Tell me again why the NHL needs to stay in Nashville

People get interested in the personalities after they're interested in the product. There's a reason why people from "Saturday Night Live" tend to get more notice than those from "Mad TV," and it's not about marketing.

Get players on Leno and Letterman? To do what? Letterman generally has two guests per show, excluding musical performers. That's 10 per week. He does about 40 weeks of new shows per year, and that's 400 guests. You know that certain people are going to be there multiple times, so how many slots does that leave? Maybe 300? Do you know how many agents and studios and networks are pitching to get their people on the show?

 

Beef,
The original post to which we are referring said to put the main cameras, which are manually operated, behind the net.

 

My apologies

 

re timing: 1980 and 1994. failure to follow up (ie marketing) doomed any efforts.
if the nhl played the current style -- or i should say allowed the current style, in 1980 the game would be light years ahead of where it is now.

 

The League and the NHLPA, with both groups' greed, failed to follow up on the sport's popularity following the 1993-94 season. It would have took a Confederacy of Dunces not to try to reach some sort of accord following the highest rated Cup Finals in history, and damned if Bettman, Goodenow and their cronies (Board of Governors and NHLPA) didn't do their best to guarantee that the sport would never be taken seriously down here by media and big business.

 

Two more myths.

 

Pretty good column by Stephen Brunt on the folly of the new CBA

http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081010.wspt_brunt11/GSStory/GlobeSportsHockey/home

That's because the issue was never competitive imbalance, as Bettman maintained over and over again. Under previous contracts, which gave teams control over players' most productive years, free spending franchises like the New York Rangers missed the playoffs for long stretches, the wealthy Maple Leafs continued to wander the desert and low revenue teams competed for the Stanley Cup.

The issue was that markets that were products of greed-driven expansion simply weren't going to embrace the product. And since Bettman had promised the owners still more expansion (you can find the projected revenue as a line item in the presentation Boots Del Biaggio was making to potential investors in Nashville), there would be no real restructuring, no letting nature take its course through bankruptcy or measured contraction, lest it shake the house of cards

And if you want an indepth analysis of the league's finances, this is pretty solid:

http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081010.wspt_nhlmain11/GSStory/GlobeSportsHockey/home

Some teams are pretty pissed off at the whole thing: We didn't manage to get rid of salary arbitration, and some teams just can't afford to pay their restricted free agents or arbitration-eligible players," the executive said.

There are teams, like the Los Angeles Kings, who will only achieve the salary floor because of hefty bonuses to rookie players that will count against the cap to start the year. And the Kings are far from the only ones who will have to work to get above the minimum threshold.

"There are probably 10 to 12 teams that can't afford a $40.7-million payroll," added a source with extensive knowledge of league operations.


And the league shut down a whole year for this?

The CBA hasn't addressed the fundamental problem: there are certain franchises, mostly in the US Southeast that are only there because the owners wanted the immediate hit of the expansion fees.

Now it's coming back to bite them in the ass. And all this incompetency orchestrated by Bettman.

 

Holy smoke, JR. The emperor has no clothes.

Whalercanes have claimed they want to stick to roughly a $44 million budget. That's with the huge contract the organization just handed Eric Staal. They're still upset no one would take Frank Kaberle's deal. I think it's for roughly $2 million per, not chump change but not an organizational backbreaker.

Unless you're a ridiculous cheapskate like Peter Karmanos ...