Well, another good column by King Kaufman about hockey. He mentions lower ticket prices, and I’m all for that. However, I feel like I’m on the other end of the spectrum. I’ll pay the same price, or maybe even a bit more to see pro hockey again. I sure hope the Sharks season ticket base is smaller this year- get out fair-weather fans! The Sharks could be real contenders this year, and they are in good salary cap position.

However, they need to sign their free agents. Rathje, Marleau, Stuart, and Sturm are restricted free agents, and need to be signed. Ricci and Damphousse are already gone. Maybe the Sharks will be in the running for a big free agent forward. Rumors have already begun about Owen Nolan to return to SJ, where he still lives. I say sign ’em, but not for anything close to what he was making in Toronto. His back is too rickety for the Sharks to lean on him hard. Holik is probably the biggest name available, and the Sharks could use a center. Glen Murray is available, but I think he’ll sign again with the B’s, or go back to the Kings. Pavol Demitra would be a great pickup too. The real crown jewel would be Markus Naslund from Vancouver.

Team by team breakdown on ESPN here.

Well, the NHL deal is almost done, and not too many people care. I suppose I’ll have to take back my last post, in which I opined that the players realize that the owners really are losing money, and decided to give even more. After reading King’s column, I have to agree with King. The players did a full and total capitulation. They reduced their salaries, they agreed to a hard cap, something they said they never would, and the owners got more favorable arbitration rules.

I, for one, am excited. Am I happy that the owners managed to win a long labor strike yet again (NFL in late 80’s comes to mind)? Not particularly. But I can’t say that a $36M salary cap affects my life any differently than a $49M salary cap. I just want to watch hockey. And being in Sharks territory, there ain’t a whole lot of alternatives to the Sharks pro-hockey-wise.

I just can’t seem to scare up any righteous indignation about this thing. I don’t view pro hockey as a right, a right that was carelessly and ruthlessly taken away by rich white men looking to gain more money from other rich (mostly white) men. I view it as a great sport to watch and play, and I’ll watch it and play it whenever I can. It’s not a public utility. I can appreciate that some (ok, lots) of tax dollars were spent to keeps teams around, in the form of new arenas and tax breaks. And maybe that’s where the indignation should be coming from, if it exists. Let’s make that a lesson. The NHL wants to run their business with leadpipe cruelty and mercenary sensibility; we should guard our tax dollars with the same attitude. No more arena subsidies. No more tax breaks. If my beloved Sharks move to Ames or Boise or Minneapolis because San Jose won’t cough up some millions, I’ll get over it. I’ll still watch the games on TV. Or not. As Jerry Seinfeld said, when you’re rooting for the home team you’re essentially rooting for laundry.

Not to brag or anything, but it looks like my way of handling the new economic landscape of the NHL has gained a little traction. A per-team cap in the $22M to $36M range. This tells me two things. One, the players really want to get a deal done. Two, the accounting discussions they’ve have recently have opened their eyes a little bit. If you remember, the discussions in February stalled after the owners offered $42.5M, and the players would only go down to $49M. What’s changed? Maybe the players are starting to realize that the very future of the league is in jeopardy, and the new numbers released by the owners confirm the Leavitt report as more than a PR document. There’s still a ways to go- more negotiations on arbitration and free agency, perhaps the players decided to go further on the cap in order to get more in those areas.

There’s a story that the “Big 4” commissioners (Tagliabue, Stern, Selig, and Bettman) are meeting Congress to discuss steroids. Considering pre-lockout hockey ratings in the US were south of NASCAR, arena football, and bowling, this makes me further question our federal leadership. Although I’m not sure taking the “cream” and the “clear” could really spruce up the crotch chop.

Latest news from the NHL talks? Nothing is happening. Glad to see the owners and players are committed to getting a deal done. If anyone needs me, I’ll be watching curling on “The Ocho”.

Ok, I’m too lazy to come up with 10 rule changes or improvements, so I figure 5 (ok, 6) should be enough. Here they are:

1. Actually enforce obstruction. Maybe the obstruction rules need tweaking, maybe they don’t. What they definitely need is the refs to enforce them as they are written. If someone is skating after a loose puck and a defensemen changes his skating line to make contact with that person, it’s obstruction. I don’t care if they fall down or not. We need to stop the clutch-and-grab style away from the puck. If the refs won’t enforce it, get new refs. I’m really fed up with this stuff.

2. Smaller goalie equipment. Buccigross wants bigger nets, and I want control over the equipment. Very strict guidelines on everything a goalie wears: leg pads, blocker, catch glove, chest protector, jersey, helmet, everything. If that means very tall or big goalies can’t fit into the equipment, too bad. Small guys don’t have a reasonable shot of making it in the NBA or NHL, what’s the difference? And don’t tell me bigger pads mean more safety. Patrick Roy wearing a 58 jersey don’t help squat in terms of safety, but it does stop pucks from going under his arms.

3. Eliminate red line offsides (two line passes). This change makes the Olympic game more interesting, and the European game faster. Let the fast guys skate.

4. Move the net back to where it was pre-Gretzky. He was a master behind the net, and I think this is at least partially why they moved it out. Well, time to move it back. More room in front = more goals scored.

5. Reinstate touch-up offsides. I’m not sure why the league ever agreed to a rule that would increase the number of stoppages of play.

6. Goalies can play the puck wherever they want, but if they’re out of the crease, you can hit them like any other player. I want to see Brodeur’s skill at clearing the zone, or Lalime’s lack of it. But having an invisible force field around you when you’re wearing 3X the amount of pads as everyone else makes no sense.

Ok, so I’m grasping at straws, but there’s been a spate of recent coverage in Hockey News (the best sports publication out there) and John Buccigross’s column on espn.com about “sprucing up the game”. Here’s Mr. Buccigross’ list (without all the commentary):
1. Bigger nets
2. No skater interference
3. Penalty deterrents (like serving the entire two, disqualification for too many penalties)
4. Adopt all AHL rule changes this season (wide blue lines, tag up offside, crease behind the net, net closer to the boards)
5. Paint helmets interesting colors and designs
6. Mandatory ref and player microphones
7. No music before faceoffs
8. Take out the red line
9. Play-in games for the playoffs

The tenth suggestion was more of a joke than anything, so I didn’t include it. Numbers 5, 6, and 7 don’t really have anything to do with the game itself, so I can’t say I really care. People don’t go to football games to watch the halftime show, unless you’re planning on booing Ashlee Simpson. Fixing what happens when play isn’t going on is a distant second to fixing the game on the ice. Exhibit A: the XFL. You can have clever nicknames on the back of your jersey (“He Hate Me”), Matrix-like camera tricks, and the hottest women in the world as cheerleaders, but having a second-rate sport will kill you. And in the past 5-10 years, hockey has been a second rate sport.

I’ll post my suggested rule changes in the next few days.

Bring on the scabs. I’m not real sure of all the pitfalls of fielding (icing?) replacement players, but I say let’s go. I’m a hockey fan, first and foremost. I want to see top-level play. If the only people that will provide it are minor league, college, and international players, then I say “where’s the season ticket form?” I’m not willing to pay the same prices, but I’ll pay more than I’m paying now (i.e. nothing).

Ok, so now I’ve decimated the owner’s position and said the players need to yield to keep the sport healthy, what the heck is supposed to happen? It involves the dreaded s-word: “Salary Cap”. If you give the owners everything they want, you end up with the NFL but far less rich and popular. Owners make lots of money every year, players have absolutely zero job security, and only the best players make anything even remotely approaching what the owners are making.

So what kind of salary cap are we talking about? I would advocate a soft salary cap, which means that each team can only spend a certain amount on player salaries, with some exceptions. The NBA has a soft cap, and some of their exceptions make a lot of sense. For instance, teams can go over the cap if they resign their own free agents. I would also advocate another feature of the NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), having maximum and minimum salaries that are indexed by the number of years in the league. Bonuses (signing and otherwise) would be prorated over the life of the contract, as the NFL does.

So what about linkage? Well, you would use revenue and expense history to set the inital salary cap, but the cap each year would not be hard linked to expenses- perhaps it could go up by a certain percentage each year unless revenues dropped or something like that. I’m sure this will be a sticky negotiation point, but if there is no definite linkage (hard and fast relationship between league revenues and player payroll) I think the players will deal.

So why no linkage? For one, it’s too easy to hide revenue. When teams are owned by companies that broadcast games or otherwise provide team revenue, through accounting tricks you can make the team (or parent company) almost as rich or as poor as you want. Cablevision has the exclusive local contract the Rangers, and they own the Rangers. Cablevision could pay the Rangers far under market rate for the TV rights, making the Rangers look very troubled financially. Then Cablevision is doing great because they just paid a buck and a half for the TV rights and got millions in advertising revenue that never shows up in the Rangers’ books. I’m sure there are millions of variations on this scheme. The Flyers are owned by Comcast, the biggest cable provider in the country. The Ducks are owned by Disney, who owns ABC and ESPN. Up till now, the owners have not provided all the financial information the players’ union has requested. Hmm, I wonder why that is?

Are players going to make the same salaries under the new system as they did? No, but they don’t expect to anyway- otherwise they would not have proposed a 24% pay cut right off the bat. But with some tweaking of the structure, free agent rules, and salary arbitration, they won’t be struggling to put food on the table (unlike Latrell Sprewell).

Well, I couldn’t stay away, haha. It’s been almost a year since I’ve last posted, and a lot has happened in the hockey world in that time. Some of it surprising, most of it not. My Sharks lost in the playoffs to Calgary, who ended up losing to Tampa Bay in the finals. Vincent Damphousse, Mike Ricci, and Todd Harvey are gone to other teams. There have been no NHL games this season, so I can’t say I’ve been too derelict in my duties. Ok, ok, I’ve been derelict.

Might as well take this opportunity to weight in on the lockout, it seems like everyone else has. I’m going to be in the minority and take the players’ side, at least partially. Players only spend 3-4 years in the league on average, and they are the ones putting their bodies in harm’s way. If anybody should make a disproportionate amount of money, it should be the players. That being said, it’s not the same as agreeing that the system prior to the lockout was working. There do need to be changes made in the financial structure of the league in order for hockey to survive.

For one, there needs to be heavy revenue sharing. Football has it, and it works. Football also has a gigantic TV contact where the NHL does not, but I have confidence that the NHL business minds can come up with something that will level the playing field a bit. To have one team financially able to spend 3, 4, 5 times as much money as other teams is a problem. It ends up producing exactly what we have- some teams spending so much on free agents that the othet teams have to overspend to compete at all.

But, having a hard connection between revenues and payroll is the same as saying they want a mandated profit margin. Sorry folks, that’s not how a business works in a free market. You do well, market well, sell well, put out a good product and manage expenses, you make money. You don’t do well, you have runaway expenses, you lose money. Pay Bobby Holik $100 million dollars (or whatever it was). Sorry, you lose money. Have fun dumping that contract.

More later.