Thanks to all those that participated in the fantasy draft last night, our 20-team league should prove to be very robust, and we had a fun chat going on during the marathon 2.5 hour draft.  Given 320 picks, that’s less than 30 seconds per pick, so it didn’t feel like it dragged too much at the time.  I must admit, drafting is my favorite part of fantasy.  Doug was unable to log on, but we traded dozens of texts during the draft, so his fingerprints are all over our team.

I know fantasy is inherently boring to those that aren’t participating, but I’m going to give a couple of reactions to the draft, that may even be amusing to non-participants:

• My favorite pick of the night for SuperDudes: Mikkel Boedker, 1st line LW for PHX, drafted in the last round, 315th overall.
• My least favorite pick of the night for SuperDudes: Travis Zajac in the 11th round (205th overall).  I know he might be on a line with Kovy, but he just signed a cushy deal, gets hurt a lot, and has cracked 60 points only twice.  Nathan Horton probably would have been a better pick here, or even Adam Henrique, who’s also on the Devils, but I didn’t have the balls because Henrique is hurt.
• The best pick of the night: Alex Burrows 6th round (104th overall) by WhyDoIKeepComingBack.  On a top line with the Sedins, Burrows gets some of the most sheltered minutes in the league.  We drafted Bobby Ryan in the 5th, so I’m not super disappointed about our picks before (we would take taken him in the 6th if we could have) but I do think several other teams drafted clearly inferior players in the 4th and 5th rounds.
• The worst pick of the night: Dany Heatley 2nd round (40th overall) by Behind Enemy Lines.  I know he might play on a line with Parise, but his production has been steadily decreasing (82, 64, 53 points the last three years).   I think other teams will key very heavily on that line and deny Heatley the open space he requires.  Some slam dunk 70-point or higher players were still available here, like Thornton, Spezza, St. Louis, and Kane, so I think this is a reach, especially on a team that Hockey Prospectus is forecasting to finish 22nd in the NHL.  And they are projecting 53 points for Heatley.

Next year I think I want to do an auction draft, especially after listening to the Backhand Shelf podcast here.  For the poor bastards that logged into the draft and saw they were picking 15-20, they knew there was no chance they could get some of the best players in the league.  With an auction draft, you can vastly overpay, like the Rangers did for Scott Gomez! Or Wade Redden!  Or Bobby Holik!  Or Michal Rozsival! Or… you get the idea.

The Dudes have so much to talk about, now that the CBA is signed, the schedule is out, and teams are practicing.  Topics this week include Tyler Seguin’s domestic habits, the new Dudes fantasy hockey league, and the Western Conference preview.

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By popular demand, we have opened back up a Dudes on Hockey fantasy league on Yahoo Sports. Click on the logo to get to the league. Here is the Dudes on Hockey Fantasy League CBA: We are going to do one league this year with 20 teams. There will be four divisions of five teams. So odds are someone will have to draft Paul Bissonnette and live the Twitter glory. Eight teams will make the playoffs. There is a live draft time posted on the website. The password to join is ihatekane. This will be the only league this year so have at it Dudes! See you on the imaginary ice.

The lockout is finally over, and the Dudes could not wait to record a new podcast exploring all the details, and talking excitedly about the upcoming season.

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Hello hockey fans and Happy No Hockey Year.A quick update to let you know what to expect from the podcast in early 2013 from your favorite neighborhood Dudes. We have decided to wait and record our first podcast of 2013 when the dust has settled for good on the NHL vs. NHLPA Battle Royale. At this point there are two possible outcomes, a 48 game season beginning in mid-January or Bettman cancels the season like Cop Rock.

The good news is, there’s only another week of this stupidity and then we’ll know what direction we’re headed in as hockey fans for 2013. The Dudes will hopefully be back soon with a mega-episode profiling the ins and outs of the new CBA and a 2013 season preview, or we will be moving forward with full coverage of the San Francisco Bulls and Worcester Sharks for the remainder of the hockey season.

Until then, fellow Dudes.

We will be at the game tonight, as I’m sure many of you.  A loyal and generous listener has let me know that they have 2 tickets they cannot use, and will forward to the first person that emails questions at dudesonhockey dot com.  See you there.

The Dudes try to talk about the two goods thing happening to San Jose hockey – the Bulls coming to play at HP Pavilion, and the success of the Worchester Sharks.  But the depressing lockout talk continues on.

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Another week ticks by and even though there appears to have been some useful discussions today between some select NHL owners and players without their parents present, it fails to get me excited. I feel like I’ve been teased by this before a few weeks prior when representatives were meeting for several days straight, only to say they have nothing in common. I refuse to get sucked in…yet…

While we wait for some real news, there will be no podcast this week. When Mike takes a vacation from the podcast, he goes to India or Africa. I put on make up and sing songs in costumes. Yup, my vacation is cooler. Just ask Detroit Red Wings prospect, Riley Sheahan, how he spends his hockey vacation. Drunk in a Teletubby costume? Yes please.

Mike and I have been pretty hard on the Worcester Sharks from the beginning of the season, feeling they didn’t have the NHL caliber talent to compete in a bizarro world AHL season filled with players who would otherwise be playing in the Bigs. Worcester has told us where to shove it by leading the competitive Atlantic Division with 24 points and a 11-8-1 record. Tim Kennedy is tied for 3rd in the AHL in scoring and the Woo-Sharks have played with a brand of toughness one can only hope to see in the big club, if they lace them up again this year. There appears to be some encouraging moments from Freddie Hamilton, Sena Acolatse and Taylor Doherty and Alex Stalock’s numbers are solid, but not spectacular. I personally have not watched a moment online, but the closer we are to not having NHL hockey, the more likely it is that I plunk down some plastic to watch Worcester and some future Sharks take the ice.

Just up the road, the SF Bulls are competitive with a 8-12-1 record. They are the worst defensive team in GAA in the ECHL, but Sharks prospect, Marek Viedenskey, has found his scoring touch and looked dominant in person when Mike and I went to a game two weeks ago. He currently has 13 points in 9 games and hopefully he can carry it back to Worcester when they bring him back – which they will…There should be playoff hockey in the Bay Area regardless since it appears the ECHL takes the top eight teams per conference in their new playoff format. With only nine teams in the Western Conference, the odds are in the Bulls favor.

I’m looking forward to talking on the podcast about a hockey book I’m reading called Shorthand: The Untold Story of the Seals. I’m just barely into it so far but the stories about the Bay Area’s first venture into the NHL with the Seals is beyond fascinating.

We’ll be back next week, no matter what happens in the labor talks. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a costume to put on.

Dudes talk about stuff. Happy Thanksgiving.

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I’ve wondered for a long time how owners can buy teams for hundreds of millions of dollars, and lose cash every single year.  I had two theories:

1. Owners don’t view teams as a business (as Malcolm Gladwell and Bill Simmons have written about before), and more as a luxury objects to enjoy, like paintings .
2. There are some accounting tricks being played in order to maximize losses.

I still think 1) is true and now it appears 2) could be true as well.  Jonathan Willis wrote an interesting article, using some data he found about the Florida Panthers, a team that has claimed to lose $7M or more per season.  There is a little controversy about Willis’ points (and conclusions) but I think these facts are undisputed.

• A company called Sunrise Sports and Entertainment (SSE) owns the Panthers.
• This company has a division called Arena Operating Company (AOC), which runs the arena, and is an entity to which SSE apparently pays rent, because the Panthers use the arena.
• Because of the sweetheart deal the Panthers got, AOC also makes money on the other events in the area, paying some back to the local government.
• AOC has made $90M or so in profit between 1999 and 2008.
• The only reason AOC makes money on concerts is because it’s the Panther’s arena, and controlled by SSE.
• However, the Panthers (SSE) do not claim this profit as hockey related revenue, and get to cry poor to the league and held up as a model of why the current system is failing.

Since the audit Willis references is only in relation to AOC, and not SSE, it’s not entirely for certain SSE is in fact turning a profit every year.  But if they are claiming a $7.5M loss per year on average, $90M profit over that time period is more than enough to wipe away that red ink.

All in all, this is a nice deal if you can have it.  The only reason Willis got access to any of this is because the county performed an audit.  Otherwise SSE could keep on making money every year, having their initial investment in the team appreciate, and claim they are losing money all the while.  It should be mentioned that the Sharks (Silicon Valley Sports & Entertainment) also operate HP Pavilion, though the details of their deal with the city is not public information.  It’s entirely possible (though certainly not proven) that SVSE is turning a profit each year as well, due to those extra revenue streams- revenue streams that would not be available if they did not own the Sharks.