I think that BECAUSE the NHL players WANT to work, they should keep their benefits.

It's like denying the CAW benefits because, even though they WANT to work, they are not willing to accept a 24% pay cut even though the industry is profitable. Everyone who is willing and able to work has the right to benefits.

Saying "oh the NHLers made $Xmillion last year and can afford open heart surgery for their child" is a cop out and not a fair argument in a labour dispute.

How do you come to that conclusion? Yes, they could charge close to the same ticket prices in STL and sell it out imo. The eastern cities do not have some sort of strangehold on the concept of lots of people being excited about the Winter Classic.

Demand would be high. As you may have noticed, the Winter Classic is kind of a big thing even outside the cities playing in the game.

Oh yeah, almost forgot...STL sold out their Frozen Four event in 2007. Almost 20k each session. Without a single team terribly close to them. 2007 was Michigan State, Boston College, North Dakota and Maine. Sure, the participating schools traveled some fans for this. But these things mostly tend to depend on locals to support the event. It went over extremely well and was very popular there and they tried to get it again for 2013 and 2014 although were passed over by PIT and PHI.

I think tix were $100 per session for that. Not exactly Winter Classic prices. But seriously, they can do fine. It's not like the economy in Buffalo is thriving or they have a ton of people there. And they obviously went crazy for it. So would STL.

St. Louis was apparently 24th in average ticket prices, and I would be very surprised if they had more season ticket holders than Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington, NYR, et al. I don't know what the Rangers did this time around, but as I'm sure you know, the Flyers made it mandatory to purchase tickets to the Alumni game, WC, and Phantoms game all-in-one. For some, probably many, we're talking about contributing $1000+ in guaranteed revenue without breaking a sweat. You really think they can match that in St. Louis?

The only team I can think of that would make sense for the Blues to play is Chicago. This would help drive demand a bit, but I have a hard time believing the St. Louis side would come close to matching the revenue of any of the aforementioned clubs. And as someone else mentioned, there's no way NBC is going to be able to charge what they want for advertising in a St. Louis/x game vs. a game between two markets where there's more demand and more nationwide appeal. Could it happen under the right circumstances? Sure. I just have a hard time believing that will be any time soon.

Any discussion involving ticket sales and revenue is nulled by the fact that the NHL would be most profitable if you had 10 teams in Toronto, 10 teams in Montreal, and 1 team in all the other major Canadian cities.

The NHL isn't out to make profit and the fact that there aren't 10 teams in Toronto proves this. The NHL is out to masquerade around as a "major professional sports league" so the big wigs like Bettman can feel important.

cwice - And those markets could have probably filled stadiums twice as large...just like Detroit will fill a 110k seat stadium.

I would understand the argument SOME if I was trying to claim that Nashville or Tampa would do super-great with an outdoor classic. But I'm talking about a pretty decent hockey market like STL here.

If STL had a 100k seat stadium you would say that's more people than they can possibly get there. If they only have a 40k seat stadium) which is the case then you say they have to charge too much for the tix.

I'm not saying the NHL is going to run over there because STL is not as attractive a team for them and NBC as a lot of other teams. But I am saying the event would do totally fine there. I'm really surprised at the number of people thinking it would be a big struggle to pull it off there.

You guys are acting as though PIT and PHI level fan-dom are necessary in order to pull it off. Ummm, why? It's not like they barely made it or struggled to pull it off or anything. It was easy. Fan enthusiasm for the event and demand for tickets was crazy. Philly had to LIMIT things. They had OVERWHELMING demand. They could have sold twice as many tickets at the same prices if they had the space for everyone. Perhaps three times.

But somehow STL won't be able to just fill a stadium? For the Winter Classic? Really?

Also, I don't think $1000 for the Winter Classic was very common except for scalpers. Upwards of $300 for the Winter Classic game itself. $100 (at most) for alumni game and $50 (at most) for AHL game I believe is what it was.

Read just now on google of one Philly fan who was miffed at spending $508 total for TWO tickets to each of the three games. Winter Classic for him was $149 each. Alumni game was $72 each, AHL game was $33 each.

Does the one in Edmonton not count any more?

They all require insurance of their NHL contracts to play here either from their pocket or from their club here. Kaberle, Voracek, Pavelec and others havent found a club for this reason yet, Jagr and Plekanec are playing for free because of this

And apparently NHL is trying to screw them with transfercards, they refused to sign Yakupov's and he missed several Nizhnekamsk matches

http://espn.go.com/nhl/story/_/id/83...m-last-lockout
Mike Modano saying the lockout is not worth your salaries.

It's all about the....

Ovechkin looks SLIM

Your argument seems to be based on your premise that players "want" to play. However, they don't want to play bad enough to come to an agreement.

Benefits are simply a portion of a player remuneration. It is not a right. If you are no longer working for a company, it would be stupid for that company to continue to give you remuneration.

If they are concerned about health care costs, they can do what millions of Americans do and buy insurance.

There's more to it than this. What about corporations that drive ticket prices up? How many times have we seen "sell-outs" on TV and there are probably 30% open seats? The corporate season ticket holders in some markets **** over the real fans who can't afford to go to games. So saying that high attendance revenues isn't a perfect indicator either.

It's a rare market where corporations buy tickets but fans don't. Corporations buy the ticket because ostensibly it's a desirable place to go - in markets where hockey isn't strong, this isn't true.

The point is that there is more than just gate revenues that show whether or not a certain place is defined as a good hockey market.

I would like to compare merchandise in each market, combined with ticket purchases and gate revenues to determine what a good hockey market is.

Steve - All of that PLUS TV ratings which I think have to be factored in as well.

By the merchandise metric though, the Hartford Whalers are still an awesome hockey market fwiw. And I'm here to tell you that it is generally pretty terrible.

I am going to repeat myself - part of the issue with smaller markets is that those corporate tickets don't exist on the same level there. Corporate tickets are only worth purchasing for corporations if there is deemed to be some value to schmoozing clients with them - there's just not much of that where hockey hasn't caught on.

This is...ummm....different.

OHL is implementing a rule wherein a player with his 11th fighting major of the season receives an automatic 2-game suspension. They are cracking down on the one-dimensional goon type players who do little more than fight.

NHL is watching closely to see how well the whole thing works.

http://espn.go.com/blog/nhl/post/_/i...hl-is-watching

That one was just announced recently.

The other interesting "test" was announced a few months ago, the AHL is doing some new icing rule at request of the NHL. Implementing it for first month to see how it goes at which time the decision whether or not to continue with the rule will be considered by the league.

The rule states that in event of potential icing violation, the defenseman wins the race if he reaches the end-zone face-off dots (line across) before attacking player AND provided the puck has already crossed the goal-line by that point.

I have seen so many great hustle plays where the forward got past the D-man to negate the icing. Not at all thrilled with this rule. Hope it is discontinued after a month. Maybe I'll change my mind once I see it in action though.

Obviously. Except that hockey has decently "caught on" in St. Louis and to say otherwise is silly. Just look at their TV ratings. Pretty good fan-base.

OHL rule is so lol I couldn't believe it. Upon the player's 15th fight, the team is issued a $1,000 fine! Heaven forfend! That'll teach those teams. The players are going to do what's expected of them from their coaches and management, and for players without a lot of talent, that's going to be fight.

Hybrid icing >> standard icing, hope it catches on in the NHL. Sure, we will miss out on 1% of the icings where there is a great play to negate it, but we will also miss out on the injuries that often result from trying for those great plays.

I have never argued otherwise. I have argued that St. Louis is not a very good market even though there are lots of hockey fans there.

$1000 isn't insignificant to an CHL junior team, imo.

i know the OHL isn't huge business, but they pay their players nothing and i figured they did pretty well at the gate. aren't most of the teams owned by ex-NHLers? $1,000 seems rather paltry - $10,000 seems like an actual deterrent.

Figures the one season hed come into camp in shape and the NHL locks em out. Now he's a lock to gain 30 lbs. On another note, Corey Pronman released his top 100 prospects list today. It makes me want to vomit seeing Teravainen, Grigorenko, Girgensons rated so highly, while Tom Wilson is nowhere to be found. Who? Exactly.

and the max fine for players in the last CBA was $2500, which is prob even less of a deterrent for anything, so what?

as far as the OHL thing goes, adding suspensions and fines for fighting will probably do something. wanna check it out and get back to us in a year?

Why wait when one can gasbag now?