Penguins for sale - still and again

"He also had a background in football, working in PR for the LA Rams and then becoming the team's GM. He knew plenty about the sport and the league before he became its big cheese. Big, BIIIIIG difference between Rozelle and Bettman."


Most of what Rozelle did with the Rams was the hype and publicity, which you seem to disdain. He was NOT a football guy, he was a business guy, which is what a commissioner should be. Bettman supposedly has no feel for the game, yet it's been in his administration that the NHL finally did away with the quaint notion of ignoring any penalties committed after the second period. Commissioners surround themselves with people who know the ins and outs of the sport; their job is much more important.


"What doesn't matter, apparently, is that I answered your exchange rate argument, since you don't have a response. And about Miami and Nashville's "potential" for high TV ratings, well, I have the potential to fuck every woman at the Playboy Mansion. Doesn't mean it's going to happen."


The exchange rate fluctuates, and will again. It's always an issue for leagues that operate in Canada. Who said anything about "high" ratings in Miami and Nashville? I said those are cities that show up in the Nielsen TV ratings, so they can contribute. Canadian cities have zero impact. None.


"They have everything to do with this discussion. Unless you're telling me that the NHL's "braintrust" came up with the idea of glowing pucks because they thought the players and the fans in the stands would think they were neat."

It was done for a TV network, which was paying the NHL far more than it deserved. You find me the league that doesn't do things at the behest of TV partners -- unless you think ESPN believes viewers really want those B list celeb interviews on Monday Night Football. Jesus, they superimpose a yellow line on the football field to show viewers the first down marker. Have they tampered with football or done service for viewers?


"The ratings in the States would be no higher if it were Ottawa vs Calgary, a matchup that could very well happen, so I guess we should just kick them out of the league right now. You know, make way for a more suitable final pairing of Nashville vs Phoenix, which 1,000 whole people might watch on TV. Assuming, of course, that they could find hockey on TV since there aren't any real networks in the States that want to pay to televise it."


So if you already have the potential for a horseshit matchup of Canadian cities that do not show up in US ratings, you should just say what the hell, and increase those odds? Interesting philosophy.


"And the league office was in Montreal, which meant that Canada maintained at least a tiny bit of control over the top professional level of the sport that was, after all, invented here. Silly us, having the nerve to think that maybe there might be a place for more Canadian teams in what began as a Canadian enterprise (what, you thought National Hockey League was referring to the Lower 48?)."

Ah, so that's what it all comes back to, isn't it? Damnit, it's OUR sport and these American college boys and Vladimirs and Pavels are taking over. It's always that, isn't it?

Go get yourself another dose of Don Cherry and weep in your Molson.

 

You know what they say about plans ...

 

I'm not a big Bettman fan at all, but it cracks me up how diehard hockey fans can't get over the fact he's commissioner. Shit, he's been commissionner for well over a decade now, the bird has flown folks, so why continue to act as if that dynamic is going to change?

And Elliotte's post was great.

 

I would point out to my Canadian brethren and sistren -- thanks, Molly -- that even the Original Six only had two teams in Canada, and that the Next Six had none. It was the WHA that spread pro hockey to the western provinces. Since its paleolithic era, the NHL historically has been a US-centric league.

 

Because Bettman has been a disaster as a commissioner. His strategy of "growing the game' by expanding into non-hockey markets has been a failure.

Because during his reign there have been two lockouts, the first right after the Rangers' Stanley Cup win, the biggest opportunity the NHL has had in twenty years to maximize its exposure in the United States.

 

No one's arguing that. But during the original Six Days virtually every single player was a Canadian.

Chicago, one of the original six teams has had disastrous attendance this year. The biggest crowd they've had so far this year was last night when the Leafs were in town.

THAT's what Bettman doesn't recognize: the NHL needs the Canadian teams in order to proper.
If Atlanta goes away, it's not a big deal.

 

John Zeigler, line 1 ...

What exactly do you define as a failure? NHL TV ratings never were what one would call stellar. And owners certainly weren't complaining with the nice expansion fees they were divvying up.

Au contraire, JR. I'd say the '95 playoffs were just as good, if not better, than '94, and hence built on the successes of '94. For example, see top-seeded Quebec being beaten by the eighth-seeded Rangers, a six-game series that had only one blowout. The players were fresh after a shortened season, and the quality of play was much higher. If the labor dispute ended earlier, could the NHL have wrung more promotion out of Fox? Sure. But Fox promoted the heck out of the sport for the next three years, and ratings remained in the hopper.

And you can't blame Bettman for the second lockout. Blame the drunken-sailor spending owners for that. They brought half the league to the brink of bankruptcy.

For anyone who wants to trash Bettman, please remember the Zeigler era. Remember "Game 3" of the 1988 Stanley Cup Finals in the Boston Garden? The lights-out game? Well, no one knew what the heck to do, since Zeigler was on VACATION in EUROPE. In the midst of the sport's CHAMPIONSHIPS. The guy made Alan Eagleson look like a hockey hero. (The above was totally recited from memory, from recollections of coverage on the Boston TV stations.)

 

Wicked
The expansion was a cash grab by the owners and was myopic beyond belief.

It did nothing to help the game in the long term.

Lay that one on Bettman's feet. To repeat, his strategy was flawed.

Sorry, but the 1995 Stanley Cup Final was the beginning of the worst periods of hockey I can remember. The Devils beating the Red Wings in one of the most stultifyingly boring Final begat the "neutral zone trap" era.

That was under Bettman's watch and all the little weasel could say until the next lockout was "The game is healthy. It's in good shape". And when one of your high profile stars, Brett Hull, says, "The game sucks" and "It's like a rodeo out there", you know the game's in trouble

Post Cups win hockey resulted in a game that was unrecognizable. Bettman could have fixed it and he didn't. It took Shanahan's competition summit to supply the initiative for the "new NHL"

And I wouldn't use Ziegler as a model for a convenience store clerk.

And I go back to what I and Double J said: Bettman's not a hockey guy. He knows nothing about the game. A hockey commish would never have allowed Fox to make a travesty of hockey broadcasts.

I could name you two guys have the business smarts of Bettman and are superior hockey guys: Brian Burke and Lou Lamoriello.

And he could have prevented the season long lockout. A strong commish would have whipped those owners into shape.

 

The game after the Stanley Cup Finals in '95 did suck.

The GMs and coaches are as much to blame for that, though. It's called adapting/innovation.

So are the officials and Brian Burke/Colin Campbell, who pledged about 12 times to cut down on the clutching and grabbing. Each time, they bent over to the players after about, oh, two games.

One of the reasons Bettman was hired to be president (his initial title) was because he had more of an interest in hockey than most of the other candidates. Everyone in the NBA offices said Bettman always was talking pucks.

They could've done far worse, though I'm not stupid enough to stand here and tell you Lamoriello or Burke wouldn't have done better jobs.

 

Wicked, you're right.

Burke and Campbell could have put an end to the clutching and grabbing but didn't. So it's not all Bettman's fault. And so could have the GM's if they wanted to.

And the players will stretch the rules as far as they can.

 

Since we're discussing boring hockey...why can't a rule be put in effect to stop the trap like the NBA used to have illegal defenses?

I know it's stupid but my brother's shitty hockey team was winning with the left wing lock. Boring...

 

1988 was even better than that.
In the Eastern semis, the Schoenfeld-Koharski Doughnut War broke out and, when the league didn't take action, the refs staged a one-game wildcat job action and we had two guys who ran a rink in Commack officiating a playoff game. The league was paralyzed, allegedly, because Ziegler was in England, getting his son deprogrammed from some cult.
Then, at the ensuing presser, Ziegler refused to say how many hockey games he'd seen in the previous year.