Wake up at 1 AM to watch the opening game. Get treated to at least half an hour of mindless blabber from the bruins until they finally get their banner under the roof. Why couldn't they have done this crap from 0:30 until 1, and not delay the game for half an hour?
I just finished playing some amateur hockey at my local ice rink. I did decent for not skating or playing for three months, being able to handle the puck well along with shooting it in the general direction of the goal several times. However, the tips of my toes hurt like all hell right now.
Flyers trolled the Lightning's 0-4-1 defensive system yesterday by ...not attacking: This happened the entire first period, on at least four different occasions in which the Lightning refused to forecheck for at least 30 seconds at a time. Tampa's been using the system on and off ever since Guy Boucher took the head coaching job at the beginning of last season. So the Flyers thought "if the opponent doesn't want to play hockey, why should we"?
Flyers lost in OT, in part because of some quite bad calls made by the officials. It's still a moral victory because the Flyers demonstrated that there are still teams that play The Trap despite the NHL's efforts to get rid of that strategy, and that it is a complete and utter fucking disgrace to the sport. It's also made quite the stirr because this was on national TV.
I actually like this a lot. Sure, it doesn't make for anything interesting to watch since there is no action, but it's great game-wise. It shows that people are willing to try out new strategies in an attempt to win the game. While I really want to see someone get hit, this is actually kind of exciting game-wise.
Something, something, something, hockey movie, Sean William Scott hitting people a bunc, Alison pill likes hockey players, tagline amuses me, sounds like a personal motto.
The NHL's board of governors has approved some drastic realignment starting with next season. Gone is the two conference-six division model. They now have 4 conferences with an uneven number of teams:
Conf 1: Anaheim, Los Angeles, San Jose, Colorado, Phoenix, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton Conf 2: Winnipeg, Minnesota, Detroit, Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Nashville, St. Louis Conf 3: Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Buffalo, Boston, Tampa Bay, Florida Conf 4: Carolina, Washington, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New Jersey, Islanders, Rangers
Regular season schedule is that teams from different conferences will play each other twice, once home and once away, and the rest is intra-conference play. If your team is in a conference with seven teams, your team plays every other team in that conference six times. In eight-team conferences your team will play every other team in the conference five or six times, with a rotating schedule so it evens out after a couple of years.
Playoffs will be intra-conference 1 vs. 4 and 2 vs. 3, with the winners of those series playing each others. How the final four will be seeded has not been determined yet but will in the spring by the General Managers. Names for these conferences have also not been decided yet, but a lot of people are rooting to go back to Norris, Smythe, Patrick, and Adams.
TL;DR version: The Patrick Division is back, and there will be hell to pay.
My only complaint is that the top 4 in each make the playoffs. That's more than half the teams. Should be top two. Make the regular season matter more.
That would probably cut severely into revenue. Playoffs, no matter what market, are almost always sold out whereas regular season games may not. See Phoenix. In essence, if you cut the entire first round of the playoffs, you cut somewhere 32-56 sold out games. Not to mention that merchandise also rises when a team queues for and appears in the playoffs.
That would probably cut severely into revenue. Playoffs, no matter what market, are almost always sold out whereas regular season games may not. See Phoenix. In essence, if you cut the entire first round of the playoffs, you cut somewhere 32-56 sold out games. Not to mention that merchandise also rises when a team queues for and appears in the playoffs.
If you want the reward, then win the games. Earn it.
I'm not talking about the a team alone, but about the NHL in general. Revenuesharing, TV deals, and the like. Cutting the first round of the playoffs would be an economic shot in the foot, with an orbital laser cannon.
I'm not talking about the a team alone, but about the NHL in general. Revenuesharing, TV deals, and the like. Cutting the first round of the playoffs would be an economic shot in the foot, with an orbital laser cannon.
In the immediate and short term, sure. In the long term, I think you actually make more money with less games.
Look at baseball, which has a zillion games. People don't even watch every game for their own team, let alone games of other teams. Compare that to the NFL. There are so few games that each game matters a fuckton. People will watch regular season football games of teams across the country just because each game matters so much.
You'll have less games, but you'll have way more viewers per game. Your sport will be on national television and not on some regional cable network. Regular season games will matter more, so maybe you can actually sell out all season instead of just playoffs. The finals will actually be in winter when people still care about hockey, and not in June after baseball is well underway. Also, if we contracted some of these crap teams we could probably have four six-team conferences instead of two 7s and two 8s.
This is the primary reason why despite the fact that I like hockey the most of all sports, I watch a lot more football than hockey. It's not on cable. Each game actually matters a lot. With hockey I can't even see the game without cable, and I'll just have the scores sent to my phone.
Scott, you realize that actually good teams in certain markets do come close to selling out every regular season game? The jump in attendance compared to regular season was about small market teams. However, that doesn't change the fact that by cutting the first round of the playoffs you are cutting almost guaranteed sellouts regardless of whether big market or small market teams.
You've also now moved the goalposts and went away from talking about cutting playoff games to cutting regular season games. Fine. The problem is that the NFL isn't playing one game per week to artificially increase viewership. Hell, they could easily go and increase their season to 20-22 games per team without losing any viewership whatsoever. However, the sport is too physically demanding for that to go ahead, and the players union would revolt.
I'd also call it quite naive that just cutting down on the games played would increase the viewership on the rest of the games. How many games do you plan to cut? How about 20 games per team. That's a quarter of the NHL season. Do you really think people will tune in more to each individual game because of that? When it's still competing with 60 other games? Where do you think is the sweetspot that makes every game "matter", or matter more than they do now from a purely economic standpoint. Not to mention that you are cutting ticket sales and advertising for every game you cut in the process.
Yeah, there's a couple of crap teams that have neither athletic nor economic success, but tossing them out will increase the situation only so much. Yeah, distillation is good, but at some point you will end up leaving money on the table and by cutting down games you will much quicker hit the spot where you will keep people from attending games even though they want to in big markets than you will increase the attendance and viewership in small markets.
Oh, and I watch about 60 hockey games a year, and I don't even live in the U.S. Availability is hardly an argument. The thing is available to you. It's just that you are too lazy or too cheap to get it.
Comments
Madison Square Garden
New York, NY
Wed, Mar 21, 2012 07:30 PM
I think I'm going. Internet pre-sale starts TOMORROW. ^____^
SUCK MY PUCK CHAOS
Well, at least I have another goal of the year candidate by Giroux to give me some smiles.
This is the other, for those keeping score at home. And it's only 6 games into the season.
Yikes. Man, am I glad I picked up Khabibulin.
This happened the entire first period, on at least four different occasions in which the Lightning refused to forecheck for at least 30 seconds at a time. Tampa's been using the system on and off ever since Guy Boucher took the head coaching job at the beginning of last season. So the Flyers thought "if the opponent doesn't want to play hockey, why should we"?
Flyers lost in OT, in part because of some quite bad calls made by the officials. It's still a moral victory because the Flyers demonstrated that there are still teams that play The Trap despite the NHL's efforts to get rid of that strategy, and that it is a complete and utter fucking disgrace to the sport. It's also made quite the stirr because this was on national TV.
This series is going to real good.
Conf 1: Anaheim, Los Angeles, San Jose, Colorado, Phoenix, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton
Conf 2: Winnipeg, Minnesota, Detroit, Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Nashville, St. Louis
Conf 3: Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Buffalo, Boston, Tampa Bay, Florida
Conf 4: Carolina, Washington, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New Jersey, Islanders, Rangers
Regular season schedule is that teams from different conferences will play each other twice, once home and once away, and the rest is intra-conference play. If your team is in a conference with seven teams, your team plays every other team in that conference six times. In eight-team conferences your team will play every other team in the conference five or six times, with a rotating schedule so it evens out after a couple of years.
Playoffs will be intra-conference 1 vs. 4 and 2 vs. 3, with the winners of those series playing each others. How the final four will be seeded has not been determined yet but will in the spring by the General Managers. Names for these conferences have also not been decided yet, but a lot of people are rooting to go back to Norris, Smythe, Patrick, and Adams.
TL;DR version: The Patrick Division is back, and there will be hell to pay.
Also, it's a map!
Look at baseball, which has a zillion games. People don't even watch every game for their own team, let alone games of other teams. Compare that to the NFL. There are so few games that each game matters a fuckton. People will watch regular season football games of teams across the country just because each game matters so much.
You'll have less games, but you'll have way more viewers per game. Your sport will be on national television and not on some regional cable network. Regular season games will matter more, so maybe you can actually sell out all season instead of just playoffs. The finals will actually be in winter when people still care about hockey, and not in June after baseball is well underway. Also, if we contracted some of these crap teams we could probably have four six-team conferences instead of two 7s and two 8s.
This is the primary reason why despite the fact that I like hockey the most of all sports, I watch a lot more football than hockey. It's not on cable. Each game actually matters a lot. With hockey I can't even see the game without cable, and I'll just have the scores sent to my phone.
You've also now moved the goalposts and went away from talking about cutting playoff games to cutting regular season games. Fine. The problem is that the NFL isn't playing one game per week to artificially increase viewership. Hell, they could easily go and increase their season to 20-22 games per team without losing any viewership whatsoever. However, the sport is too physically demanding for that to go ahead, and the players union would revolt.
I'd also call it quite naive that just cutting down on the games played would increase the viewership on the rest of the games. How many games do you plan to cut? How about 20 games per team. That's a quarter of the NHL season. Do you really think people will tune in more to each individual game because of that? When it's still competing with 60 other games? Where do you think is the sweetspot that makes every game "matter", or matter more than they do now from a purely economic standpoint. Not to mention that you are cutting ticket sales and advertising for every game you cut in the process.
Yeah, there's a couple of crap teams that have neither athletic nor economic success, but tossing them out will increase the situation only so much. Yeah, distillation is good, but at some point you will end up leaving money on the table and by cutting down games you will much quicker hit the spot where you will keep people from attending games even though they want to in big markets than you will increase the attendance and viewership in small markets.
Oh, and I watch about 60 hockey games a year, and I don't even live in the U.S. Availability is hardly an argument. The thing is available to you. It's just that you are too lazy or too cheap to get it.