Vanflyer

I actually like cherry. Some think he is a blow hard, but allot of times I find myself siding with his opinions. He also does a tremendous amount to support youth hockey and also the troops. All that said, I always am asking myself if he is gay (not that there is anything wrong with that), but man, some of the suits scream (Sir) Elton John!!

Who are the people that negotiated Baseballs CBA (http://www.sportspromedia.com/notes_and_insights/mlb_sign_collective_bargaining_agreement_extending_period_of_labour_peace_t/). I mean they signed a TWENTY FREAKIN' ONE YEAR EXTENSION!! Get those people in the room to get this thing done!!!

I used to have a client in Portland when I lived in Van. I would Fly from Van to Portland Monday and Fly back on Friday. Used to catch allot of Winterhawk games. WHL is one tough junior league. Great battles between the Thunderbirds (Seattle), Giants (Van) and the Winterhawks. Portland is one of the best walking City's in North America.

@hf101 Harding just became my favorite goalie in the NHL.

I could tell you stories of my days in the corporate world (insurance companies in the USA) and all the operational waste and voodoo accounting that went on.

Backhand from silly.com on the article. I am not an accountant, nor pretend to be one. Why is that amateur hour? The holes I see in it are so what if an owner has borrowed money to buy a team. That is of little consequence to me and only really has impact on how much profit the owner gets when they sell (selling price offset by loans=net profit for the owner). The operations side is what I have been preaching all along. Yet, until we actually see where the operations expenses are and the reason why teams operational expenses were greater than revenue, it is very hard for me to make an argument that it is due to player salaries. I mean maybe it was due to the 30 executive offices all getting mahogany furniture and gold plated lamps, or Sniders new lear jet with the cool cam on the bottom of the fuselage so you can watch take off and landings as if you were strapped to bottom of the plane to get your jollies.

Daly "I can't wait until this meeting is over so I can screw Bettmans wife again, and again and again"

effing idiots (owners). Who in their right mind would let a minority rule their business??

What happened to the democratic way of majority rules??

How can anyone attack a person that has a real dancing bear as their profile icon??? Two bad .gifs don't work on the main forum. But if you want a good laugh, click on his profile and check out his icon. It is pretty funny. @ruxpin — backhand

One would think. Did yous see this article in SI about the Panthers? Pretty interesting: http://nhl-red-light.si.com/2012/11/16/nhls-money-loser-mirage-rangers-flyers-hurricane-relief-game-more/

I would be curious to see what components make up the profit and loss statements. I would imagine that the league would say "here are the 5 things that we look at" and it has to be uniform. Otherwise, teams could hide revenue under subsidiary companies that slants their picture to look like their losses are greater than they actually are. In regards to Florida being more viable or not, perhaps "more viable" would not be a fair statement. Yet, when one team (st louis) generates 50M more in gate receipts, yet has less total revenue, it makes you scratch you head.

@idahophilly Did you see the NHLPA's proposal to the league on 11/21 by Irish Jim??

The more that I look at this, I think it is the teams that are in big metropolis areas that are successful. Here is the list of teams that operated in the black last year: 1) Toronto 2) NYR 3) Montreal 4) Detroit 5) Boston 6) Chicago 7) Vancouver 8) Philly St Louis, Dallas and LA are the other cities you could site as comparable size. I think there are three factors: 1) Operational expense (including players salaries) 2) Attendance / draw 3) Ticket prices For example, let us compare St. Louis and Florida. St. Louis 1) Operating Income / Expense: St Louis had an operating income of 78M (off set by 43M in player salaries). So players salaries consumed 55% of their income. Their net operating revenue was -2.7M. 2) Attendance / Draw: St Louis was 9th in the league and garnered 300M in gate receipts (18809 per game). 3) St Louis average ticket price was $39 per ticket. Florida 1) Operating Income / Expense: Florida had an operating income of 81M (3M higher than St. Louis). Players salaries were 50M (7M more than St Louis). So players salaries consumed 61% of their income. There operating revenue was -7M (-4.3M less than St. Louis). 2) Attendance / Draw: Florida was 21st in the league and garnered 250M in gate receipts (16628 per game). 3) St Louis average ticket price was $37 per ticket. So, while St Louis,as the 9th highest attended team in the NHL, generated 50M more in gate receipts than Florida, there overall revenue was less than Florida's while St. Louis also spent 7M less in player salary than Florida? The numbers don't add up. Granted, I don't know about building debt and all that, but just on the surface, the argument that Florida should not be a team starts to fade away a tad when they are fiscally more viable than the 9th highest attended team in the NHL.

My family holds their extended family re-union at a place called lake side on lake erie in Ohio. The first time I went there (8 or 9 years old) I felt like I walked in a time machine and jumped back 10 years. Every subsequent time, I feel the same way. Its like going to Fargo (and I have been there too).

One way you could solve that is to not have guaranteed contracts (ala NFL). If player signs that 2.0 to 2.5m contract and then returns to the 750k performance level, release him and sign another grunt on the sidelines for 750k.

@ruxpin I get what you are saying about Ohio- but kind of don't get it. They have immediate rivalries with Detroit, Chicago, St Louis and Pittsburgh. I would have thought hockey would code well in a college town. I think with allot of these teams, corporate sponsorship plays a large roll in the ability to be sustainable. I mean Tampa generate on average 18.4k in attendance (13th in the league). Yet they still lost 8.5M dollars. That tells me that revenue outside of attendance is not being generated and / or additional income is not being realized. The islanders situation will be interesting. I actually think they will be more viable than NJD. While you can take the train right to Prudential Plaza, Newark is just a crappy place to go to. There are certainly parts of Brooklyn that are crappy (dangerous) as well, but I would think it would have more appeal to go see a hockey game there versus Newark.

Where I live, most of the indigenous population do not know north from south or left from right (when giving directions).

I would be curious why you think Columbus is a bad expansion location??

I don't understand this analogy. If I buy a commodity and there is a cost to the acquisition of that commodity (broker fees), that is one thing- yet the value is the value. I guess you can sort of liken that to an annual operating cost, but it seems a stretch to me. LA lost 2M last year. Lets pretend for argument sake that they have lost 2m every year since they were purchased (17 years ago). That is a sum of 34M that they have lost since the owner acquired them. Yet the net of their valuation from the point of purchase until now is 119M. Write off the 34M in loses and that is a 80M profit in 17 years (initial purchase price of 113m). Almost double the money. I won't get into the creative accounting that can go on and taxes for stated loses. I again will say that show me another business where you can lose money operationally, yet still nearly double your investment?

Ah, okay. I interpreted what you meant as weak in the US as a lessor compared to Canada. It would be interesting to see what the viewership numbers are in Canada v. USA.

There must be a sheep reference there somewhere.

Interesting point. After Forsberg left, the Flyers needed to get a "face". That off-season the choices were Drury, Briere and Gomez. I personally wanted Drury, but it turns out that Briere was the best (and cheapest) of all three. I actually think Jack Johnson could possibly be that guy. Its hard for me to understand what happened to him in LA, but in the NCAA and international competition- he was a beast (of course he had Erik Johnson helping him at the international level). I also think that Bobrovsky might have to the chance to be a "poster-child" hockey player. He has deficiencies but is extremely athletic and a work-a-holic (comes from an extremely hard working blue collar family / town).

I fixed the first part for you. Interesting about Whooostunnn- they rank 12th in attendance in the AHL and double the attendance of the Phantoms. Another side note (mostly for those posters on TSN.ca that say hockey belongs in Canada and not the USA), the second best pro-league of ice hockey in North America (AHL) sports only 3 Canadian teams (out of 30).

@AlaskaFlyerFan I think he is in Texas now (or there abouts). Yet, Alaska is one of the most amazing places on earth both geographically and culturally.