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A note to readers
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Roundtable of Death: “We’re Alive! We’re Ali…(gunshot)” edition
Varada
It’s Friday, which means work isn’t going to get much out of me today. What, I work in health care, it’s not important.
So what should we talk about? How about Ottawa’s defense? Are you a fan of going out and signing, say, a Chris Campoli on the cheap, or are you excited to see what these young Binghamton Boys can do?
I looked at the UFAs, and there aren’t really any I’m interested in beyond Campoli, who is still young and we know can play 15 minutes a night. The problem is that with Cowen out we don’t really need depth, we need a top pairing guy, and there isn’t really one of those available. Also remember that Ottawa traded it’s second round pick this year for Ben Bishop, which means that if we’re getting into trading for a defenseman it will be the kind you can get with a later pick (meaning probably not as good as Campoli) or the kind you have to give up a first rounder or a prospect for, which isn’t preferable. This team shouldn’t really be in a “going for it” mentality, but should be patient.
I’ve written on the blog about how if there’s a season where Ottawa sort of stinks it up, I don’t mind it being this one considering it’s shortened and next year’s draft is deep. Maybe it also puts Ottawa in a selling mood and we get some picks for expiring contracts like Gonchar, Regin, maybe Latendresse if he has a decent season. I won’t say Alfie because I know how people will react…but Alfie so he can win a goddamned cup already. I’m not saying let’s go out and tank on purpose, just that if the capricious gods are going to be total dicks, then this is the year I’d like to cash that in. In which case, I’m all for giving the youngins some development time in the NHL. They’re tearing up the A, some of them already have a championship in that league; I think it would be valuable to give them some NHL time against the big boys, let them get acclimatized while expectations are lower.
Another thing we could talk about: holy bejeezus take a look at next season’s UFAs. I’m so excited for this. No longer do we have crazy 15 year deals being handed out – every team with the cap space can basically offer the same “league max” deal of 7 years and the maximum salary, and it’s up to the players to go where they want. They can’t all live in New York, which means they start looking at who is up and coming, and that’s us. I scrolled about halfway down the page and was still finding guys that I would love to see on our team. If Alfie retires, Ottawa isn’t going to have any trouble finding a high-end forward to take his place (though no one can take his place).
James
I agree that outside an offer sheet for PK Subban or Michael Del Zotto *uses Canadarm to make appropriate sized hand wanking motion* there’s no one available out there who’d really make the D corps drastically better. An offer sheet seems totally out of the question for the sole reason of what are you realistically going to offer Subban or Del Zotto that MTL or NY wont match? These guys aren’t Shea Weber go-all-in guys. You’d basically just waste time helping another team write the contract for them. I’ve checked that list of UFA’s twice now (RESEARCH). I suppose I wouldn’t think it was a grievous error to toss your Foster or Campoli type guy a 1-year contract bone as, hey, they can play some NHL minutes but Ottawa’s admittedly weak and Cowen-less D keeps bringing me back to one question: Are we rebuilding or are we rebuilding?
This Mike Lundin injury is not like Cowen’s: a broken finger is a few weeks out I’d estimate. He’ll be back in a month probably. I’m not saying he’s the saviour by any means but he’s a signed NHL player is he not? I for one am in favour of giving Borowiecki and Wiercioch a try. Gamble? Definitely. Who the hell is going to flat out guarantee that two guys who’ve played 10 NHL games (which is more than a fifth of the season this year!) wont look out of place? But to me they aren’t the craziest options either. Wiercioch is in his 3rd year in Bingo and playing great. Borowiecki, or Bonerweicki if you hear Tim Murray talk about him, is also in his 3rd campaign. He was also an AHL all star last year which is quite an accomplishment when you’re a shut down D man. Paul MacLean said something that mirrors my thinking the other day, that yes, they are inexperienced but everyone has to start their NHL career at some point. Amen Pappy. Given the circumstances, I’ve been looking at it like, “Yeah, the Sens D is a little fucked this year.” It will be interesting to see this play out given that the topic du jour is that Ottawa’s goaltending is the team’s biggest strength. Tenders will be put to the test especially if there’s two Binghamton boys in the mix. If you’ve been following the BSens you know that they have been outshot nearly every game…even when they win.
One plausible and interesting trade idea that Silver Sevens’ Peter Raaymakers (WHO I MET A GUY WHO MET HIM ONCE) brought up with me via an autograph he was faxing me was potentially trading Sergei Gonchar to Evegeniburgh Malkguins for the Right Honourable Paul Martin. Martin’s game would probably be more useful to the Sens this year then Gonchar’s but do the two years he has left on his contract muck up the rebuild once Cowen does come back? Since no one out there improves the D short term I say take the loss and try out some Baby Sens.
I’ve already gone on the record (IMPORTANT) in saying that I don’t think this is a playoff team this year. I’m not going to pretend I know jack shit about this years draft being deep or shallow but a high pick is a high pick and is always a bonus in a rough year in the standings. I expect this team to still be a high scoring team with a porous defence and improved goaltending with Bishop. Could go either way.
To address your point about the UFA list for this summer I think it looks pretty good. I don’t know if I’m quite as happy in the pants about it as you though I am for sure super hyped on Corey Perry being potentially available. The 2014 crop looks really scrumtralecent. According to Capgeek.tv the Senators will have $35, 580, 833 in cap space so my advice would continue being patient and offer Malkin $35, 580, 833* for seven years.
*It’s funny because that’s an actual yearly salary for a player in other sports, in fact this kind of payday WHICH IS PART OF A FUCKING JOKE BY THE WAY, would barely put him in the top 15 highest paid athletes. The more you knowish.
But wait…what does the seventh most popular Senators blog have to say about Brian Burke’s firing?
I know that I have a propensity to weigh in on the Maple Leafs more than is probably reasonable for a Senators fan, and hopefully you won’t assume that it’s the usual Ottawa denizen’s insecurity-complex speaking. What can I say: they’re the most popular team in the league, in the biggest hockey market in the world, in my favorite team’s division, and up until today they had the most contentious and divisive GM.
I’ve written about it before: what makes the Leafs’ situation more tragic than your everyday mediocre team is just how unique it is to see a team in those market conditions go through the incredibly painful process of selling major stakeholders on a rebuild, embark on said rebuild, and then jettison said rebuild all in the course of about three years. Think about what it takes to convince your sponsors, your fans, and the media, let alone as diverse an ownership group as the Leafs had at the time, that a few years of terrible hockey might help the team get to elite status. And they did it! They took all of the painful steps you need to take when you just can’t hack it anymore. They hired an interim GM in Cliff Fletcher who could be the bad guy and make the unpopular decision thanks to his ‘interim’ tag. They traded, bought out, or let walk a number of veterans like Sundin, Tucker, and Domi. They drafted in the top five for the first time in years. They even nabbed Grabovski for nothing. They were on their way.
Then cometh the Burke.
The initial coverage of this firing seems to list the fact that the Leafs never made the playoffs during Burke’s tenure as the reason for his firing, but that doesn’t seem reasonable to me. You have to judge a person against the expectations in place when they take the job. The man was handed a five-to-six year rebuild in year two. To me the expectations on Burke were that he restock the system, shelter his prospects from intense media scrutiny to allow them to develop, show incremental improvement from year to year, and be competing for a playoff spot by the end of his contract. The tragedy of the Leafs isn’t that they stink, it’s that they don’t even have their rebuild to show for it. It’s true that their prospect system went from one of the worst in the league to about the middle of the pack. But the mainstay complaints of the previous decade are still there: a lack of blue chip talent in the pipeline; terrible goaltending; overpraising the players who perform and systematically destroying those who don’t.
But it’s also not really Brian Burke’s fault—it’s whoever hired him. You just don’t hire a guy like Brian Burke to steward a rebuild. He’s not that type of GM. He’s the guy who will move mountains to draft the Sedins side-by-side, the guy who will make monumental trades happen when the rest of the league is frozen up with cap issues. He’s probably one of the best connected guys in hockey, and he can take a team with all of the fundamental building blocks in place right over the top (see: Anaheim). But as a patient, methodical builder, he stinks. Even with a front office that includes Dave Nonis, and did include Rick Dudley, and a scouting department that is larger than most franchises (if the Leafs’ webpage is a true barometer of these things), the elementary functions of player drafting and development, or even the importance of these things, seemed to escape this group.
I actually wouldn’t include the Kessel trade that will ultimately define the man’s legacy among Burke’s biggest mistakes. He obviously vastly miscalculated the ability of his team before giving up those two first rounders, but if the Leafs had indeed been the bubble team he thought they would be those picks would have been a Jaden Schwartz and a Joel Armia instead of a Tyler Seguin and a Dougie Hamilton. To me the biggest mistakes of Burke’s time were perpetually failing to shore up his goaltending and, despite saying something along the lines of “July 1st is our draft,” refusing to give out the types of contracts that would allow the Leafs to leverage their enormous wealth as an advantage to attract the best free agent talent. I guess you could bundle that up into one big failure to finish a rebuild that was already underway and for which he would take none of the blame for the team stinking.
Obviously Burke will be best remembered for his personality, which was occasionally buffoonish (the untied tie, the barn fight, the repeated statements of ridiculous hyperbole, the blatantly contradictory statements of absolute certainty). But it’s precisely that brashness that also put him on the right side of progressive causes like You Can Play and gay rights in the sport in general. His greatest asset as a person—his brash confidence—just happened to be his greatest fault as a manager. I don’t dislike the man at all. I just think he was put in a situation where he wasn’t likely to succeed, and he never seemed self-aware enough to change.
It will be interesting to see who the replacement is. Considering the proximity to the start of the season, one thinks that Nonis or someone else internal, with a familiarity with Leafs’ hockey operations, gets the nod.
Update: …and Nonis it is! This is why it pays to watch the press conference before you post. Hysterical that Burke is staying on as “a senior adviser.” The man’s effectiveness was borne out of not listening to anyone and now he has to plead to be listened to.
Roundtable of Death: Life Edition
Varada
Figure we haven’t done one of these in….nine years? Let’s talk why not?
1) How do you feel about hockey now that it’s back? On a scale of one to ten, one being you’ve sworn hockey off and ten being that you’re so excited that you’re sitting in a Sens jersey (and nothing else) right now counting the minutes until the opening game, how are you feeling?
2) Predictions for the Sens’ season?
3) Breakout player this season / player who’ll find himself in the doghouse at season’s end.
4) What you’re most excited to see.
MINE ANSWORDS:
1) I’m at about a four. This lockout seriously dampened my enthusiasm for hockey, and obviously the NHL in particular. That’s not just the lockout’s fault, it’s a combination of the 67s stinking this year and playing way out in Kanata (anyone watched any 67s games? I’m not so bandwagony that I’ll only watch competitors but MAN is that some stinky hockey. At one point they were outshot 22-6), the AHL not knowing how to capitalize on a lockout and continuing to offer shitty feeds behind pay walls, and international tournaments taking place in Mad Max-like dystopias in the middle of a leper colony in the Prussian Empire. This isn’t helped along by the fact that I realized that when I have 57% of my life back due to no hockey I get to work on other things. I read books. I learned some French. I caught up with friends whose idea of fun doesn’t include going to a bad Irish Pub every two days to spend $75 on beer over a four hour period.
I’ll still catch games on television, but I’m not lining up for tickets, not buying much in the way of merch, not even really interested in nitpicking through every little development (Chris Neil likes chili; what effect will this have on his possession game?). Paradoxically, I will continue to be a part of a hockey blog. Democracy, not meritocracy, ladies and gentlemints.
2) I think we have some regression in store, helped along by the lack of mister 20-minutes-a-night Kuba, Cowen and Lundin’s injuries, Phillips, Gonchar and Alfie all being one year older, Michalek’s shooting percentage coming back down to earth, Karlsson probably not leading all defencemen in scoring by 20 points, and that we pretty much lucked out in not missing Spezza or Michalek or Alfie to injuries that much last year. I don’t think we’ll see a bottoming out, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find us just on the outside of the bubble looking in. I wrote earlier how if there was a year that the Sens were going to go futile on us, it may as well be this one, when I’m used to no hockey and we’d only have to live with about 50 games of sucking. Then again, wackier things have happened in a shortened season. Craig Anderson might just win the Rocket Richard trophy.
3) I feel like Turris is the natural answer to the breakout player question, though I’ve never been a huge champion of the kid and I’m skeptical still. I think he’ll do just fine as a 2nd line center, but breaking out, turning heads, stealing hearts? I dunno. Maybe. I think I’ll go with Jakub Silfverberg, who I think may be a part of the Calder conversation, thus increasing the “Is Jakub the reincarnation of the not-yet-dead-Alfie?’ chatter. As for the player in the doghouse, I’d say either Phillips or Neil, both of whom I think should have moved on a couple of seasons ago during the purge. Phillips is a serviceable second pairing guy, and obviously he’s a veteran with a great history in the city, but at $3MM per I don’t know if having both he and Marc Methot around battling for the not-quite-good-enough-to-play-with-Karlsson spot sets my world on fire. Neil gets a bit of a pass because Carkner and Konoptka are gone and as hockey savant Don Brennan will tell you, you need someone on your team who if he wasn’t playing hockey would probably be in jail. Neil will fight people, so…we need him? Veteran, pump-up guy, history in the city, blah blah blah. But his possession numbers are brutal. He also takes more penalties than he draws, making the whole ‘pest’ element a bit of a wash. I don’t know if I care much for yet another season of Neil scoring, what, 20 points?
Holy shit, I completely forgot that this team signed Peter Regin. He might pleasantly surprise.
4) I’m most excited for the Robin Lehner / Ben Bishop tandem era to start in Ottawa. I love both of these guys so goddamned much, and think they’re destined for a spirited competition for the starting role before Lehner goes crazy once and for all and poisons Bishop’s soup. I love Andy, but I think he gets left behind starting next season, with this season being the start of a saga that will be rivaled only by that part in Game of Thrones where someone brutally murders someone else and then there’s a soft core sex scene.
James
1) I feel pretty good actually. I’ve spent my time in my ‘being bent out of shape about everything’ phase (which if you follow our twitter –whiiiiich according to our number of followers you likely don’t – was admittedly pretty intense for a while) but for the last few weeks I’ve been in a place where I just wanted a definitive answer. It wouldn’t have been all that crushing if there was no hockey as the idea of no season felt quite normal after three months of there being no season. If there was indeed to be hockey, great, because I love NHL hockey and am glad to see that Alfie didn’t have to retire like that.
One thing that was tough to deal with for me was watching Erik Karlsson tear it up in another team’s uniform. It’s been quite some time since Ottawa had a young player who was a force and to see him using those skills on another team (THAT LITERALLY DRESS LIKE CLOWNS) was really irritating for me. Particularly after having had locked him down with a new contract in the off season. Welcome Back To Our Karlsson Years (oh boy, did you miss how awful I am).
If I were to give it an out-of-10 rating I would say I am actually at about a 7 at this point. Probably a 7.5 in two weeks time when the season starts. But like Varada pointed out, I was 10/10 excited pre-lockout and that dulled considerably. Life went on. Now the NHL’s coming back and I’m up for some hockey, why not. My performance expectations are pretty low and I think it will be fun to see how it all plays out for better or worse. I’ll likely be in the cheap seats at the home opener…alone.
2) I predict an entertaining and competitive season that falls just short of a playoff berth. I am not quite as cautiously pessimistic about every element of the team as tends to be convention in these discussions. Last season was educational like that. Sure a lot of things went right but credit where it’s due. Suffice to say, defence has people legitimately pretty worried. People talk about Gonchar like he’s the worst player on the team but will no one give him credit for putting up 37 points in 74 games last season? I get that he makes too much money but he’s been playing and playing well overseas and I think that’s promising. Cowen and Kuba will be missed but I don’t know if a Methot-Karlsson, Phillips-Gonchar top four and a Borowecki – Wiercioch / Benoit / eventually Lundin as bottom pairing will necessarily destroy the team. Methot is clearly the wild card as who is an authority on anything Blue Jackets related. What I see is a Norris winner paired with what’s supposed to be a fast shut down guy, two past their prime but still very serviceable guys and, yes, a green 3rd pairing but at least it’s the third pairing. Sub standard overall but could potentially get the job done. I could be wrong but remember, as of right now, our divisional rivals in Montreal, Toronto and Buffalo have not improved hence my prediction of competitiveness and entertainment. That said, given the sword of Damocles that is injury, the team’s competitiveness could unravel quickly. There will be little room for error in this short, half assed season and it would be foolish to think that Ottawa’s game will be free of such error. I give Ottawa an up and down, fun to watch 10th place in the East finish.
3) Breakout season: NikitaFilatov.com Just………joking. Turris is the logical answer but after putting up 29 points in 49 games with Ottawa combined with his handsome new contract to me Turris done broke out already. He will continue to be a solid top 6 contributor and put up a similar rate of numbers, I think. My true breakout prediction goes to Jakub Silfverberg. Anyone who has witnessed his post-getting used to the North American game majesty in Binghamton knows he looks like a guy playing in a league below his skill level. I don’t expect him to dominate but I think he will crack the top 6, possibly top 3 and stick for the short season. I think if Colin Greening could quietly have a 17 goal rookie season hanging on the first line I am confident that Silfverberg will be able to perform similarly. Unlike Greening though fans will actually notice how impressive that is. A silfver lining (ugh, booooo, me) of the lockout is that Jakub got to adjust his game away from the scrutiny of the Ottawa Sun comment section types and will arrive at camp in a better mindset than if he was just thrown into the pool back in October. I think essentially it’s like Silfverberg has had a 3 month training camp and will hopefully be able to capitalize on that warm up this season. I’m trying to think of what constitutes a break out season in 48 games, hmmm…I guess 9 or 10 goals.
Goat of the year in the Year of the Goat: Have we simply entered an age where Phillips is just basically permanently on the fans’ bad side? Since he signed that deal after a brutal campaign on a brutal team fans seemed to have decided to just hate the guy. Damned if you do damned if you don’t. Like Kuba before him: “Play a good game, go unnoticed, play a bad game and get torn apart.” I predict Big Rig will take on Kubinian amounts of blame this season. He’s not the same guy he used to be but, like Gonchar, in my opinion, he’s not exactly losing the team games but not winning them either. With a weaker D squad look for Philips to be run out of town when the going gets tough. That was basically the case last year and that was on a playoff team.
4) I am excited about two things and they are quite divergent. First, just could not be more excited to see Erik Karlsson play again. Norris win and point avalanche definitely a contributor but not necessarily the sole reason for excitement. With Kuba gone and if Methot indeed pairs with him we should expect a lower rate of production from EK but goddamn do I miss how fun it is to watch that kid skate like the wind and launch bombs from the point. Though I didn’t get to watch him play, his point totals indicate that he didn’t seem to miss a step in Finland and how can you not be pumped to watch the team’s best young player. The second (and admittedly very, very weird) thing I’m excited about seeing is what Guillaume Latendresse is. This guy is a mystery wrapped in a riddle wrapped in an awful goatee. Case in point, I didn’t even know he spent the vast majority of last season injured (ALREADY EXCITING!!!). I have no idea what to expect. Aside from tearing it up for a while after being traded to Minnesota from the Habs this guy has always seemed to have a rep as a guy with good top 6 potential who couldn’t really put it together. From what I gather, this is his last kick at the can in terms of being re-signed in the NHL. I like the idea of him being in direct competition with Peter Regin who from what I gather is being given his last kick at the can in terms of being re-signed in the NHL. Am I expecting something huge from I already hate spelling his first name Latendresse? No, I am just very interested to see how that story line plays out. Look for him to become a goat if things don’t pan out.
JAMES ON!
New Message From The NHL and The NHLPA: “Screw You Fans”
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We’re not even back yet and I’m thinking about a tank job
Reading the Peter Dorion interview over on The 6th Sens this morning in which the depth of the upcoming draft class is mentioned, and it got me to thinking: is there any other season in which I’d rather see the Senators tank for a high pick?
I mean, why the hell not? My interest in hockey has never really been lower. (My girlfriend noted the other day how I suddenly spend my evenings reading books, learning another language, staying fit, and she wondered what had happened. I realized it’s that I’m not spending every other night watching four hours of television in a bar and slowly drinking myself to death.) When the season finally gets rolling it’ll be yet another tainted “season with an asterisk” next to it. Even in the best case scenario, this gong-show of a league has alienated the hell out of all of us.
It’s true that maybe Ottawa’s veterans, the Alifies and Gonchars of the world, can benefit from the shortened season. Maybe the stars will align and our injury prone players, the Regins and Latendresses, can stay out of the field hospital. And I’ll take a strong showing with an asterisk over nothing. But then again, if there’s a season when I’d like to see Ottawa get another top five pick, it’s this one. After all, we’ll only need to put in a half-season’s worth of sucking to get there.
In which case, let’s find those expiring contracts a new home and get ourselves some picks! Gonchar would look great playing terribly for the Capitals or Penguins.
Contradictory messages on hockey economics
Two interesting and contradictory stories today that muddy the waters when we try to understand just how profitable it is to own a hockey franchise.
First is this North Texas news story, which features an interesting (and short) audio interview with a sports economist who claims that overall league sustainability sags because of hockey in non-traditional markets. Makes sense conceptually, though he doesn’t offer up much more evidence than “Hockey country in South Florida? No.”
I don’t disagree that building a sport in a non-traditional market is challenging and requires a billionaires’ equivalent of the welfare state in the meantime, but we are talking about huge media markets with mad sports cultures. If hockey is sustainable in cities with a population base like Winnipeg’s, it’s hard to understand how it couldn’t be sustainable in a city where even a fraction of its sports consumers would equal the same number of people.
More to the point, though, is how the angle of this story continues to calculate hockey profitability on a strict hockey-related-revenue-to-hockey-related-expenses ratio. That simply doesn’t reflect the manner in which value is derived from sports franchise ownership.
(One other point made during the interview that resonantes with me more, though, is that owners are emboldened by how strong the fan support was after the last lockout, and how fans are only damaging the long-term stability of the league if they welcome their teams back with open arms. We need to vote with our dollars. End aside.)
Now look at this tellingly contradictory story from South Florida, which says precisely what I and many others have been writing about for some time: those who own their own arenas or have favorable arena deals have a number of non-hockey related events and revenues to buoy their teams. “So what?” you might ask. That’s not hockey related revenue, and so shouldn’t be included when we talk about hockey’s profitability. Except that in many cases you simply can’t get your hands on that revenue without an arena, and you can’t get your hands on an arena without a regular tenant, and that your tenant then eats up a huge amount of your fixed expenses. Simply put, a hockey team might lose money, but your investment still gains.
We start to get a picture of an overall investment strategy: You don’t necessarily want a sports team, you want a sports arena. With an arena you can inflate real estate and land prices in the area, where you can strategically invest beforehand, and/or charge for retail space, and/or derive value from businesses you own nearby. To get an arena, you need a sports team, the cheapest of which is an NHL team in a non-traditional market. Even if you don’t have the arena, get the team and you can agitate for the local government to build you one with public tax dollars.
Once you’ve got your arena and team, your direct hockey-related revenue in-out ratio might produce yearly operational losses – you probably don’t make enough on ticket sales to pay for salaries and arena expenses. But your overall portfolio, made possible by owning the team, is producing value. You may even make a short term profit when you consider revenue sharing, merchandise sales, and television revenues, much of which is not reported. And if you’re lucky, maybe your team goes on a run, wins some playoff games, and you make some bonus short term profit. Meanwhile, your franchise is increasing in value year over year. If it’s in the middle of the pack, that means a 4%-11% return on your $200MM investment every year. All you have to do is have the money to cover any operational losses in the meantime, which some owners (remember those two guys in Tampa?) have trouble doing when all of their other speculative enterprises crumble in a crashing economy.
In the meantime, you can limit your operational losses by slashing payroll and agitating for a lockout to remove player rights. In the end, this narrative of non-traditional teams dragging down the league is only accurate if we continue to look exclusively at hockey related revenue. But owning a sports team isn’t about whether or not the team makes money. It’s about whether or not all of your investments, made possible through the ownership of that team, make money. Which is why the owners’ line about how broken the economics of the game are is so disingenuous.
I don’t doubt that some owners are actually losing money, and some owners’ investment strategies haven’t panned out. (Wang on Long Island hasn’t had as much luck getting a new arena as Katz in Edmonton.) But that players and fans should repeatedly pay for the unrealized strategies of various billionaires is asinine. The reason the Coyotes don’t have potential owners crawling all over them isn’t because there’s no appetite for hockey in Arizona. It’s because a state with an economy that runs on real estate sales has crashed and is near bankrupt. No one has any money to spend on anything, so real estate speculation has flatlined. As the economy recovers, look for more potential owners to start sniffing around these supposedly doomed outfits in non-traditional markets.
All of which to say that the owners of sports franchises are looking quite villainous lately. The Senators’ owner, Eugene Melnyk, is fairly mild in comparison – though he does have a tendency to make shitty, misleading statements about relocation right before tickets go on sale, or claim that his club is the second largest employer in Ottawa, which is ridiculous. But when we see the repeated manipulation of fan sentiment to get concession from the public purse, to drive down individual rights in the form of player arbitration (from guys who I would assume are staunch anti-state-interventionist Republicans to boot), and the plainly misleading reporting of franchise values, then I don’t know how anyone can be pro-owner in all of this mess.
Because hockey is hockey, but Star Trek TNG is Star Trek TNG
One tragic byproduct of this whole lockout—other than people losing their jobs and stuff—is that our web sphere (that’s a thing) has lost some serious momentum. James is killing it over on Twitter as usual (just over –>), but I don’t have anything to write about except some whiny articles about how I don’t like hockey anymore and how billionaires have billions of aires. I miss being enthusiastic, childlike, idiotic about unimportant entertainment.
So, as a new ongoing feature, I’d like to write about Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was just added to Canadian Netflix, as I watch all 177 episodes in order.
Now, for our American readers, you need to know first that Netflix in Canada stinks. It doesn’t have anything. While in Amurh-ica you have access to hours of quality programming (read: Golden Girls), in Canada Netflix is mostly state-sponsored shows about the joys and mishaps of agricultural life and also some SeaQuest 2032 (R.I.P. Jonanthan Brandis, King of Tiger Beat). For some reason, content rights have to be negotiated fiefdom-by-fiefdom. But Star Trek TNG was just added, and though I shudder (with pleasure) when I see the words “177 episodes” displayed, I only watched the first four episodes this week.
Episode One: Encounter at Far Point
The new series starts out ballsy by following the statement “To boldly go where no one has gone before” with an episode that basically asks “is all this exploring stuff even a good thing to be doing?” Within a few minutes of taking over the ship, Picard and company are confronted by Q, a near-omnipotent creature who appears in the guise of the various phases of human expansion and colonialism. Q then proceeds to put them on trial for the crimes of humanity. You could have ended the entire series right here, with Picard admitting that exploring for exploring’s sake is sort of dangerous and meddling and stupid, that the human race is a virus, and then the screen could go black and giant middle finger could appear. This might be the series’ most meta, first-year-lit student moment. It’s either awesome or stupid, depending on how you look at it.
We also get to see a version of Picard that is irresponsible and dickish. He hates children; he risks an emergency saucer separation at warp 9.8; he makes Riker re-dock the ship manually for no reason; and he’s kind of brattish when standing up to Q, causing the god-like being to repeatedly injure his crew. Kind of awesome, again, for the debut episode to be like, “You want more Kirk? Guess what: Captain Kirk was an asshole. He lost a crew member every single episode. He was a terrible captain.” Then they find a planet where a human is mercilessly abusing a giant space jelly fish, basically admitting that humanity isn’t that much better in the future than it is now.
Oh, also: Shit is dark. Someone actually gets shot with a machine gun in this episode. I think this might be the darkest episode until the one where Tasha Yar has to fight someone with a spikey glove in a cage of death. You know the one. I think it’s an episode or two from now.
Counselor Troi is clearly intended to be this show’s Jonathan Brandis.
Episode Two: The Naked Now
Okay, this is incredible: in only their SECOND EVER EPISODE a space virus makes everyone act drunk and screw each other. That’s not an exaggeration. The Enterprise stumbles across a ship where the crew immediately demands HOT MEN and then proceeds to blow themselves out of an airlock. I’ve been drunk before, even stupidly so, but I’ve raaaaaaarely wanted to kill myself and everyone around me because of it. I can’t speak for my friend Tom, Who Lights Camp Fires with Gasoline. He might be space virus drunk. Also, someone showers in their clothes. That’s just crazy.
There’s a weirdly puritanical subtext to this whole thing, sort of like Reefer Madness. Do you want to get drunk kids? Just know that if you do, you might kill everyone.
So, the Enterprise crew, including, somehow, Data, get infected with this thing, and everybody, including Data but excepting Jordie (Geordie?), gets laid. Wesley Crusher, being a boy, has no interest in being laid, but uses his boy genius to steal the ship. A meteorite is hurtling towards the ship (the odds of a relatively small rock in space arcing toward a relatively small ship, thermodynamically speaking, are astronomically tiny, but whatevs) and Riker, having less than a minute to live, decides to narrate something in his space journal about the situation. Also, the most advanced ship in the history of the race stops working if you take out a bunch of giant microchips.
Episode Three: Code of Honor
Otherwise known as the most racist episode of Star Trek TNG ever, the crew visits a planet of Africans and makes a series of condescending remarks about how they, the largely white crew, used to be just like them, the Africans. Meaning materialistic, venal, and sexist. Surprisingly, Worf–from the race of Klingons that usually stand in for anachronistic and vaguely ethnic stereotypes–doesn’t even get a line to speak. Seems to reaffirm that you only need as many Others as you need antagonists for your space operas. Anyway, Tasha Yar fights another woman to the death in a laser cage, and everyone moves on to other, hopefully less racist episodes.
We also discover why Star Trek TNG took so long to get to Canadian Netflix: at one point Data calls French an outdated language. Racists AND monologuist. Not exactly the franchise’s brightest moment.
Episode Four: The Last Outpost
Ferengis (sp?) shut down the Enterprise, making them totally vulnerable. Picard uses the opportunity to tell Data about the history of human flags. The bad guys stole a T-9 Energy Converter from Gamma Tari 4. This is relevant.
Shortly after I’m pretty sure Picard says “merde.” Jordie says, “Come back fighting, woo wee!” then gives a thumbs up. Brilliant.
For the rest of the episode everyone is pretty much useless at their jobs and the ship barely works. Picard seems completely insane, and Riker looks at him like he knows it. Data gets his fingers stuck. The future is a terrible place full of imbeciles.
Should, and can, Bettman go?
With this first glitter of optimism we’ve received in weeks—generated, perhaps tellingly, by meetings where the NHL Commissioner and NHLPA head were both absent—I’ve found myself thinking about the prospect of seeing hockey this year. Up until today I’d just about given up on that notion. Goes to show how even the cynical like me can be bent by a mildly positive though largely ambiguous headline.
It also speaks to how little we fans may expect from either side in terms of PR, and how little we received. I’ve never felt like either side was invested in the feelings of the fans, except to the degree they could manipulate fan sentiment as leverage in their negotiations. Such is the magnifying effect of the 24 hour news cycle. What is a group of rich people fighting over how much richer one side gets to be than the other turns into the same group of rich people biting the hand that feeds them. Given how badly this thing has been cocked up, I can’t help but think some kind of overture has to be made to the fans to get them back on side; I’ve never heard people sound as cynical as they have these past two months.
Which makes the following question both a bit compelling and also completely ludicrous: is the best thing the league can do to make amends with the fans to axe Bettman?
It would be succumbing to an unfair stereotype—Bettman answers to the owners, after all. But consider that 1) Bettman is a convenient stand-in for the greediness of the owners and the brokenness of this negotiation process; 2) There are many skilled, cut-throat former lawyers who could play the role of facilitator and administrator, and 3) maybe it’s healthy to have a little bit of turnover at the top, especially when your guy has been in his role for almost 20 years. This track record of lockouts is not synonymous with Bettman’s track record. For better or for worse, Bettman is the brand.
How many more years do you want this guy booed every time he steps up to a microphone, be it at the draft or handing out the Stanley Cup? This is supposed to be the face of ownership, the powerful mask of the league itself. Fair or not, Bettman’s as divisive a figure as you’ll find in professional sports, and after yet another lockout I can’t imagine there aren’t enough owners in that board room to do the ultimate shanking in blaming this whole fiasco on him. They could wash their hands of the whole situation and get back to the business of making money.
Unlikely to happen, of course, as Bettman has created the ultimate insiders’ club. And there’s nothing more appealing to the rich white man who has everything than membership in an exclusive club. He’s ingrained himself with the league’s identity. But we might be starting to see the beginning of a fan backlash that could be counteracted by the appearance, if certainly not the reality, of regime change.
Forbes list foregrounds the not-so-hidden benefits of franchise ownership
I was trying to find an image for this post, but figured you don’t want to see another photograph of Gary Bettman making a turgid face as he strains to offer another non-answer at a press scrum…
I don’t know what it says about me that Forbes puts out some of my favorite hockey analysis, but they’ve done it again with their annual report on the value of hockey franchises. In it, they illustrate that the media’s focus on the operational losses of franchise ownership–which are themselves specious claims for owners who also own their arenas–are nothing more than the short-term price one pays for what can be staggeringly lucrative mid-term investments.
We mortals are expected to get by on the sort of paltry returns available to people playing with mere hundreds or thousands of dollars. What Forbes’ list indicates is that if you can afford to sink $200MM into a franchise, you’ll probably get the kind of increases in overall value, year over year, that make losing $5MM a year in the short term more than palatable. (Presuming you’ve got it to lose after buying the thing, admittedly.)
I won’t focus on Toronto, where all sense and logic are destroyed in the void of abject homerism. Or on New York, where they have a license to print money. ($74MM in cool cash year-over-year, zero debt.) But Melnyk’s looking at a nice little $100MM return on his $120MM investment in the Sens about a decade ago. Double your value in 10 years? Anyone who even bothers to look at their RRSPs will tell you that’s a pretty good deal.
Ottawa’s operating income was probably slim to nothing – $14.5MM before taxes, etc. But between all of the undeclared revenues that are made possibly through owning a hockey team – non-hockey events at ScotiaBank Place, television revenues, merchandise – in addition to the return when Melnyk gets around to selling the team, even a small market team like Ottawa, presents an enviable investment.
Maybe more suprising is how much debt Ottawa is carrying. At 59% of value, Ottawa is eighth overall is debt load, among the likes of the Islanders, Panthers, Hurricanes and Stars. They’re worse off than Nashville and St. Louis. This seems strange since Melnyk’s had a decade to pay off that arena. This may speak to his financial woes at Biovail. He has a profitable franchise. He just isn’t paying down his principle fast enough to be able to enjoy it.
More surprising still is that despite all this debt he’s carrying, Melnyk doesn’t seem to be a hardliner in this lockout situation. Sitting right there with him, in 10th, are the Washington Capitals, and their owner Ted Leonsis has long been suspected of being a hawk in all of this. Though he’s got a few looooooong term deals, and he might be feeling buyer’s remorse, in many ways the Caps are better off than the Sens financially.
Over on Puck Daddy they’re talking about the gap between rich and poor teams, but I don’t know if that’s really the point. Teams, even the exceedingly poor ones, can claim to be losing money operationally, but the overall value of the franchises don’t go down at the rate that most franchises go up. Only three franchises went down in value last year – St. Louis, Columbus, and Carolina. Two remained neutral – Tampa and Phoenix. (That’s right, Phoenix did not lose overall sale value despite losing more money operationally than any other this season.) And everyone else experienced at least marginal growth. The middle of the pack franchises increased in value between 4% and 11%, which ain’t a bad return in one year for your $150MM-$300MM investment. Especially considering, you know, you get to own a hockey team on top of all that.
Welcome To Your Karlsson Years 