You tell ‘em, Paul!  People like Lyle Richardson, Tom Benjamin and I (yes, nice of me to tag along with those guys, eh!) kept trying to point out that a cap and this pseudo-revenue sharing plan wasn’t going to help with a core issue, the revenue gap.  Furthermore, I know I said it until I was beyond blue in the face, but the Canadian small market issues had a heck of a lot more to do with exchange rates than any economic structural issues of the league.  It’s nevertheless only a cold comfort to feel I was right.

Posted by snafu from Michigan on 11/07/07 at 07:58 AM ET

Aw, poor babies!  Cry me a river.

If they were that concerned maybe they should have gone with a median instead of a mean, anyway.  Go back to your Math 101, businessmen!

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 11/07/07 at 08:08 AM ET

Forgot to mention how much I LOVE this comment:

“We knew the clause was there but it wasn’t something we looked closely at,” said one small-market team owner. “We thought we’d deal with it when we had to. It’s clearly a big problem.”

Thank the gods that this person doesn’t work in my workplace!

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 11/07/07 at 08:11 AM ET

I don’t know about anone here but I’m just shocked. SHOCKED! I say. You mean to tell me that in order to prevent small market teams from being lazy and relying too much on big market teams to shoulder a large portion of their operating budget, the league actually has them working hard to promote their team and the game of hockey? Say it ain’t so, Joe. Just say it ain’t so.

Posted by UMFan on 11/07/07 at 03:08 PM ET

Being a bitter, evil, mean human being, I smiled when I read this article.  I said at the get-go that the CBA’s revenue-sharing program was a joke because it didn’t meaningfully address the disparities between clubs’ revenue-producing abilities, and simply tore up every team’s biggest money-maker, post-season ticket sales, in order to marginally subsidize teams that had little incentive to really address their problems…

As it turns out, the more and more we read the legalese, there is a small incentive for teams to address their revenue-producing problems, but it’s written in such a draconian way as to spitefully punish small-market teams for being small-market teams. 

This CBA was supposedly written for the smaller, non-traditional market teams, and if they neglected to address this central issue while cheering a cap linked to revenues, it’s their own damn fault for ignoring the fact that the CBA was in fact about two things—increasing franchise equity, i.e. a team’s bank value, by theoretically capping costs, and it was about making the rich richer, giving the New Yorks, Torontos, Montreals, and Detroits of the league greater profit margins while simultaneously instilling resentment for small-market subsidization because the money comes from the playoff revenue pool. 

As it turns out, apparently, Bettman, Daly, and Saskin managed to screw everyone over at the same time, players, fans, big market teams (hello, doubled playoff ticket prices by the Wings), small market teams, everybody but the NHL itself.

Welcome to the jungle, small-market owners.  The business of professional sports is a vicious one, and even a socialistic CBA can’t save you from the harsh realities of sustaining day-to-day losses in terms of expenses vs. revenues in pursuit of precious franchise equity.

Posted by George Malik from South Lyon, MI on 11/07/07 at 04:35 PM ET