If they keep getting the attendance figures they’re getting, and the revenue they’re reported to be getting, it won’t be there for long.
According to one report I read last week, the Coyotes are projected to make about eight million dollars in ticket revenue this year. Eight million. Their PAYROLL is $40 million, and obviously they’re not going to make up that much of a difference in TV and league revenues (and they have expenses other than payroll.)
Right, because trading a dollar for three quarters always works out well. Just ask Boston or Florida.
Well, not unless you get that number one goalie. Top-tier goalies are worth their weight in gold.
rubs hands evilly Yes, the plan to stamp out hockey in Arizona is working perrrrfectly…
I really wonder if the Coyotes made a mistake in getting their arena all the way out in the far West valley. That is a very long drive from the more affluent central Phoenix and Scottsdale markets. The Cardinals can get away with it because it is only 8 games per year and 7 of them on a Sunday. Why America West arena wasn’t built with hockey in mind, I’ll never know.
Spezza definitely would be worth more traded than he’s worth kept. The problem is he’s got a huge contract, which limits your options to teams with cap room, unless you want to take back contracts of equal cost.
The Senators are in a dangerous position; they’re a team that does not really have what it takes to win, but are so closely removed froma Finals berth that I suspect they’re unwilling to admit it to themselves. They’ve really screwed the team up with bad moves in the last year or two, and now have an expensive team that doesn’t play well. Alfredsson is doing his damdest but he’s one man.
Now, I think, is the time to bite the bullet and cash in some of the big names, most notable Spezza; Alfredsson is untradeable and worth his salary anyway, and I think Heatley’s worth holding on to. But I think they should dump many of the other salaries and rebuild, accepting a poor showing or two in order to put some enthusiastic youngsters out there.
There’s hardly any wonder about it. In long-season sports, stadia downtown work and stadia in the 'burbs generally don’t. Football, as you point out, is not subject to the same rules.
It also doesn’t help that the Coyotes are terrible, of course, and who knows; maybe if they put a decent squad on the ice the fans would start showing up.
But the NHL brass’s intransigence in insisting, against all available evidence, that the southern teams are all doing fantastically well when the plain facts are that they are not is frustrating to a lot of fans who’d like to see the NHL provide more of its product where the hockey fans actually live. We’ve got at least one ownership group in Ontario that wants a team and is willing to pony up way above market value for one, has a place to put them and millions of fans who want it, and the NHL would rather have its teams owned by criminals or placed in areas where there aren’t very many hockey fans. It’s like owning a chain of grocery stores in Los Angeles and moving half of them to Antarctica.
Now that the Canadian Dollar is down around where it should be and revenue’s up here in the great white north decrease (although they’ll all still make money - just not as much), we’ll see if Bettman still has the balls to say things are going well…
Hockey is doomed when half of it’s fans are “elitest” toward the other half.
Oh no. You get me wrong. I’m just being a brat. It’s good that more people get to see the beautiful ballet that hockey is.
They made a huge mistake. The valley is so spread out and reliant on cars as it is, throwing it way out there in the hopes of developing up to and around it was ludicrous. I am only occasionally willing to trek all the way out there and I’m a huge fan of hockey, how can they expect a casual or burgeoning fan to drive that far? You almost have to plan an entire day around it.
I don’t know, how are you explaining it now?
Icing occurs when a team(call them the offensive team) shoots the puck from their own (defensive) half of the ice past the opposition’s(call them the defensive team) goal line without it contacting any player or goaltender. Icing is called(and the play is whistled dead) when a player for the defensive team touches the puck with his stick or any part of his body.
An icing violation is negated if:
(Note that the last two conditions are special cases and probably shouldn’t be brought up until the rest of the rule is understood).
The penalty for committing an icing is a faceoff in the offensive team’s defensive zone. The offensive team is not allowed to make any player substitutions while the play is dead.
It might help to explain why icing exists as a rule and how it fits into the game structure.
For me, when I am showing new people the game, I try to emphasize that the team that controls the blue lines (both of them) is normally winning the game. Icing fits into that description as one team can not control it’s blue line and desperately throws the puck away
The above explanations explain well what icing is, I always start my explanation by explaining what it is for. It’s to prevent a team from delaying the game by just ramming the puck all the way up the ice every chance they get. You could sit on a lead easier that way. Once that’s explained, the mechanics of it are pretty easy.
I kinda skipped that part for my SiL, but you’re right. My wife’s problem was that she’s not a sports fan in general, but is a basketball referee. If something doesn’t have an analogous play in basketball it takes her a while. You can make up hypothetical rules in basketball to explain offsides, but not icing.
Go Sharks! (but let’s keep the games less tight than yesterday, OK?)