2017 Stanley Cup Playoffs thread

RickJay · May 24, 2017, 5:19pm

Obviously I root for Ottawa, but, in truth, if they were going to lose to any American franchise, I’d want it to be Nashville. That’s a franchise that has done everything the right, professional way, and has built up something out of next to nothing.

As an aside, since it’s going to come up sooner or later… Ottawa did not quite sell out Game 6, which is I am absolutely sure the first time in a long, long time a conference finals game as not been sold out.

This is, to say the least, quite alarming in a Canadian market. If Edmonton was in the Western Conference finals people would be selling their children into slavery to get tickets.

Now, I can sit here and provide excuses, and God knows there are a lot of them, and the positioning of the arena is absolutely #1. Getting to, but especially away from, the Canadian Tire Centre fucking sucks. I’ve done it, many times, and it sucks, sucks, sucks. My sister in law and her family live within a long walking distance of the CTC - if you;'re just driving up that way on a Sunday to go to the nearly outlet mall it probably isn’t a ten minute drive on back roads. But they rarely go to games, because they dread the hour to two hours they’ll be stuck in the parking lot afterwards. Suburban stadiums aren’t a good idea for hockey, or basketball, or baseball. They’re fine for football. So a new arena downtown, or on LeBreton Flats, might improve that. But for a Canadian market attendance was abysmal, and there’s no sugarcoating it. And much worse than in years past; the last time they got this far in the playoffs the team’s attendance was past capacity. None of the underlying weaknesses of the market are changing anytime soon; it is going to remain a government town with few large corporations, and it’s not growing very fast.

There are other excuses too; the federal payroll system fiasco has robbed some customers of their money, the team’s been boring and mediocre for a really long time, blah blah blah. The fact remains, however, that the team’s season ticket base is very low - under ten thousand - and professional sports in general in North America has been a flattening of attendance. One wonders how the team will fare in years when they are actually a bad team.

Rysto · May 24, 2017, 6:32pm

The attendance is definite a problem. Personally I don’t think that the government’s difficulties with the Phoenix pay system is having much of an affect. As I understand it, the primary difficulties there are with people receiving irregular payments. People who aren’t making a regular salary aren’t great candidates to have enough disposable income to regularly attend NHL games.

Personally, I think that the primary issue is with the location of the arena combined with a shift in demographics. I grew up in Ottawa, and 10 years ago Kanata was where basically all of the tech companies were. If you’re going to be located next to a suburb, at least if it’s full of upper-middle-class people you can make it work.

I don’t live in Ottawa anymore but most of my family does, and from what I understand things have changed somewhat. Despite Nortel being gone there’s still a lot of tech in the area, but the companies there are considered boring and stodgy. Kanata is where married 40-something tech workers live and work. The cool stuff and the startups are happening downtown now, and the 20-somethings have followed them there. I’m betting that trends like these are making the CTC’s location a lot less viable for the Sens.

Leaffan · May 24, 2017, 7:30pm

The amount of high tech jobs in this area (Kanata/Ottawa) got wiped out last recession and especially with the bankruptcy of Nortel.

The location does indeed have a lot to do with it, although the CTC is only about a 15 minute drive from my house. Upper deck playoff tickets can be bought for $125ish bucks, which isn’t too bad, but when you factor in parking and a brewskie or two it starts to reach about $300 - $350 for a pair of tickets. This is probably a bargain compared to Toronto, but when you rely on families taking up the slack, well, not many can afford to do that very often.

High tech industries here are not buying season tickets like the good old days. It’s hard to keep your corporate hockey tickets when you’re sending IT jobs to India, after outsourcing all your manufacturing to Mexico and China 10 years ago.

A new location downtown is in the works, but I’m guessing we’re still 10 years away from that happening.

ETA: Government agencies don’t buy tickets, and employees are not allowed to accept tickets as gifts.

RickJay · May 24, 2017, 7:36pm

I don’t think anyone doubts that the location is a problem. It looked like a great idea 20 years ago when March Road was Silicon Valley North, and not because of the demographics (people in the 40s are reliable consumers of pro sports, if anything) but because the corporate sponsorship they were hoping to rely on just never came back in force after the tech crash. There’s tech, but no major company I can think of is headquartered there anymore. I don’t count Corel.

Suburban arenas are a problem. Buuuuuuut… I mean,. it was Game 6 of the conference finals. in CANADA. If the Calgary Flames put their stadium in Airdrie, a conference final game would sell out and the scalpers would be charging three hundred percent markups. The Ottawa market looks weak to me. Not as terrifyingly weak as Carolina where things frankly look rather dire) or Arizona, but shockingly thin all the same. What would happen to the Senators if they had a stretch as bad as Carolina?

I appreciate that, as Leaffan points out, it’s expensive. Ottawa tickets are mid to slightly above mid range by NHL standards and parking and snax yadda yadda. But that is true everywhere; going to a professional sporting event is expensive, it sucks, let’s all accept that. But for all those problems, the other six Canadian teams are doing much better at the box office and it’s absolutely inconceivable they would not sell out a playoff game. This isn’t a matter of what’s fair, it’s a comparison; Ottawa looks like a weak NHL market.

I hasten to point out that “A new stadium will fix it!” is a chancy thing. Maybe it will. I and probably a million other people, was convinced the Islanders moving to Brooklyn was a terrific idea. It’s been an incredible disappointment, and I am personally really flummoxed by it. Okay, granted, Barclay’s Center has problems, but given the sheer weight of the market you’d think they could sell more of their (fairly cheap) tickets.

wolfpup · May 24, 2017, 8:08pm

Edmonton? What about Toronto? People sell their children into slavery just to get tickets for a regular season game! Kind of a side issue to the other side issue, but this is a large part of the reason that the Leafs were out of the playoffs for so long, just barely squeaked in this postseason, and got their asses handed to them in the first round. They just don’t care. Every game is a sellout and the season seat waiting list is measured not in years but in geological eons. From the all-important business standpoint, winning or losing makes absolutely no difference. They’re just as happy playing golf as playing hockey.

RickJay · May 25, 2017, 1:25pm

Okay, well, I hate the Leafs, but allow me to rebut the “it doesn’t matter if they win” argument.

The reason the Leafs were out of the playoffs for so long is because they were very poorly managed. They were TRYING to win, but did so ineptly; they drafted poorly, made poor trades, and always seemed to pick the wrong goalie. There is no evidence at all they did not care (and certainly the players would not prefer to golf early.)
The history of the Toronto Maple Leafs since their last Stanley Cup is not one of unremitting failure; they have had some very good teams. IIRC they made the conference finals four times in ten years from 1993 to 2002.
The claim that they don’t care is bizarrely at odds with the plain facts that the team has made major structural changes in the last 3-4 years to change the direction of the team. Clearly they were dissatisfied withthe team’s performance and wanted better personnel in charge. They didn’t give Mike Babcock and Lou Lamiorello a jillion dollars just for kicks. If they didn’t care they could have hired an inferior coach and an inferior GM for a fraction of the price.
Obviously the Maple Leafs have a financial incentive to make the playoffs. Please bear in mind the players don’t get paid more for the playoffs. A player who makes $2 million a year doesn’t get paid overtime for making it to the Finals; they get a bonus, but that comes out of the gate. Every playoff game a team plays is worth millions of dollars in bonus revenue. I’d guess, from what sources I can gather, that the Leafs made at least an extra $12-15 million just by playing one six game playoff series. Selling out during the regular season is great; making it to the playoffs, however, is much better.

Furthermore, selling out does not mean you’ve maximized your revenue (and actually, during the doldrums of the last ten years, the Leafs did have a few games that didn’t sell out, so had that continued it would have gotten worse.) While you cannot add more seats to the arena, more demand means you can charge higher prices for the seats you do have, charge more for TV rights, and charge more for commercial sponsorships. If supply is fixed but demand is increasing, you can jack up the prices.

The reason the Leafs “squeaked into the postseason” and “got their asses handed to them” (which isn’t true, they played very well and took it to six games) is they’re a young team. They’re in the early stages of constructing a legitimate contender. In regards to that you have it exactly backwards; they are what they are in fact because management is trying to build an excellent team.

I mean, the Ottawa Senators are one game away from the Finals, but in terms of the future I’d be much more optimistic about the Maple Leafs; they have far, far more young talent than the Senators do and a clear plan, run by some of the most respected brains . This is about as good as this edition of the Senators is going to get; I see no particular reason to believe the team will be better in 2017-2018 than it is now. Obviously, if the Senators somehow pull off a miracle tonight and beat Nashville and win the Stanley Cup, it’ll be worth it. But if the team collapses because it’s so old, ten years from now they might be in trouble again.

Leaffan · May 25, 2017, 11:03pm

Good summary, Rick.
I want to add that the main reason for all the shit they went through is Harrold Ballard: surprise, suprise.

It’s no secret that he didn’t like paying players market value and traded them away when they, and their agents, were looking for a fair deal.

It didn’t take long after Ballard’s death before the team had a major rebound, and we’re still fairly good up until the 2004/2005 lockout, after which a salary cap was introduced and suddenly the couldn’t just outside out and buy a Gary Roberts, or a Joe Nuendyke, or an Eric Lindros whenever they wanted.

And the closets were bare. Their scouting and development sucked and although they tried to struggle through it, they couldn’t.

I wish I could say I was angry when they lost to Boston in game 7 of the first round in 2011 after being up 4-1 with 10 minutes left, but I wasn’t.

I saw it coming and it was just the saddest fucking thing imaginable.

So here they are now, LEGITIMATEY building through the draft and player development for the first time in my memory.