Over the last week I have been grimacing in pain due to getting my wisdom teeth pulled. It has given me time to sit around, watch television, and live on yogurt, soup, and pudding.
As I’ve waited for the pain to subside I was lucky enough to observe the idiocy that is the NHL front office. For a league that is struggling to maintain it’s place in the popular sports hierarchy, it doesn’t look like they realize that there is a huge public image problem.
This has been escalated even more by the recent news stating that the NHL is looking into contracts signed by star free agents. Evidently, they are concerned that teams are front-loading the contracts so the player gets paid the bulk of the money in the earlier years of the deal, providing the team with less of a salary cap hit in the later years of the deal.
For example, defensemen Chris Pronger of the Philadelphia Flyers just inked a seven-year deal worth $33.5 million, $28 million of which will be paid in the first four years of the contract.
The fishy part about the contract is that Pronger is now 34 years old and will be 35 when the season starts, so the odds of him playing until he is 42 years old are very slim—although NHL defensemen do enjoy long careers.
The problem with the entire contract situation is this: the CBA (collective bargaining agreement) was designed so that teams would have to abide by a set salary cap.
By front-loading the money in contracts, teams look like they are trying to circumvent the cap hit that would occur should a player retire before playing out his deal, which would mean that a team signed a player and discussed his retirement—something that is forbidden.
The NHL shouldn’t be overly concerned with this issue, and that is why I’m writing a letter to Gary Bettman, the Commissioner of the NHL, telling him exactly what he should do to bring the league back to prominence:
Dear Commissioner Bettman,
Why are you concerning yourself with the ethics behind contracts being signed by your star athletes when there are more pressing matters at hand?
Do you want to see your league take a step back to what it was like during the 2004-05 NHL Lockout? I sure as hell don’t. What you need to be focusing on is the promotion and image of the league. The one good thing that you have going for you: the attendance numbers are extraordinary!
Total attendance throughout all thirty teams totaled 21,495,541 fans, with only the Atlanta Thrashers filling less than 80% of their seats.
Both of these numbers are better than the NBA, which plays the same number of games in front of comparable crowds. The NBA had 21,398,899 fans come to their games, but seven franchises failed to reach 80% average attendance, with the Memphis Grizzlies bringing up the rear at 70.3%.
To compare the two leagues, in Philadelphia, a strong sports market, you had the Flyers average 19,545 (100.2%) in attendance at the Wachovia Center versus the NBA’s 76ers who averaged 15,802 (79.7%) in the same arena!
The amazing thing is, both teams made the playoffs in 2008-09, but the disparity in attendance heavily favored the NHL team.
So Gary, now that you have brought back the original fan base to the NHL, it is now time to expand the league’s horizons and grab sports fans and casual viewers alike.
How should you do this? First, focus on obtaining media contracts! The NHL may as well be in the Stone Age compared to the rest of the major professional sports leagues.
While the NFL has $3+ BILLION in television contracts with CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, ESPN, and NFL Network, the NHL has a measly $70 million per year contract with Versus, along with a two year contract to broadcast about 10 games on NBC a year (including the Winter Classic through 2011).
Here is a list of things to do to promote the NHL:
1. Get a deal done with ESPN to broadcast games.
Some of my best memories from when I was younger was watching Gary Thorne do a game on ESPN, then keeping the TV on to watch NHL 2 Night. ESPN does a great job of promoting the content shown on their station, and with the amount of viewership they get, it will be worth it, this I guarantee.
2. Recognize that you have a great thing going with the NHL Winter Classic.
We're going to send you the most entertaining NHL articles, videos, and podcasts from around the web.
3 Comments
Loading more comments...
This comment and all replies have been deleted This comment has been deleted Undo delete