The Detroit News has an interesting piece today in which they discuss the difficult personnel decisions the Red Wings front office will be faced with under a new CBA. All of this is assuming there is no salary reduction mechanism put in place under a new system (i.e. The rollbacks either the NHL or the NHLPA proposed).

The Wings currently have 11 players signed for next season and will spend $37.4 million on just those eleven. There are three players that have options, Curtis Joseph, Brendan Shanahan and Mark Mowers but the News expects only Shanahan and Mowers to return. This is because the option on Joseph’s contract is only activated if he wins a Cup or six playoff series over the three years of his contract. The paper points out that if there is no season, he can’t accomplish either one of those goals and that means he won’t be with the team next season. That came as a surprise to me since I don’t ever remember hearing those contract terms. I’m not sure that I mind, however. Joseph’s been a good goalie but hasn’t lived up to the rather high expectations we fans have here in Hockeytown. It probably is time for someone else to have the job.

Anyway, if the Wings just bring back Mowers and Shanahan to add to the 11 they already have signed, their payroll would stand at $40.75 million, a number which is likely to be well above any salary cap level imposed by the NHL. They are obviously going to have to do something about that, beyond not signing players. A lot of players will be forced to take pay cuts if they want to stay on the team.

Other than the Joseph thing, there isn’t much new information in the article, except for the tidbit that Henrik Zetterberg is seen, “as the one who will carry the torch after Yzerman retires.” So they think he’ll be the next captain? That goes against the impressions I’ve been getting. To me, it seems like Kris Draper is next in line, even though he is not even an alternate captain at the moment. We may very well have that question answered next season, especially since it looks like there will not be a 2004-2005 season for sure now. Steve Yzerman has said that he can’t see himself playing again if the NHL takes a whole season off and that scenario is becoming more likely by the day.

(via. DetNews)

Today marks the 107th day of the NHL lockout. The deadline is January 14, 2005. Negotiations won’t start until January 3rd at the earliest, but I doubt they will reach an agreement. The players have already started compromising with the 24% pay reduction across the board resulting in saving $511 million over the next three years. The owners, with Bettman as their leader, refuse to compromise at all. And they have the nerve to ask for a salary cap AND a 35% pay cut to some of the higher paid salaries. At the start of the lockout, I thought that it was both the owners and players fault for the position the best hockey league in the world was in. However, I now place a lot of the blame on the owners, well specifically Bettman.

So why is the NHL in this economic slide? Why is it no longer considered one of the 4 major sports?

1) Poor marketing. Instead of choosing to advertise star players and even teams in their respective cities, the NHL decided to use Michelle Kwan, Shania Twain, and Jim Belushi. Twain’s and Belushi’s commercials were designed to help explain the game and its rules. Commercials explaining the rules of the sports are not going to attract new fans. Show highlights of great goaltending, hard hitting, maybe even a fight or two, great goals, and some skilled puck-handling (ie. Datysuk’s deke of Turco). That is what’s going to attract fans, not Michelle Kwan with her awful looking shot. Pay good advertisers to come up with highly marketable commercials, not these corny ones starring non-NHL players. By having better marketing, the NHL will hopefully find a higher attendance at its games across the country and better TV ratings. Better TV ratings will lead to higher TV contracts. The revenue from these contracts are split amongst the teams so the higher the TV contracts, the higher the teams’ revenues.

NJmonak10 at the Lets Go Wings forum suggested a commercial where hockey is compared with some of the best of other popular sports: “A crushing tackle in football, then a blind sided hip check in hockey. A diving catch for an out in baseball, then I think it was Mike Vernon that had the diving stick save highlight. A slam dunk over Shaq, then the Lang goal in last year’s playoffs where he overpowered one of the Preds. A boxing clip then a hockey fight. A hundred meter dash, then a footrace for a breakaway. You could even have something like archery then show Roenick sniping the top corner. Then at the end you could have a lame slogan like, ‘NHL, it’s the best of the best.’”

2) Too much expansion. When Bettman came into the NHL from previously running the NBA, he expanded the league from 21 teams to 30. With 30 teams across the US and Canada, the talent pool has become diluted. Some of the locations where expansion teams were placed do not have the fan base to support a NHL team. “There are too many teams, especially in southern outposts far removed from where hockey has always thrived,” William Gildea of the Washington Post said. “The NHL has made the mistake of pulling up from its roots, trying to make itself a national U.S. sport. It isn’t. It’s a regional sport.” In the 2003-2004 season, the Nashville Predators and Carolina Hurricanes finished in the bottom three for attendance with an average of 13,200 fans or less per game. “The NHL in markets like Nashville, Atlanta, Tampa, Miami, Anaheim, Raleigh…I could go on and on…doesn’t make any sense,” Howard Bloom, publisher of SportsBusiness.com, said.

Some players support contraction blaming Bettman for expanding the league where it doesn’t belong. “You get rid of six or seven teams that don’t belong where they are … Some states just aren’t marketable, some cities,” Detroit Red Wings Chris Chelios said. “Hockey’s not a national sport in the U.S., and Gary Bettman doesn’t have a feel for that. That’s my opinion.”

3) Let teams play against traditional rivarly opponents. The Red Wings are lucky if they play Toronto once a year outside of playoffs. The Original 6 should be able to play at least a couple games among each other. Teams with rivalries should be able to play against each other more than once each season as well. You could even make it a weekend deal- have a rivalry game every weekend to even attract more viewers. I would rather watch other rivalry games then just any teams playing (aside from the Wings) each other and I’m sure that is mutual among other fans.

4) Make certain changes to the game itself like decreasing goalie pad size and other suggestions made by that GM meeting and Shanny’s summit.

5) The league shouldn’t have to suffer the business mistakes of certain hockey teams. Every owner should be held responsible for bad marketing or foolish business mistakes.

6) Get rid of Bettman.