Hot Ice: NHL Thread

[ursus arctos]

This is in French, but is good on the cost of various locations at the Centre Bell

https://www.journaldemontreal.com/20...au-centre-bell

It also answers my question about the change. The boards that are visible for two periods are CDN 415,000 a season; those visible for one period are CDN 310,000. There are significant ancillary charges (production, other required ad buys) on top of that, and the playoffs (if any) are extra (with the tariff going up each round).

I would expect the Habs to be able to charge more than any team in the league other than the Leafs, though the exchange rate will have an effect on that.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Sedin night at Rogers Centre as the twins become the fifth and sixth Canucks to have their numbers retired. The following game will be played on the frozen tears of the 20,000 present.

[Hot Pepsi]

That is touching.

[ursus arctos]

Shutting out Chicago wasn't a bad tribute at all

[Amor de Cosmos]

Not at all. But but Jacob Markstrom's 49 save shutout was the real tribute, a club record. What a story he's turned out to be. Talk about a late developer, two years ago fans were wondering how quickly Thatcher Demko would be ready so we could wave him goodbye. Now they're debating which one we can afford to keep. Goalies eh? Never can figure them out.

[ursus arctos]

Especially Canucks' goalers

Look at what's happened to Cory Schneider

[ursus arctos]

[URL="https://twitter.com/nhlonnbcsports/status/1231407483333357571?s=21"]https://twitter.com/nhlonnbcsports/status/1231407483333357571[/URL]

Carolina is up three with two and a half minutes left and up 3-2 with the Zamboni driver in net.

[Anton Gramscescu]

6-3 Carolina, and Leafs Nation is losing its collective mind.

[ursus arctos]

Dangle couldn't have dreamed of better material

[Amor de Cosmos]

The Leafs are the gift that keeps on giving, and giving, and giving...

[jefe]

Well, Lou Lamoriello's all in. Start scoring, kids.

[Cal Alamein]

Enjoyed this match (USSR/CANADA - 1967 World Championships) on youtube last night - wish I could get more info on each of the squads.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOBp15k-SBc

Some observations:
*Still a handful of Soviets bareheaded
*No plexiglass around much of the arena
*Loved the AFRI-COLA ad behind one of the goals (couldn't wait to try one in FDR after yrs of seeing ad hoardings on Soccer Made In Germany)
*USSR had a mix of light and dark helmets
*Seriously uncomfortable and mostly useless goalie masks for both goaltenders
*Crazed amount of photographers rushing the ice moments after the final whistle

[ad hoc]

My occasional off topic foray into this thread to update on the Erste Liga (Hungary/Romania). This season was very much a season of 3 halves, Brian. (Or as it's ice hockey, actually a season of three periods)

My home town team Csikszereda were by far the best team in the first period, winning the "regular league" comfortably, 9 point from Ferencvaros in second, and a full 23 ahead of third place. Table here https://www.ersteliga.hu/stats/standings#/1945/regular

Then the 10 team league splits in half, with the top 5 entering a second stage of the season, just playing one another twice. As winners of stage 1 Csikszerda started this session with 6 bonus points, but still in the course of 8 games managed to finish dead last winning only once. Table here. https://www.ersteliga.hu/stats/stand...45/masterround

Now we're into the playoffs. The teams in the top section of stage 2 all qualify, as do the 3 which finished top of the bottom section. But it's been a susprising set of games so far. Ujpest, who finished second in the bottom half (and hence 7th overall), have swept Dunaujvaros who finished 2nd, 4-0. Gyergyo (from here, just up the road) (6th) are beating Brasov (a little bit further down the road) 2-1 at the moment. Csikszereda (5th) and 3-1 up over Debrecen*. And Ferencvaros (1st) barely scraped a 6-5 win over Fehervar (8th) last night to go 2-1 up.

(* went last night, and it was a well played high quality game - for this league. We won in overtime after a 2-2 draw). The rest of the playoffs promise to be really interesting and the quality of hockey seems to keep going up year on year. )

[ursus arctos]

Did they just take the second period off?

It strikes me as a rather bizarre system.

In other news, the Brooklyn Islanders experiment is over.

The Isles will play all of their playoff games this season and all of next season back at their refurbished old home in Uniondale.

[JVL]

Not NHL-related, but still... I've just bought us tickets to watch Germany v. Hungary in the group stage of the IIHF Women's World Championship in early April. All of the big games (i.e. featuring Canada & USA) are taking place in Halifax and will probably sell out, so we'll be heading up to the substantially smaller arena in Truro to see this.

[Flynnie]

Did they just take the second period off?

It strikes me as a rather bizarre system.

In other news, the Brooklyn Islanders experiment is over.

The Isles will play all of their playoff games this season and all of next season back at their refurbished old home in Uniondale.

Why does Bettman still lie through his teeth about shit like this? He pooh-poohed any return to Nassau a few years ago because the arena was too small for hockey. But 13,917 is completely adequate for the Isles.

I guess you could say he was doing so because of their desire for a new arena. That's Gary's personal Everest, he's a Long Island boy and an Islanders fan. But the way he does it is disingenuous. The Isles' new rink isn't going to be especially large by NHL standards, a little over 17,000. Hockey would probably do well to focus on smaller rinks where every seat is great, then trying to have 19-20,000 seat arenas in places where you're gonna struggle to fill them. Montreal, fine. Long Island, not so much.

[Flynnie]

Oh, and RIP Henri Richard. One of the underrated greats. The quiet dynasty -- four Cups in five years from 65-69, and it took a tight six-game Leafs win in the 1967 finals to deny five in a row -- was powered by him. He was phenomenal in the playoffs in those years.

[Snake Plissken]

I'd have thought Bettman does it because his owners want to get in on that sweet new (preferably publicly financed) arena money.

Scary thought - he's now the longest serving NHL commissioner ever, having just clocked up 27 years.

[Hot Pepsi]

His record is decidedly mixed.

[ursus arctos]

Given the competition, that isn't necessarily bad

The big kahuna governors found some real putzes to fill that chair

[Hot Pepsi]

Right.

I recently read something that pointed out that there was a cover story in Sports Illustrated (or maybe it was Time or Newsweek) around 1993 or 1994 claiming that the NHL was on the rise and the NBA wasn't. The point is that clearly the NBA has eclipsed it in "relevance" both here and abroad and hasn't made the mistakes the NHL has made - two lockouts, especially.

The lockouts were dumb. The inability to find a way to play in the Olympics/and or get momentum with the World Cup is maddening. The move out of Canadian markets and into the south has largely been profitable, I suspect, thanks to public funding of areans and has lead to growth in youth hockey in those places but it's easy to look successful when the baseline is zero. And there are a lot of issues with youth hockey and youth sports in general that need to be addressed before worrying too much about how many kids are playing in Phoenix. Losing the ESPN deal and then being on Vs. for a while was really stupid, although ultimately it may have worked out because now the NHL is NBC's top sport other than football.

But even without those issues, the NHL would still be behind the NBA now. That moment in the early 90s was an abberation. Jordan had quit (temporarily) and the style of basketball was especially dull. The importance of the NHL series of video games cannot be overstated and the impact of that really hit in the mid 90s. Gretzky was in LA and movie stars were coming to games. In-line hockey was having its ESPN2 moment. But all of those factors were destined to be temporary even if the league was better managed. Basketball and soccer are just inherently more accessible than hockey for most of the world and the NFL is inherently more TV-friendly.

The NHL could be doing a lot of things to help "The Game" thrive, but the owners don't really care about "The Game." They care about money and their own personal social status. They're no worse - in fact, on average they may be better - than the owners of the other three big North American sports.

Sadly, I don't think the players really do either. They seem to mostly just want to retire to Florida and not pay income taxes.

[ursus arctos]

That population is almost as bad a sample of humanity as a weekend night at Mar a Lago

And yes, there is some overlap

[Snake Plissken]

Hockey really boomed worldwide in the 90s. Lots of shiny new arenas, plenty of money sloshing around. I was only thinking the other day how there was a roller hockey game in Manchester Arena in summer 1997 that got about 6,000 fans in.

The problem was that the owners were incapable of capitalising on it, even in the short term. The NHL lockouts, the trap era, all that. The point about the EA games is a good one, and I sometimes wonder what would have happened had the boom coincided with HD TV becoming the norm.

In Britain, the game managed to miss its opportunity completely with the Superleague spending itself into oblivion by fielding lower end AHL quality sides of 20 imports and not developing for the future. Of course the house of cards came down and many clubs had to restart and emphasise British talent. And that had led to *looks at import levels in the EIHL*... ah.

[ursus arctos]

Very much so

It was a huge opportunity that was seriously bungled, and I would add the the increased availability of overseas players (especially Russians, Czechs and Slovaks) as another factor.

[Flynnie]

I'd have thought Bettman does it because his owners want to get in on that sweet new (preferably publicly financed) arena money.

Scary thought - he's now the longest serving NHL commissioner ever, having just clocked up 27 years.

Sure, but he has a way of making incredibly disingenuous, even at the time, public pronouncements. Nassau gets a facelift and some luxury boxes, while Brooklyn was a lemon from Day 1. Why not say, "This is an interesting development, but our long-term goal is a new home for the Islanders" instead of shitting all over the idea. It's obvious he wasn't speaking for the owners, as soon as Nassau got gussied up rumours were everywhere that the Isles would play games there and they started doing so shortly thereafter.

Or the time when he smugly lectured Winnipeg on how it would have to support hockey when the Thrashers moved, right before they sold out their entire season ticket allocation in 7 minutes.

The move out of Canadian markets and into the south has largely been profitable, I suspect, thanks to public funding of areans and has lead to growth in youth hockey in those places but it's easy to look successful when the baseline is zero.

Most of those teams would be bankrupt without revenue sharing. Even the Sharks and Lightning, probably the two gold standard Sun Belt teams, barely show a profit. From a purely rapacious standpoint, Canadian markets probably needed a kick up the rear end. They were miles behind US franchises in merchandising, TV rights and arenas. But there's a hypocrisy in saying Quebec City is too small to support an NHL team because of the floating loonie while the league bailing out Phoenix over and over again is OK.