EHM The Blue Line

I just came across this article by Al Strachan on the FOX Sports website and thought it was interesting. I agree with most of his points, especially the first one!

http://msn.foxsports.com/nhl/story/6909 ... 62&ATT=142

Thoughts?

WOW! Strachan making sense. Me thinks someone else really wrote this.

Anyway...Bettman is at fault for the first lockout/strike. The second one is not his issue. Partly yeah, but the greedy players never recognized the reality of the situation...the owners were not going to buckle. That was the big problem

Increasing net size is stupid. The composite sticks I totally agree with. EVen at a kids level this problem is very noticeable.

As for training camp...no way...off base here. Players show up in god physical condition, but not necessarily good hockey condition. Playing games every second day and travelling after a 3 or 4 day camp would not be a good thing for these guys. Playing yourself into shape is just a synonym for abusing the player, and injury.

The ice does suck, and the game needs help...especially with officiating. Two refs is fine, but they still need to be able to skate, and see the whole play. Right now, other than the fact that they are calling the game the way the league correctly wants them to, you have officials behind the play, and not able to keep up all over the place. Need some better skaters.

TV and marketing go hand in hand. And Strachidiot is right on the mark here. Back on real TV, and also get some proper players markteted. Gatorade does a great job with Crosby, so does RBK...Need some more NHL stuff,...not just TV commercials. Owners need to get their heads out of their asses. Sometimes, I find it hard to see these guys as billionaires with business sense, because they do not seem to understand simple economics.
Salary demands won't go any higher than warranted by play, as the players will get more endorsements if they are marketed properly...and the revenues for the league will increase...leading to a cap increase...leading to a salary increase...everyone wins!

I strongly agree with number one, and the rest are pretty good as well.

Though, I do disagree with number 9. Increasing the size of the nets would be doing exactly what I think is ruining the integrity of the league - it would simply be applying a patch over a problem; not actually fixing it. If the unnecessarily large goalie pads are creating less scoring, then bring the pads back to a realistic size like they used to be when scoring was up. If we make the nets bigger instead, what will they be in the future? - Soccer nets, with the goalies still compensating to take up 99% of the opening? And then we'll have to go to nets that take up the whole end of the ice... with goalies further compensating to continue to take up 99% of the opening?

The funny thing about the owners and the cap is that some of the teams that were complaining they couldn't afford to compete against other teams salary-wise are some of the same teams maxing out against the cap. Look at Ottawa. They're planning on spending the full cap yet before the lockout they said that they couldn't afford to pay like these other teams. Now the cap is as high or higher than the big teams' payrolls before the lockout.

B. Stinson.....you are so close to being absolutely right...but it would be 99.95% of the opening.

Bruins--The difference is for Ottawa...spending to the full cap at $48 or $50 mill is not an issue, but competing for players with teams like the Rangers(who kept forgetting to buy players that care), Flyers (who kept forgetting to buy a goalie) and Dead Things(who kept forgetting to buy..oh forget it, they never forgot) who would and could spend to $85 or $90 million was not an equal footing. So when that was happening, Ottawa just said eff it...and so did the others and spent $30 mill to make more money...because in a Canadian city (like Boston) they just keep coming anyway. To a point anyway.

I think that everyone agrees on one point: FIRE BETTMAN! I think that i know more about hockey than him, even if i'm lost in a country that doesn't care about hockey at all

I think that getting rid of the composite sticks would be a solution by itself to increase scoring. If you can pass the puck faster, you can beat the defense faster and so create more big opportunities, and so score more. No need to tweak the pads or the net size (even if a reduction of the pads size wouldn't hurt ). Combined with a better ice, you got tons of goals that you can't have actually. And for the ice, i think it's a shame that an ice sport where there are millions of dollars in it can't have a perfect ice all the time I could understand that a Spanish hockey club has difficulties to always have a perfect ice, but can't accept it from teams with millions in hand!

Marketing the players and being on TV is an evidence... Hum...well...maybe not for Buttman

Good point in the article about the impact of gambling. It wouldn't make the whole difference, but it has an impact for sure, no matter the sport.

But before being able to make any clever change, you need to achieve the first point: fire Buttman!

Shadd666 wrote:Combined with a better ice, you got tons of goals that you can't have actually. And for the ice, i think it's a shame that an ice sport where there are millions of dollars in it can't have a perfect ice all the time I could understand that a Spanish hockey club has difficulties to always have a perfect ice, but can't accept it from teams with millions in hand

Sure it is shamefull. Many of those amphitheater are used all-year long by all kind of entertainement. Just taking exemple, Bell Center is one of the most used place in North America. Beside hockey, we got circus, rock concert, WWE wrestling, sometime even monster trucks!! The team rarely pratice here.

It is hard for the ice while stages are always placed and removed.

NHL need to find a way to get solid ice or a way to set up new ice in a less than 24h dead-line.

batdad wrote:B. Stinson.....you are so close to being absolutely right...but it would be 99.95% of the opening.

Bruins--The difference is for Ottawa...spending to the full cap at $48 or $50 mill is not an issue, but competing for players with teams like the Rangers(who kept forgetting to buy players that care), Flyers (who kept forgetting to buy a goalie) and Dead Things(who kept forgetting to buy..oh forget it, they never forgot) who would and could spend to $85 or $90 million was not an equal footing. So when that was happening, Ottawa just said eff it...and so did the others and spent $30 mill to make more money...because in a Canadian city (like Boston) they just keep coming anyway. To a point anyway.

Did the Rangers and the other big spenders really spend $85M-$90M before the cap? If so, I stand corrected. I thought the current salary cap was closing in on what the higher spending teams had before the cap was in effect. My bad!

I don't know if they spent $85-$90M before, but i remember that in the very first version of EHM05, the Rangers were starting with a player budget of $65M...

Maybe not that high, but certainly a fair bit higher than any cap that would be in place at least for 10 years me thinks

batdad wrote:Maybe not that high, but certainly a fair bit higher than any cap that would be in place at least for 10 years me thinks

And never achieved something worthy

Wow, I didn't realize how high their payrolls actually were back then. I stand corrected!

They don't show hockey highlights on ESPN anymore???

It really sucks that there is someone this inept in charge of our favourite game.

And really, Al Strachan wrote this?

holydogg wrote:Sure it is shamefull. Many of those amphitheater are used all-year long by all kind of entertainement. Just taking exemple, Bell Center is one of the most used place in North America. Beside hockey, we got circus, rock concert, WWE wrestling, sometime even monster trucks!! The team rarely pratice here.

It is hard for the ice while stages are always placed and removed.

NHL need to find a way to get solid ice or a way to set up new ice in a less than 24h dead-line.

That's right. Now they'll practice here.

If they show hilites on ESPN it is after about 20 things, and the highlight is usually a lowlight like Todd Bonehead Bertuzzi, Alex Perepinhead, etc.

Although ESPN.com did have the Ducks cup win on the front page for like an hour or something.

Yup, hockey coverage is horrible in the US, especially the southern US.

For example the Vancouver-Anaheim series usually ended too late for me to watch the entire game during the work week. So, I was left waiting for highlights in the morning on the only show you can find any on... ESPN Sportsdesk. And yes, they do come on after EVERYTHING.... baseball, dwarf tossing, fence painting, the spelling bee highlights.... then they'll show a few hockey highlights, maybe one goal and the game winner, then its back to dwarf tossing. They don't go on and show the other playoff games, just back to dwarf tossing and a little later maybe a highlight or two from another series.

Another bad thing about the US coverage, for watching live games, is if the feed is from a US network. Then you usually have terrible camera work, as far as following the puck, and a lot of times they have the white-balance so far out of whack on their cameras that the ice looks radioactive it's glowing so much! No wonder people say they have trouble following the puck.... you can't even see it with the ice like that! Additionally, the camera men seem to lose track of the puck themselves, or zoom in on a scrum when the puck is already long gone or maybe in the net. The only saving grace is that they now usually have 5 or 6 camera angles, so you can catch it on the replay. It makes me really understand how much I took our Canadian hockey coverage for granted.

So yes, it is really hard to find reliable hockey coverage down here.

Snowmon wrote:Then you usually have terrible camera work, as far as following the puck, and a lot of times they have the white-balance so far out of whack on their cameras that the ice looks radioactive it's glowing so much! No wonder people say they have trouble following the puck.... you can't even see it with the ice like that!

MSG for Rangers games is the classic scenario for this... it's horrible. And Versus' camera work was SO bad this year that I actually turned away from watching the games in high def because it just made it harder unbelievably to follow the puck. That's a talent right there... I remember ESPNs HD games back in the day and they were jawdropping you could see every little bounce and deflection of the puck.

Well Snowmon you've now drawn me into the thread so I guess I'll comment. Of course #1 is absolutely essential in my opinion get someone in there that loves hockey and knows what it and it's traditions are all about. Like for example a Steve Yzerman or Mario Lemieux or maybe a Scotty Bowman. We need someone to protect and nurture the game, not "reinvent it into the most exciting product evar!!!". Someone who actually DOES know what the fans want. But that's just my usual Buttman tirade I've repeated many a time.

Like some people are on expansion changing the net size is where I'd part ways with the NHL. And that is saying somethign from someone who watches at least half a dozen games a week during the regular season, but it would jsut be the ultimate travesty to me, officially making the entire past and tradition of the game a moot point.

I also fully agree with the abolishment of the instigator rule as well as his mention of a 'Five For Turtling' penalty as well.

If anyone wasn't around in January and is interested I wrote a collection of rants up as Minty's Resolutions for the NHL here in the hockey forum, I won't retread any more of that though in talking about Strachan's article ghost written by someone with hockey sense lol

Snowmon: If it's such painfull watching hockey highlights on TV, why don't you watch those on nhl.com? You have around 3-4 minutes of highlights for every game. In case you didn't know about this, i think it should be a better way for you (and others!) than loosing time on TV waiting for just a few seconds

Everyone in the US complains about the poor coverage of the NHL in the US... You may be right, but remember that there are some countries where there are no hockey coverage at all! However, i think that US fans should have a better product to watch, more and better covered

Shadd,

My only problem with NHL.com is that until just a few weeks ago I only had dial-up internet as high speed was not available in my area. (A long story about phone company bureaucracy, resulting in no DSL even though every area outside of about a 10 mile radius around us has it.)

I understand what you're saying about having no coverage at all, but the US has NHL teams based in it and any commissioner with a brain in his head should understand that GOOD TV (not just ANY TV) coverage is a must to win fans in a tough market. I mean at least get a network with camera men that can half-a**ed follow the play instead of following the hot blond in the stands (yes I've seen that happen in a game down here).

Minty,

How is the local coverage for the Hawks games? I figured that up in the north-central US the coverage might be a bit better.

Snowmon: Oh, i understand better the use of TV for highlights It would sound logical that the US have a far better TV coverage for sure But who can impulse this? When you have part of the answer, you're back to point #1 and need to fire who you know. As for the cameramen, sure their work isn't always perfect! I have no problem with them following a hot blonde (even if i prefer brunettes ), but would prefer to see those ladies during intermissions, and the puck during action...

Snowmon wrote:How is the local coverage for the Hawks games? I figured that up in the north-central US the coverage might be a bit better.

The AM radio also comes in crystal clear! I swear I won't get into my rant again and simply lay out the facts. Bill Wirtz owns the broadcast rights for all non-nationwide home games (he can't block for example NBC from a weekend game but other than that...) and chooses to NOT show them to the Chicago viewing audience. He says it "protects the investment of our season ticket holders, afterall newspapers don't give away their product for free." So he instead has to PAY the local sports radio station on AM to carry the games, that's how desirable the rights to the radio broadcast are. All away games are televised on local cable and they do an above average job I'd say.

There's a follow up article to this that I just came across today. He elaborates on some things. I'm not sure I agree with all of them. In particular, he contends that the league's talent pool isn't diluted. He claims we don't need to reduce the number of teams because there's too much talent on the ice. He thinks that one of the reasons scoring is down!

http://msn.foxsports.com/nhl/story/6968208?FSO3&ATT=LT

bruins72 wrote: He claims we don't need to reduce the number of teams because there's too much talent on the ice.

Easy way to sort that, make each team ice a brit line

If anything, reducing the number of teams would make the lack-of-scoring problem worse.

That's why I hate the All-Star games; there's never any scoring due to all the talent on the ice.

By the way, does this guy understand that the NHL is the top hockey league in the world? Does he really think it's best to raise scoring by giving bad players a spot in the league? Does he really think fans are gonna pay some $100 to watch amateur mistkes leading to goals?

But of all the ideas put forth by respondents, it seems that not a single person disagreed with the idea that Gary Bettman should be fired.

There's a message there for the NHL governors should they choose to listen to it.

Or perhaps millions of fans are wrong and 30 governors are right.

At least something that really makes sense... And i love the cynism of the last sentence