[quote=“Nikuk,post:20,topic:30422"”]
It boils down to generating NEW blood. Look at the Quakers… 
[/quote]
Not sure what quakers have to do with hockey 
[quote=“RobHimself,post:21,topic:30422"”]
Not sure what quakers have to do with hockey
-snip-
[/quote]
Wasn’t it the quakers that didn’t believe in propagation by sex? Therefore they relied on furthuring their religion & lifestyle simply by recruitment…
…and they did not do so well.
you can’t make the game somthing its not… so what, do you think to get better ratings they should make the nets 2 times as big, and let goons go around killing everyone to make it more “exciting” ?
like i said before, anaheim is not going to pull a national audience. 1. they are west coast, east coast viewers can give 2 shits about them 2. they aren’t a hockey city
then you have ottawa, a canadian team with viewers in CANADA who aren’t going to watch a game televised on nbc.
Wow I cant believe people think hockey is failing because of the announcers. To the general fan (ie: not very intelligent) they don’t realize Vs and NBC announcers blow, because those fans don’t really understand hockey well enough to realize the announcers understand the game about as much as they do.
And the Sabres right now are a terrible example to use, we are a TINY market on the North American scale as a whole, and are only showing so much support because the team is doing well.
That editorial posted above highlights the reasons hockey is failing… Gary Betman. It’s no conspiracy or secret, he is single handily bringing down the NHL because he knows nothing about hockey. How can you take a guy who only knows the NBA (and not even that well to being with) and throw him in as the commissioner of a new sport he’s clueless about and expect it to work?!? Don’t get me wrong, its the board fault just as much as Betman’s, they should have realized this and have had many chances to fix their mistake and get rid of him, but for god knows why still keep him. The NHL will continue to suffer while under Betman’s control. You want to fix the NHL,
step 1, fire Gary Betman
step 2, fire Collin Campbell
step 3, hire a commission who actually has a brain
step 4, replace Campbell with someone who actually has a set of balls to end these rampant cheap shot hits before someone else gets seriously injured, paralyzed, or worse.
step 5, put Brett Hull in a barrel and throw him over Niagara Falls (OK, this one is just for me really :), I just really hate that retard)
[quote=“Adictd2b00st,post:23,topic:30422"”]
you can’t make the game somthing its not… so what, do you think to get better ratings they should make the nets 2 times as big, and let goons go around killing everyone to make it more “exciting” ?
[/quote]
Fuck no. The game doesn’t need to be changed. I think that shortening it to series of five games MIGHT be a good idea. Shortening the season… eh :tif:
I love the current game style & rules.
My biggest gripe with procedure is teh schedule. American (non “real fans”) that are on the fence in the first place are lazy fans. Give them exciting match ups - some teams don’t come into town but once every three years damned near.
If you give lazy fans a rivalry to get excited about, they will tend to be more involved. Look at any other sport for case examples. But when a ‘rival’ team plays Our team 8 times in 82 games… meh
like i said before, anaheim is not going to pull a national audience. 1. they are west coast, east coast viewers can give 2 shits about them 2. they aren’t a hockey city
then you have ottawa, a canadian team with viewers in CANADA who aren’t going to watch a game televised on nbc.
I completely agree… and that is the problem.
To further your point: Real fans watch curling ALL THE TIME. The local ratings are prolly great… but how often do the other 260 million people in the USA hear about it? Buy memoribilia? Watch the commercials being shown in between stones…?
If the league (overall) isn’t making money then we will see the bad old days of hockey. There are not enough of Your ‘real fans’ around to carry the NHL on their backs.
Look at Golisano: His own words were “…if we spend to the salary cap, the team would have to make a deep playoff run just to break even.”
Teams need more revenue. Advertising revenue > jerseys & tickets & bobbleheads combined. Television advertising revenue > radio X alot.
$0.02
To be clear:
[quote=“mike125k,post:24,topic:30422"”]
Wow I cant believe people think hockey is failing because of the announcers.
[/quote]
I think that the announcers have less then 1% role in this.
Bettman on the other hand would be the primary contributor.
[quote=“Nikuk,post:26,topic:30422"”]
To be clear: I think that the announcers have less then 1% role in this.
Bettman on the other hand would be the primary contributor.
[/quote]
that was my entire post, did you even read it?
i don’t think the finals should be shortened, but maybe make the first 2 rounds a best of 5 or somthing MIGHT work, but a 7 game series is thrilling to me its a shame that fair weather fans don’t see that. as far as regular season scheduling goes, i think it should go back to everyone playing eachother atleast once
[quote=“mike125k,post:27,topic:30422"”]
did you even read it?
[/quote]
obviously you were not able to comprehend my entire post… let me break it down:
- You (among others) implied that this thread is about hockey falling due to commentators
- You then went on to state that this thread should be about bettman and crew.
- I then clarified that this thread is not about commentators, but rather IT IS league management.Now do you think that I read your post?
Major league sports are boring.
I watch the Sabres but I rarely ever watch any other major league games.
Everything has a life cycle and major league sports are heading to the retirement home.
I am not saying they are done yet but, I think $100,000,000 contracts are killing the sports too.
Unions can fuck anything up if you give them enough time.
[quote=“Adictd2b00st,post:28,topic:30422"”]
i don’t think the finals should be shortened, but maybe make the first 2 rounds a best of 5 or somthing MIGHT work, but a 7 game series is thrilling to me its a shame that fair weather fans don’t see that.
[/quote]
Agreed… i dont like the idea, but i think it makes a good point, as far as seasonal interest. Fairweather fans pay the bills too.
as far as regular season scheduling goes, i think it should go back to everyone playing eachother atleast once
Fucking :word:
I don’t remember the details, but there was a sports news article some months ago… it bitched about how the “new faces” of hockey (the young superstars to be) will not even play against each for in the next 140+ regular season games. Thats ridic.
Imagine The Colts & the Patriots not have a regular season game for nearly two full seasons.
[quote=“AWDrifter,post:30,topic:30422"”]
Major league sports are boring.
I watch the Sabres but I rarely ever watch any other major league games.
Everything has a life cycle and major league sports are heading to the retirement home.
[/quote]
Ehhh, yes & no. Now, I’m not as ‘experienced’ as you AWD, but i think its more of a regeneration cycle, vs. a mere rise and fall. I hear baseball is coming back :mamoru:
I am not saying they are done yet but, I think $100,000,000 contracts are killing the sports too.
Unions can fuck anything up if you give them enough time.
ugh… god yes. i think that is beyond help tho.
Don’t get me wrong… best of 7 is real exciting and most likely to result in the better team advancing since lucky bounces don’t happen every night. My problem with it is the Stanley Cup champion could theoretically have to play 28 games, in addition to thei 82 game regular season.
This isn’t MLB where the majority of players are sitting on their ass or standing around most of the game. What the current system pretty much guarantees is that by the time two teams reach the finals, they’re beat down and exhausted, and quite possibily missing some key guys due to injury.
Take 10 games off the regular season, and make rounds 1 and 2 of the playoffs a best of 5 and several things happen.
- Hockey isn’t still going on in June, when lots of rinks start having ice issues.
- Players aren’t beaten into the ice by the time the most important series starts.
- The regular season games mean more because there are less points to go around.
The whole, “I don’t care what other people think, hockey can stay the same because that’s how I like it” attitude doesn’t work. It certainly won’t work if you like teams like the Sabres, because without better ratings teams like the Sabres are an endangered species. At the end of the day, after all the “Better Days” videos, “one team, one goal” caps, and “hometown boy” garbage, each NHL team is a business. And businesses that don’t make money don’t stick around long.
[quote=“Nikuk,post:29,topic:30422"”]
obviously you were not able to comprehend my entire post… let me break it down:
- You (among others) implied that this thread is about hockey falling due to commentators
- You then went on to state that this thread should be about bettman and crew.
- I then clarified that this thread is not about commentators, but rather IT IS league management.Now do you think that I read your post?
[/quote]
I actually thought by starting off with “Wow I can’t believe people think hockey is failing because of announcers” was pretty clear that this isn’t the reason at all. And that talking about Gary Betman and Collin Campbell (the leagues management) was the reason (exactly your 3rd bullet point). But I guess I was wrong… oh well, I’ll get back to work now.
[quote=“Adictd2b00st,post:18,topic:30422"”]
look, when the game is shown nationally on nbc, and one of the teams is canadian, and the other is a west coast non hockey city, of course the ratings are going to be low. the fans of the sens are not watching it on nbc, they are watching it on cbc. there goes half your audience right there. i’m not worried, all you have to do is look at the teams that are playing, everyone is blowing this way out of proportion
[/quote]
The last 3 stanley cup finals have had 1 canadian team playing. the ratings have been getting worse and worse each year.
no one is watching hockey anymore besides the 2 teams fan bases and a select few around north america.
just make it 4 on 4. So much better… It will be a faster, most scoring, less boring game
HUH? You guys honetly think hockey is failing because of announcing?
I can tell you that no other city would watch RJ and jim if they had a choice between them and harry neal and bob cole. And are you basking the success of the sabres on the fact that the nhl isn’t in trouble? DUDE the sabres are 1 team and i bet you $50 in 3 years when they suck again they will have attendance issues and will be broke again. We may be hockey fans but there arent enough die hards in the city to support the team.
i bet not the only big defesit coming up is trading briere or drury and it will be briere.
then thats it.
and nbc is a westren ny channel… westren nyt wants to watch the sens get beat… so we will watch the station. but we will ionly make up half the rating. and the announcers make a big deal. why do you think thasts a subject on this thread. 
look, when the game is shown nationally on nbc, and one of the teams is canadian, and the other is a west coast non hockey city, of course the ratings are going to be low. the fans of the sens are not watching it on nbc, they are watching it on cbc. there goes half your audience right there. i’m not worried, all you have to do is look at the teams that are playing, everyone is blowing this way out of proportion
very very correct… again it results in use only making up so much of the audience… but weer not blowing it out of poportion
and shorning the season by 5 games would do nothing they play a game every other day… itd be a total of like a week. not big anoff to impact me.
get ridd of the fags that donnt know hocky and the announcers would not be a problem .
besides senators = canada
nbc = new york… they dont mix./
4 on 4 would be retarded btw, and not in a good way
yeah keep the game the same. there starting to crack down on penaltys… but id say let em go a lil bit,.
hocky wont be the same.
4 on 4 = really gay
i think 4 on 4 for overtime in the playoffs might be cool though