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unfortunately when it gets down to the business of hockey, with 60% of the teams losing money and only three (New York, Montreal & Toronto) making a significant profit, it makes the most economic sense for the have-not owners to completely wreck the league and start from scratch.
Islanders are finally moving to Brooklyn. "The Islanders have established a 25-year agreement to play at Barclays Center beginning in the 2015-16 season. Their lease at Nassau Coliseum expires after the 2014-15 season." Congrats Long Island you got to keep your team
So if many fans abandon the NHL when they return, it may not be as devastating as it might have been because unlike the last lockout, many markets are already much stronger in terms of attendance and interest than last time.
Coming out of the last lookout, these strong markets today had weak attendance back then: Boston, Washington, LA, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Chicago, Nashville, and even some Canadian teams were just starting to draw their long string of sellouts (Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton).
Of course, some markets are now weaker. Phoenix, Columbus, Denver, Dallas, Minnesota (although a resurgence over the summer wth the gaudy free agent signings). Detroit's interest is likely down but they still had strong attendance last year.
Rangers and Devils just came off deep playoff runs, so hopefully most of those fans are retained.
Many of these strong franchises are in important markets. Even Tampa and Florida seem to have strong ownership and good crowds, although at low ticket prices.
There was no Philly-Pittsburgh rivalry back then, no Crosby-Ovechkin, no Winter Classic, no HBO 24/7, no decent TV contract, no glitzy NHL Awards in Vegas...
Maybe the owners, many of whom seem more prosperous now vs.then, can endure this even more than before.
I'm not missing the games too much yet, but I'll be sad if it can't start by Jan. 1. Just for the sake of the restaurants and the fans who still care along with the innocent fans under 10 years old who may not understand why they're not seeing hockey.
I love the NHL, I love the Rangers. I have spent untold amounts of money, tens of thousands of dollars for season tickeyt, merchandise, hotel room tos follow the Rangers on the road. Than there are the concession stands at MSG & the cost of geting to a game, driving, parking, tolls, gas etc..
At this point we have had 4 work stopages since 1991. This is UNACEPTABLE. The owners allowed the season to be lost in 04'-05' & swore the new CBA would slove everyones problems. Apparently they were wrong. Now 7 years latter we have the same issues, in additon we now have the issues of blatant cap circumvention by owners the past 7 years that went for the most part unchecked by the NHL with the execption of the Devils signing of Kovy the first time.
Owners are their own worst enemies. They set the rules than they don't follow them by exploting the loopholes they put in place.
a 10 or 12 or 15 year contract geared towards a player retireing in X amount of years simply put is wrong. This is NOT the way to run a business.
It is absurd to think that the NHL has grand plans to expand to a 32 team leauge when they can not sustain nearly half the teams that are in the leauge now. Realisticly you have about 8 teams that are not fiscaly sound. You have another 6 teams roughly that cook the books to show a loss for tax purposes. The rest break even, again more creative accounting for some of them. Than you have the super power teams, NYR, Toronto, Montreal & Detriot that do very well.
The leauge needs to get these not preforming teams to areas that will support them, North like Seattle or Canada & seriously thing about contraction of the teams that are in weak markets that just can't survive, like Columbus & Phoniex. To this day it boggles my mind how Nashville was ever awarded a franchise. Some how they have made it work....but just barely.
Right now I am just disguested with the situation. I can't see myself spending the money that I have spend the past 20 years on tickets & merchandise once this lockout ends.
I feel for you. Lots of financial ad emotional investment...for what? Somehow the NBA fans endured this last year up until Christmas, and returned to high TV ratings overall for the shortened season. But those fans didn't have the nonsense of the wiped out season we just had 7 years ago, so maybe they were more eager to forgive. And a shortened season doesn't seem to have cheapened the Heat's championship. I wonder if this year's champ will be tainted, if this ever gets going...
I'm glad my area had lots of AHL and college options, but I want my old NHL back, the non-corrupt, more innocent one from years ago.
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