Brian Burke is peeved about the revenue-sharing concept, too, as well as the “lower limit.” Funny how these teams who were so staunchly in Bettman’s corner are finding that the CBA they demanded isn’t as the cure-all they thought they’d authored.

Posted by George James Malik from South Lyon, MI on 07/05/08 at 09:52 AM ET

Bettman must swallow some of his hubris…

LOL

Anyone else?

Posted by Nathan on 07/05/08 at 10:32 AM ET

I am shocked that the proposed solution would be taking yet more money from the high-revenue teams and giving it to the poor, disadvantaged low-revenue teams.  Shocked.

I’m sure no one had any idea of pegging any of the numbers to league MEDIANS instead of MEANS since the median is less resistant to the effect of outliers?

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 07/05/08 at 10:39 AM ET

Bettman has done many good things…

That line alone ruined this guy’s credibility.

Posted by OlderThanChelios from Grand Rapids on 07/05/08 at 10:44 AM ET

Baroque, I have always gotten the feeling that the league finds any discussion of the revenues of individual teams embarrassing, even if they’re great, and the owners aren’t too keen on revealing them, either.  If they were, they’d have agreed to a much more manageable cap via either a median of team revenues (that’s the middle number, i.e. the revenue of the middle team [in an even-numbered case, you’d add up the 15th and 16th team’s revenues and divide by two] as opposed to the average of all 30 teams’ revenues) or a team-by-team cap…

Hubris is a beautiful thing.

Posted by George James Malik from South Lyon, MI on 07/05/08 at 07:17 PM ET

That’s why I figured a median would be a good measure, because it would reach the middle range of teams - what most people mean when they say “average team.”

Then it wouldn’t matter if the Toronto Maple Leafs were bringing in eleventy-billion dollars a year or twenty cents.  The median would be the same value and they could just multiply that by 30 and use that value - the salary cap certainly wouldn’t be moving up by leaps and bounds.  The high revenue teams would probably be making far higher profits, too, since they wouldn’t be permitted to spend as much on salary as they could easily afford.

Well, if they are too embarrassed to reveal financial numbers in order to make things easier on themselves then they deserve whatever they get.  I just really wish they would stop whining like junior high girls that “they didn’t know what was going to happen!” Poor babies can cry me a river.  It gives me a headache. 

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 07/05/08 at 08:14 PM ET

Some thoughts on mean vs. median…

The league would have to know the revenue of each team to calculate either statistic, would they not?  I can’t think of a scenario where they could come up with a mean or a median without knowing the numbers.  (Is there a scenario that I’m missing?) Though, of course, they wouldn’t have to disclose team revenue in either case.

I infer from both Baroque and George, and my gut feeling is in agreement, that the “outliers” that would be tempered by the median approach fall on the high-revenue side of the list.  But how do we really know that’s true?  How do we know that, in a calculation of the mean, a high-side outlier, say Toronto, wouldn’t be offset by a low-side outlier… like maybe Florida?  We need the numbers, dammit!

We’re just bantering here, but I’m quite comfortable with the thought that the league owners and Gary.Ass didn’t consider choosing median over mean because they were… uh… incapable of doing so.

Posted by BobTheZee on 07/05/08 at 08:35 PM ET

I’m quite comfortable with the thought that the league owners and Gary.Ass didn’t consider choosing median over mean because they were… uh… incapable of doing so.

Wouldn’t surprise me one bit.  Most adults are statistically incompetent.  (sigh)

(For determining the median, they would just need to know the actual values of two teams, but they would need to know the accurate rankings of all 30 teams - the median revenue value would be the arithmetic mean (aka average) of the values for the 15th and 16th ranked teams.)

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 07/05/08 at 09:00 PM ET

Wouldn’t surprise me one bit.  Most adults are statistically incompetent.  (sigh)

I think the politically correct term is statistically challenged.

(And, yes, one would only need to know the actual revenue of the two “middle” teams… with that assured the revenue and even the rank of the remaining teams would be immaterial… but realistically, how does one go about determining which two of the thirty are in the middle without knowing the numbers for each?)

Posted by BobTheZee on 07/05/08 at 11:57 PM ET

Hey, I’m statistically challenged myself (failed college statistics and probability TWICE, woo!), but you’ve got to learn some of these things to plain old follow the NHL, never mind tutor middle schoolers on the side, these days. 

The whole issue is the whole problem, which is that the NHL’s biggest money-losers would rather continue to lose money in terms of day-to-day operating costs and eat it in exchange for the constant year-by-year increases in their franchises’ bank values, and the benefits that the equitable values gained give them in their other business ventures.  They can even borrow against the equitable values of their franchises to start other business ventures, as the Boston Bruins have done in starting a small financial counseling arm that, if I recall my Boston Globe articles correctly, offers loans which are borrowed against the perceived bank value of the hockey team.

That’s what the lockout was about, and I’m sure that Craig Leipold, who made $190 million on a team that needs to be subsidized to exist (Nashville) so that he could invest that money in an extremely profitable franchise (Minnesota), would tell him to shut the heck up and remember that the guy who signs his paycheques was given NHL ownership before he was awarded jail time for a reason.

Posted by George James Malik from South Lyon, MI on 07/06/08 at 02:36 AM ET

Oh, no - Statistically challenged is someone who wrestles with the different terms, but knows they are back there in the dusty fille cabinets of the mind somewhere, and if someone refreshes the memory they recall the difference.

Statistically incompetent is getting the same blank stare as you would expect from a recently dead goldfish.

Either way, no one will get any straight answers because it might mean the owners can’t cry poor if anyowe knows the real numbers.  So many teams are part of larger enterprises instead of stand-alone businesses, and I know that frustrates some fans - a Kings fan pointed out the AEG was spending more on transfer fees (or salary or whatever it is called) on one soccer player than they were spending on the entire Kings payroll so far for the upcoming season.  They saw it as a clear indication that the ownership was not at all committed to the success of the hockey team, as long as the overall business was raking in money ...

... Which struck me as the same kind of gripes you hear from fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs, actually, which is an interesting linkage between Toronto and Los Angeles.

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 07/06/08 at 07:24 AM ET

Careful, there, AEG might very well come after you for such blasphemy The Kings’ unofficial team cap is always a little less than the team needs to spend to keep its core players, it seems. 

AEG is SCARY, and let’s avoid the whole, “Anschutz wants to buy/relocate a second team to Kansas City, but isn’t that a conflict of interest and/or somewhat shady for an NHL owner to try to own/operate/hamper the successes of two teams?”

Maple Leafs fans deal with a similar corporate monolith in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, which reserves sane team management for the Raptors, and includes a majority investor that very evidently doesn’t give a rat’s butt as to how the Ontario Teacher Pension Fund’s team does on the ice as long as they remain the NHL’s most profitable team.  I love the fact that Bettman partially blocked the sale/relocation of the Penguins because it would have opened up a legal examination of the constitution that may very well provoke an antitrust lawsuit...but that’s another story.

Posted by George James Malik from South Lyon, MI on 07/06/08 at 10:13 AM ET