ACC Country

I know, I know, it’s mid-June, the Stanley Cup has been awarded, and we’re supposed to be talking about baseball or the GREATEST NBA FINALS OF ALL TIME KOBE IS JORDAN MVPMVPMVP GARNETT IS POSSESSED PAUL TRUTH PIERCE SASHA RANDEJO VUMAVALABITCH or whatever the hell his name is. (Sidenote: I mentioned this elsewhere, but it bears repeating… Pierce getting carried off the court in game 1 was reminiscent of Ricky Baker getting mowed down in Boyz In The Hood and Ice Cube and the gang carrying his dead body back to his house, only if Ricky had then hopped of the couch, brushed his shoulder off, and went about his business like nothing had happened.)

I digress… I was presented a scenario on the Carolina Hurricanes message board about reducing the size of the NHL, and before I knew it, I was responding with a Lopez-esque novel. I figured it contained enough substance to post here for your literary consumption. The link to the article that set me off is here.

Where do I start….?

My opinion: six teams need to be axed – cutting the league to 24 to undilute the current product. This does two things: 1) the talent pool available per team immediately increases, which in turn means better hockey for everyone, which in turn means a better product to sell. 2) the pool of shared revenue increases because you’re no longer sharing with six other teams.

Which six it would be, I’m not quite sure, but I presume they would be Florida, Atlanta, Phoenix, Nashville, Columbus… and someone else. I think those five would be a given, and one could make arguments for any of the following teams to be the sixth:

Chicago: the Hawks have been a joke for years now, frequently being outdrawn by their minor league club, but they have a good young nucleus there now and things may turn around in the Windy City. Third largest U.S. market, and the league doesn’t want to lose its presence there. Oh, and they’re an Original Six team – which still means something for reasons beyond me. Will never happen.

St. Louis: When was the last time the Blues were relevant? When Gretzky had his cup of coffee there in ‘97? Sure, they were in the playoffs for several years consecutively after that, but they never did anything. 1, 8, 11, 10, 28, 30, and 24. Those are the Blues’ attendance rankings since 2001. The lockout DESTROYED the market, and it’s not like the Rams are drawing away fans because they haven’t been great the last 3 years either, the Cards barely overlap with the hockey schedule, and there’s no NBA team. So where did everyone go? However, there’s arguably enough tradition in St. Louie to make a case for keeping the team there.

Carolina: Yeah, I said it. 28, 24, 21, 29, 24, 18, 19. Practically bottom third of the league in attendance the entire decade, but there is a visible bump since the Cup victory. The organization is very smart with the product – just needs to get a few more butts in the seats on a regular basis. You could argue that the Canes are proof hockey can work in the South. (The state of Florida is not “the South,” so Tampa doesn’t count.) I think the league would want to keep the team in Raleigh to maintain somewhat of a Southern presence, especially since we’re hypothetically whacking Atlanta and Nashville.

If we’re keeping Carolina, St. Louis, and Chicago… then who are we eliminating? The Islanders.

Sure, you got Mike Bossy and the dynasty of the early 80’s – which will never be repeated, by the way – but do the Islanders serve a real purpose in today’s NHL? They’ve been bottom third in attendance since 2000 (bottom 5 since the lockout) and the New York market is over-saturated as it is with the Rangers and Devils. Nassau is a dump – I know of no plans to renovate or rebuild anytime soon. Is there any real need to maintain a presence on Long Island? No. In my master plan, they’re getting the ax.

Okay, so we’ve established the fact that we are eliminating teams from Atlanta, Columbus, Miami, Nashville, Phoenix, and Long Island. However, I would presume that by contracting these clubs – and eliminating 120 jobs in the process – the NHLPA is going to pitch a fit, and rightfully so. That leaves the league with two alternatives:

1) Renegotiate the CBA – which under our hypothetical plan here would almost assuredly HAVE to happen – to allow the players union a significantly larger cut in total revenues. The league may have to make some other concessions, as well. The question here (which I don’t know the answer to) is how much more revenue is available to share by cutting six teams. The numbers HAVE to work for both sides – both the league and the players need to be receiving more bottom line or this will never happen.

If the numbers work out, you contract the six clubs, hold a Contraction Draft to allow the remaining teams to select players from the axed teams. This would be incredibly fun, as guys like Kovalchuk, Nash, Jokinen, etc would all be on the market, so long as the drafting team assumes their existing contracts (which could of course be renegotiated). Then you redraft division lines (we’ve eliminated three teams from each conference – so East/West remains the same) to make four six team divisions. Sound familiar? Patrick Division, Adams Division, Norris Division, Smythe Division. From there, I’d re-format the playoffs. Give all division winners a bye, have the 2nd and 3rd place teams in each division square off in the first round for the right to play the division winner. THIS is what made the great rivalries back in the day – battling it out in the playoffs, not 8 regular season games. Now you have 12 teams (3 from each division) in the playoffs, which is slightly better than having greater than 50% of the league make it as it is now, and the playoffs have a little more kick to them, making the regular season mean a little more as the division winners get to rest while their conference semifinal opponents beat up on each other in a brutal seven game series. [/ramble]

2) If the CBA can’t be successfully renegotiated, you move the teams. You think we can’t find six cities more suited for the NHL than these?? As mentioned in the article… Hamilton, Winnipeg, Quebec City, Seattle, HARTFORD, and maybe I’m crazy, but I think hockey in Salt Lake would work better than hockey in Kansas City. That would leave conference affiliations intact, and those markets are gonna pull more revenue than the existing ones, so it’s still more cash for the league. Maybe not as much, but it’s still better.