detroit/New York SCF, because the ratings would be high due to the fact that the Wings are the most poplular American hockey team, and you know that New York is passionate about hockey as well.

Are you suggesting we rig the nhl? And lets just entertain this conspiracy idea of Bettmann pulling some strings to get his favorites into the finals. Detroit definitely wouldn't have gotten as far as we did, seeing as how poorly we represented our team by failing to buy tickets (no matter what the reason was that we didn't do it, the point remains that our upper bowl was empty and that wouldn't give a good message to the uneducated media.) Detroit wouldn't have made it 6 games into the Calgary series.

And don't even get me started on the officiating. I almost can't watch hockey sometimes because of some of the calls made out there that change the game around. (Even some of the calls that benefit the Wings, I was in shock over.) Perfect example? At the end of Game 5.

The officiating has always been bad in the nhl. Mickey Redmond makes it a priority to point out referee flaws, and hes been doing it since he began helping out with commentating. The fact remains that refs are human, and they will miss calls, look too much into a play and call something that shouldn'tve been, even bias comes into play, I'm sure. But that happens in every sport, and hockey is MUCH faster paced than ANY sport, and if you've ever tried reffing (as I have done for intermural college teams), you'll realize exactly how hard it is to make sure you keep track of every offsides, icing, roughing, tripping, high sticking, boarding, elbowing, and the countless other calls that can happen anywhere on the ice at any time. Do they suck sometimes? Completely. Is their job easy? Not at all. So calm down a little on the refs, especially this and last year of all years.

Gary Bettman has brought hockey morality for the real fans in the league to an all time low.

I couldn't agree more, but for different reasons than you mention. I'm disappointed with his failure to prevent lockouts, his weakness in taking advantage of media outlets (although nbc was a positive turn, and I hear its supposed to be even better next year), his unbelievable ability to turn blind eyes to apparent problems, as well as his persistent meddling in things that seemed perfectly fine before he screwed around with them. NOT for allegedly pulling strings so an ignorant hockey city can win the cup.

Seeing Pronger raise the Cup was bad enough, but that the Cup will now be defaced with the words "Anaheim Ducks" on it is almost unthinkable. They might as well put Mickey Mouse and Goofy on there as well.

They're an official nhl team despite what you think of them, and its quite appalling how bias you seem to be against them. And for what reason? The only one you've mentioned as of yet is the fact that their fans aren't as intense as ours, which last time I checked has very little, if anything at all to do with how good a team plays. And apparently their team plays very well, as they did just win the stanley cup.

You know he's a hated man when even the Ducks "fans" booed him as he entered last night. Remember when he had to say "It's ok, I bring gifts"? They should be worshipping him like the second coming of Jesus. He's one of the main reasons why the Ducks and other non-traditional teams have won. His first screw up was to put teams in places like Miami, Anaheim, Los Angeles (The only reason they are still around today was because of Gretzky), Tampa Bay, and Nashville, who could barely sell 3/4 of their tickets this season despite their top ranking in the standings for so long. Was Gary asleep when this came out, or did he just pretend not to notice?

He definitely is a hated man, and he really has a lot of guts presenting the cup each year. However, like I've already argued, I believe he has very little with Anaheim actually winning the cup. They have been around for a good 10-15 years (I'm sorry I don't know the exact number), and they've been a pretty good team since the start. It was only a matter of time before they finally won. And like I said, if you're going to base a city's fanbase with how well their arena sells out each night, you should be placing the Wings fans at the bottom of the barrel. I believe we failed to sell out a single playoff game.

Either he just doesn't have a clue, or he was tired of having teams like Detroit and Colorado and Jersey dominate year after year. Hello? It's sports, and there will always be dominating teams, no matter what. Deal with it. Look at San Antonio in the NBA. Uh oh, the Spurs are too good, we better make a salary cap so the Charlotte Bobcats can have a chance and those selfish Spurs will finally crash! You wouldn't have this problem, Gary, if you didn't put teams in those markets where people couldn't give a flying rat about those teams. I'm glad that Pittsburgh didn't move to Kansas City. Before moving back to MI in 03, I lived there for 9 years, and their minor league team, the Blades (which featured future NHL'er Patrick Lalime and Ray Whitney) had to fold due to a total lack of fan interest.

One of the main points of having an "nhl commissioner' is to increase ratings and to popularize hockey. If you decide to not put new teams anywhere in America, you honestly need to be fired, because that shows me you don't care about the ratings, or popularizing hockey. Most of the cities that have had teams for a while are fairly content and educated with hockey. Why not try to spread that to other cities? How could that possibly be a bad idea? Sure there are cities that aren't going to accept hockey no matter what, but you need to take those chances to get to the cities that would embrace a new team like a new baby.

Once again Gary, thank you for screwing the best game on Earth, and a sincere thank you from all of us real fans for screwing us as well. You thought you were saving the sport? It's in even worse shape than it was in 04.

I'm not going to deny that hockey is in bad shape, and I'm not going to deny that alot of the blame rests on his shoulders. But that really has nothing to do with Anaheim winning the Stanley cup, or the Wings not winning the Stanley cup. So as I agree with your statement that Bettman sucks as an nhl commissioner, I unfortunately see absolutely no real support for your claim in your long winded argument

edit: quote coding error

Edited by Echolalia, 07 June 2007 - 06:20 PM.

[TEX-WING]

^^^^
damn, got a cramp in my scrolling finger

[RedRockit]

Holy cow. Well, here goes...

[long post: please send Matt $3.40 US in postage due]

Well said.

[Shoreline]

Meh, I've kinda worn myself out with the "Bettman sucks" posts. Think it's obvious he does and that he needs to go, but looks like I have no choice but to get used to the fact that the Ducks won, as well as much of California doesn't give a crap. That's what makes it a bitter pill to swallow, that an area with such lack of concern for the greatest award in sports wins the cup. Oh well. I'll be ordering Center Ice again this next season.. hoping there may be an online version again this year -- might test that out. Makes it a lot easier doing straight video capture within the computer than using a TV-in graphics card (such as the ATi All-In-Wonder cards, or TV tuners). There's so many games I'd have loved to record, but I refuse to use VHS players or DVR's for recording.

Edited by Shoreline, 07 June 2007 - 06:41 PM.

[Kp-Wings]

The Official Bettman sucks topic? Oh come on now. This must be the 1,000,000 Bettman rant topic that's been referred to as " The Official one".

While I am disappointed with the fact that these low brow area teams keep winning, and the fans continue to not care, there's nothing that can be done about. Credit the team GM's for building these Championship teams. It also comes down to the fact that a lot of these teams all really sucked for a long time, and are now stockpiled with great draft picks. Like Anaheim for example.

I would certainly like to see big market teams win the Cup again, no doubt. Teams like Detroit, Toronto, New York, Montreal, Boston, Philly, Minnesota, Buffalo, heck even Chicago would all throw huge celebrations and parades when their teams win the Cup. These teams like Anaheim only have one little parade, then it's back to talking about the offseason in the NFL, the Dodgers, or the Lakers. It's very dishearting that the people down there really don't care about hockey all that much, but what can you do? The GM's for these teams are able to build winners off of the new CBA. Bettman, at the very least, can be blamed for that.

[Yzermania19]

Well, what can you do?

We all know Bettman sucks, has always sucked and will continue to suck. That is a fact and unfortunately until TPTB realize that, he will continue to be the NHL commissioner. I don't like the idea of him fouling up the league even more, but there is precious little I - or any other hockey fan - can do about it, because it is apparent that Bettman could give two farts about the fans' opinions.

As for the Ducks, I freaking hate the Ducks. I don't believe they "deserved" to win the Cup, any more than any other team, but they won the requisite 16 games first, therefore they earned it. Yes, that's it - they earned the Cup. They didn't deserve it, they weren't necessarily the better team, they just got to 16 wins before anyone else.

And the future of the game? Well, I would love to see about six teams contracted, and some of the remaining teams relocated to more viable hockey cities. But I doubt the contraction part of my hope will be realized. If anything, there will be expansion. For the exisiting teams, I'm not necessarily talking about moving them out of non-traditional markets, because I think the key to the future of the NHL lies in non-traditional markets, but they have to be the right markets. Two teams in Florida is one team too many. Atlanta had a team a generation ago and couldn't support it. California does not need three teams. Studies need to be done on some of the existing franchises that are struggling, and some potential new markets, like Portland, Kansas City, Houston, Las Vegas.

Of course, the NHL really needs to advertise like crazy. RedRockit mentioned there were no commercials for the NHL on NBC, and I agree. I did not see ONE commercial for the NHL during NBC's prime-time lineup. Not even during the Stanley Cup Final. That is not only pathetic, but it is inexcusable. How the hell do they expect to attract an audience if they don't advertise? Maybe, just maybe, if they'd had a commercial on, someone might have said, "oh wow, the Stanley Cup. Hmmm...maybe I'll check it out." Instead the NHL is treated like the ugly stepsister that no one wants to acknowledge is part of the family. The NHL needs a advertising and marketing program that is going to make household names of some of it's up and coming stars - put a "face" on the league - so that everyone, regardless of what team or sport people follow, will know who these guys are and want to watch them, whether it's on TV or in person playing against their local teams. They need to get commercials on NBC prime time. They need to get on a better cable channel than Versus. And they need to get better coverage on NBC - there is no excuse for a contract that says NBC can cut away from a overtime playoff game to show the pre-race show for a horse race. That is appaling, disturbing and absolutely sickening. No other sport - whether it be football, basketball, baseball, golf or even bowling - would put up with that crap.

[dadair]

Just to throw a little gasoline on the fire, Sports Business Daily reported one topic on the Board of Governors meeting is.......EXPANSION. Yep, you read correctly. Expansion into Las Vegas and Kansas City.

[Zion]

Not sure if this was mentioned already, but Los Angeles has had a hockey team LONG before Bettman arrived.

[SouthernWingsFan]

Soon Bettman will be blamed for such things as global warming, throwing trash on I-90 in the middle of nowhere in Montana, and for not being able to prevent the next earthquake in San Francisco.

Just you wait, it will happen!

[Kp-Wings]

Soon Bettman will be blamed for such things as global warming, throwing trash on I-90 in the middle of nowhere in Montana, and for not being able to prevent the next earthquake in San Francisco.

Just you wait, it will happen!

You're not getting it though.

The part we're all frustrated with is the fact that the Ducks "fans" hardly even gave a s*** after winning the Cup last night. The city of Anaheim has pretty much already forgotten about it, as Paris Hilton has made the top headline for the day. It's just frustrating when these teams win the Cup, and yet the fans don't care. I guerentee you that if the Wings had won it this year, it would be on the front page of every newspaper, and the city would be partying it's ass off right now. And it's not just Detroit. A lot of teams like Toronto, Motreal, Boston, New York, Chicago, Minnesota, Buffalo, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa, Philly, and even Long Island, would all be the same way. The fans of these teams appriciate the fact that their team won the Cup. The fans of teams like Anaheim really don't. That is what is so frustrating about it.

And yes, Bettman is the one to blame here. He instituted the Salary Cap and the CBA, so teams like Anaheim could build winners, while established teams who actually have fans would fall into a state mediocrity, or be good but still not win the Cup in favor of these no nothing southern market teams. And I know you're from the south, so don't think that I am knocking the south in any way. The fact of the matter is though, is that a lot of these teams in the south have fans really don't care about winning the Cup like the fans of teams who play in the north The fact that these teams all play in northern areas may be mearly quincidentle (sp?), or it may not be. It depends on how you look at it.

The reason we all hate Bettman is because he shows more support to teams who, quite frankly, don't have much of a fan base at all. He would rather see teams like Anaheim and Carolina win the Cup over Detroit or Toronto. And while he's never come out and said that in public, you know very well that that's his intentions. It has been from Day 1.

Edited by Kp-Wings, 07 June 2007 - 08:16 PM.

[Kass]

Teams Added/Moved Under Bettman:
Nordiques (You gotta agree they're just as passionate in Colorado)
Winnipeg Jets (OK, Yeah Phoenix sucks)
Minnesota (Good)
Atlanta (Bad)
Hartford (Meh, You could argue that Hartford was doomed from the start, but so is Carolina)
Columbus (Done suprisingly well attendance-wise for playing like crap)
Nashville (Very bad).
Minnesota North Stars (Dallas does well)

Out of the last three Stanley Cup winners only Carolina came to be under Bettman's tenure.
Anaheim and Tampa Bay were both given franchises under the previous president.

[RockyMountainWingGal]

I cannot say I agree that any team doesn't deserve to win the Cup - like many already stated - the players on those teams certainly deserve it. However, I completely disagree with Bettman on the expansion thing. I think he added too many teams too fast. I'll admit I'm not a fan at all of putting a bunch of teams in the South. I think people are being a bit nairve on the California thing. They must realize Cali has had teams as far back as the original 6 - WHA teams etc. The Kings have been around since the '67 expansion. I see California as a pretty good hockey market actually.

How I would judge it however, is whether the team can support itself. There are teams in some markets that could not sustain themselves without sharing and the cap system. I guess I have a big problem with that. The talent pool has been diluted, and the schedule is just killing the NHL imo. He's talking about expanding again - Las Vegas and KC I hear - ludicrous considering the ratings right now - and no tv contract. I love the league, but I don't think it can survive under the current system. I know it's cliche - but the big market teams are crucial to the league's success - and if none of them win for years....I think that's bad for the NHL. Now those teams will have to learn to compete under the new system just like the Wings have. But if they don't, and these expansion teams win every year - I fear the worst.

And I'm not trying to be sour grapes - the Ducks were a great team and deserve to be champs - at least the West got the Cup back. I don't even consider Anaheim to be a small market (it's not) and California is not a place void of hockey tradition (I'd have to stick Tampa or Carolina in that category).

[eva unit zero]

The talent pool has been diluted

The talent pool has not been diluted. That is a myth.

Proof:

In 1987, there were approximately 450 NHLers and 425 Canadians with 25 Americans or Europeans in the league. Now, there are approximately 385 Canadians and 315 Americans or Europeans.

So, for the sake of argument, assume two things: 1) That Canadian hockey produces the same amount of 'NHL level' talent now that it did 20 years ago, and 2) That after the 315 Americans or Europeans, there is not another player who would have made the NHL 20 years ago.

That would mean there are 740 players right now who would have been good enough to play in the NHL in 1987. That's a 65% increase in the talent pool. If we assume there are the same percentage of NHLers outside the league from the US or Europe who are '1987 NHL level' that there are of Canadians, that's another 33 players, meaning a 72% increase in the talent pool rather than 65%. The league has added nine teams since then, a 42% increase. Adding two more makes that a 52% increase. So the average fourth liner in a 32 team NHL in 2007 will still be better than the average 4th liner in a 21 team NHL in 1987.

Also of note: expansion to KC and Vegas means one West team moves East. That COULD be Detroit. Add Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia to the Northeast, and merge the remaining Atlantic and Southeast divisions into a new Atlantic division and you have two 8 team divisions in the East. Add Dallas, KC, Minnesota, and Colorado to the remaining Central teams, and the Western leftovers can make up the Pacific. Columbus obviously could be moved as well, in the same place as Detroit. Obviously Detroit/Columbus would have to remain 'West' if Nashville moved to Kitchener.

[glasgowcelticwing]

Whatever. Anaheim has just as much of a right to win the cup as any other team in the league. No one deserves the cup, you either win it or you don't. I don't feel sorry for any team that hasn't won in X amount of years, it certainty isn't anyones fault but the organization.

I totally agree with you Heaton . I hated seeing the Ducks lift the Cup. and wether we like it or not , they did win it . In a way that's what I love about Hockey , it can be one of the most unpredictable sports in the world . Everyone has a chance to win it.