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How to Alienate Your Ever Shrinking Fanbase


What was once one of the fastest growing sports, popularity wise, is quickly becoming "Who gives a Puck!".

Its sad to think players like Chelios,Lemieux,Messier and Brett Hull will likely be forced into retirement because of the lockout, or waste their last playing days on teams like the "Motor City Mechanics" in Port Huron, Mich.





Edited, Tue Feb 15 15:57:32 2005 by RedjedBlue

This all is happening because of 40 some odd so called superstars want 30 million dollars. Well, people in the United States just don't watch the sport and those greedy bastards should settle for 2 million a year. Many people think there won't be hockey until next Christmas, by that time the lesser known players will be strait outta cash and the 40 superstars will be left to retire or stay in Europe making 50 thousand a year.

Many will come back to the fabulous game of hockey but some will retire in a nice home on the beach. They will realize that there dump of a place in europe with no TV doesn't stack up against the surround sound home theatre system they once had in New York City. Go down any street in Boston and ask, "How are the Bruins doing right now?" You will probally get the answer, Ummm, yeah they prolly in the playoffs." For the most part Americans don't give a damn, some even complain they can't see the puck. In my opinion they need to take a hint from the NFL and get on this salary cap bandwagon. I know a couple of the lower end hockey players and they were making 600 thousand a year, and without hesitation they bought themselves a nice house along with a nice car. Well now they can't afford to live for the next month.

I cant find a logical explanation for anyone playing any game for a living to make more than 10mil a year.. Maybe they should all get a visit from the Armed Services and talk about their hardships.

Reality check, do you need one?

I think we all know they'll pull the same bullshi[/u]t that Major League Baseball did when it had PR problems... Performance enhancing drugs do wonders for making fickle grunts have short memories. Maybe Hockey will have its own version of the Sosa/McGuire homerun derby.

Edited, Tue Feb 15 16:24:21 2005 by Lefein

There's a little more to it then that though. Salary caps generally are not in place to protect the fans from high priced tickets. They are there to protect the teams from eachother. The idea is to have a cap so that no team can simply hire all the best players by offering them the best salary. Other sports have instituted them because they rapidly figured out that some of the owners of teams are wealthier then others and can afford to put much more money into their teams.

The problem is that you can't just arbitrarily set a cap. The cap needs to have some relation to what players are making now, and continually adjust to what the players can demand in a free market. The issue with the salary cap in the NHL from the players perspective is that hocky players historically have been extremely low paid in relation to other professional sports. Admittedly, alot of this has been due to it being behind those other sports in popularity. But as the OP stated, this occured right as the game was gaining popularity and was poised to push into the "big leagues" of American sports. To the players, this meant that in a few more years, they could expect to recieve dramatically higher salaries as the revenue from increased advertisement and viewership grew. They saw the salary cap as a way for the owners to rake in all that money without having to pay more for the players.

In fairness, the cap issue should have come up *after* the sport gained in popularity to the point where it was needed, not before. By trying to instituted one beforehand, it was very obviously planned to give the owners an unfair amount of the profits from the sport.

It's a mess anyway you look at it. What they should do is leave the caps off the table for now, or come up with a system that will automatically grow with the revenue of the sport. Wait until the sport grows and "needs" a cap first, then institute one. Doing so beforehand just looks bad.

$56 million? I think you're off, Goose.

Here's the overview of what has happened in this one to two days alone ...

The NHLPA finally agrees to a salary cap. They start off by agreeing to a $52 million cap per team.

The NHL rejects the offer, saying this is too high. They counter-offer with a $42.5 million cap.

The NHLPA rejects that offer, and in turn offers a $49 million cap.

As of less than a half hour ago, the league rejected this offer, saying that the $42.5 million cap offer was their "final offer", and that the time for negotiations was over. No other counter-offers have been made at this time.

They're cancelling hockey?

Sorry, I don't give a fu[/u]ck about the sport, I just heard about something bad happening to Hockey today.

                                     ↓His opinion is ****.↓