2019-2020 NHL season thread

The NHL has been doing pretty well. Revenues have been steadily increasing, mostly because they have done a decent job of bringing in sponsorship bucks. That gives them a bigger pie to divide up. You have Seattle about to come in, a new TV deal soon on deck, and even though the ratings aren't like the other major sports, rights fees in general have been going up, so they should be seeing more money.

Add it all together, and maybe the calculation was that right now both sides are benefiting from a golden goose, and they didn't want to make the mistake of doing anything to potentially damage it by creating a potentially contentious situation?

 

Revenues for the league are up more than 75 percent over the last 10 years. There has been a particularly marked increase every year since the lockout in 2012.

https://www.cbc.ca/sports/the-buzzer/the-buzzer-dec-6-nhl-profit-1.4935474

Sponsorship revenue has grown at a very good clip, especially on the back of the Adidas deal.

https://thehockeynews.com/news/article/nhl-sponsorships-richer-than-they-think

The salary cap gets set as a percentage of the revenue the league takes in, which is why I speculated that the decision was to avoid upsetting the apple cart while things are going relatively well, and trying to negotiate from a non-contentious place instead.

But I am not privy to what Donald Fehr or most players are actually thinking, it was an educated guess.

 

That is a nice bridge deal for Charlie McAvoy, but I have a feeling in three years the price on him is going to have a lot of term attached to it and reach well into 8 figures a year.

 

Sorry to hear that.

Smoking like a chimney, including in between periods when he was playing, probably didn't help.

I hope he's OK.

He had such a mystique as a player when I was a kid and only got to see the Canadians a couple of times a year.