And the bad news for Hockey in the US continues

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by Asher

Are the Bears even 100 years old like some NHL teams?

No, they are only 88 years old.

ACK!

[Asher]

Paaaaathetic.

[SlowwHand]

Slapping a guy in the head with a stick while he isn't looking is puss.

[-Jrabbit]

Let's face it. Hockey ownership is where the real blame lies. They stand idly by while Bettman slowly flushes their fans -- and fortunes -- down the toilet. It's sad to watch, but at the end of the day, no one is stepping up and cutting out the cancer that afflicts the NHL.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Asher
There's rivalries, and then there's hockey rivalries.

Football rivalries are a joke in comparison to the 70s/80s hockey rivalries...

And then heated football rivalries often lead to violence, some sanctioned and some not.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Slapping a guy in the head with a stick while he isn't looking is puss.

So's spearing a receiver or hammering a QB from behind.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by -Jrabbit
Let's face it. Hockey ownership is where the real blame lies. They stand idly by while Bettman slowly flushes their fans -- and fortunes -- down the toilet. It's sad to watch, but at the end of the day, no one is stepping up and cutting out the cancer that afflicts the NHL.

Assuming Bettman is to blame, and he is the cancer... the cancer got the owners the salary cap. Perhaps it is too bad that the cancer won't be going anywhere very soon.

[Drake Tungsten]

College football rivalries are better than anything except soccer rivalries (hard to top murder). Hockey and NFL rivalries are for girls...

Speaking of soccer, I hope Bettman takes over the NBA after he finishes off the NHL and runs that league into the ground, too. I'd love to see football, baseball and soccer as the top sports in America.

[-Jrabbit]

Originally posted by notyoueither


Assuming Bettman is to blame, and he is the cancer... the cancer got the owners the salary cap. Perhaps it is too bad that the cancer won't be going anywhere very soon.

The cap was a good thing, but any competient lawyer could get that done if he's willing to blow off AN ENTIRE SEASON.

Bettman is like the marketing antiChrist. He embraces the stupid and the unworkable, rejects the logical and innovative. He was being criticized as a major mistake just 4-5 years into his tenure, and now another decade of NHL decline has passed. It's like he's a bad habit they can't quit.

[notyoueither]

The trick wasn't him being willing to blow off a season, the trick was getting a majority of the owners to stay in line. It turned out to be easier to have 30 owners stay in line than 600 players once the owners got over the hump of admitting they were going to lose serious revenue...

Not that I'm here to defend Bettman, but I'm curious what was logical and innovative that he rejected.

[-Jrabbit]

How about the All Star Game on NBC, weekend daytime?

[Asher]

Who cares?

Move the yank teams north.

Winnipeg desperately wants a team. So does Waterloo and Hamilton and Halifax. Make it happen.

My only stipulation is no future Ontario teams can have Anaheim, San Jose, Buffalo, or Nashville.

[Ming]

From advertising age... just published today.

This is a section from "Masters of the Sports Universe
Commissioners of MLB, NHL, NFL and NBA Discuss Brand-building, Media Partnerships and Overseas Expansion''

It's the section on the NHL... I though it was appropriate

NHL Reconnects With Tech-Savvy Fans
Web Traffic Up 100% as League Rebounds From Canceled Season -- Without Losing a Sponsor
By Rich Thomaselli

Published: January 29, 2007

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- After a lockout canceled its entire 2004-2005 season, Gary Bettman's NHL returned last year to record attendance and record revenue. The commissioner credits the strength of the brand, and cites efforts to reconnect with the league's tech-savvy fans via new media such as NHL.com, where traffic is up 100% over last year.

Ad Age: Now that we're a year removed from the canceled season, can you talk about how you kept everybody onboard? You didn't lose a single sponsor.

Mr. Bettman: Last season was about relaunching our game under extraordinary circumstances. There are few, if any, businesses -- not just professional sports -- that could endure not operating for a year and then come back to record attendance and record revenue. It's testament to our great fans and the strength of the brand. We had to use all of our assets to re-engage our fans.

Ad Age: Did you feel like you had to reintroduce the brand?

Mr. Bettman: No, it was really to reconnect. When you look at the makeup of NHL fans -- putting aside that they tend to be the most affluent, best-educated and most tech-savvy of all the sports -- they're also the most connected. Our fans understood what we were doing during the work stoppage, and they were supportive. The place where we could have gotten into trouble was if we didn't openly fix our problems.

Ad Age: Yet nobody jumped off the bandwagon.

Mr. Bettman: Unfortunately, there was a ramp-up to the work stoppage. We took great pains to communicate with all of our partners, all our business partners, to let them know what was happening and why. It wasn't a situation where we let them invest in a season that wasn't going to occur. We gave them ample warning. It didn't come as a surprise to anybody. Had our partners moved forward with plans and invested time and money in a season that didn't occur, it might have been different.

Ad Age: What will be the next phase of your marketing push?

Mr. Bettman: One of the best results of what was accomplished was the partnership with the players, particularly as it relates to their accessibility to our business partners and the media. As a result, we're now able to promote our players better than we have before. We have an unprecedented level of cooperation, and we're using that to tell stories about our game and about our players in ways we haven't before.

Ad Age: As a former sportswriter, I always felt -- and I think a lot of my sportswriting colleagues would agree -- if you compare sport to sport, hockey players are the best to deal with.

Mr. Bettman: That was true in terms of providing postgame interviews and the daily routine that players in all sports go through. When it came to marketing and promoting the game, when it came to access for TV and our marketing partners, we didn't have the level of cooperation that other sports leagues had.

Ad Age: Tell us about TV ratings and your relationship with your main cable network, Versus.

Mr. Bettman: They have done remarkably well under difficult circumstances. We are their most important property, we are their priority, and we love the attention they're giving to us. What we did to get that special treatment, we give up some short-term distribution that we believe will grow over time. Would we like our ratings to be higher? Yes, but that's something we'll work on in a marketplace where everybody's ratings have gone down.

Ad Age: But there are other outlets. You've done a great job with NHL.com, with traffic up 100% percent over last year.

Mr. Bettman: We believe that with our tech-savvy fan base, while television will be important, sports leagues will need to connect with their fans through new media. This is something that is getting priority attention from our organization.

Ad Age: Your buddy David Stern is quite involved in the marketing end of the NBA. How involved are you in reaching out to your sponsors, to TV?

Mr. Bettman: I am involved and accessible. I wouldn't compare myself to anybody else. While I don't believe in micromanaging, I believe a sports commissioner needs to be involved; needs to be a cheerleader; and, in our case over the last couple of years, needed to be accessible to explain what was going on because we were in rather unique circumstances.

[Ming]

Originally posted by -Jrabbit
How about the All Star Game on NBC, weekend daytime?

NBC would lose money... The NHL would have to pay NBC to cover the game. Most real sports teams and leagues get money from the media to broadcast the games... In Chicago, the Black Hawks had to pay a local radio station to cover their games since NOBODY placed a bid in for the rights Needless to say, all the other "major" sports teams in Chicago make a ton of money off of the local broadcast rights to their games

[Asher]

NBC already airs weekend daytime regular season games...don't see why they wouldn't do an allstar game then.