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| [ PHOTO: CHRIS CREAMER'S SPORTS LOGOS ] |
April 13, 2017
Peter Solari, Contributing Editor Follow @4PeteSakeNY
UPDATE:
I discussed this story on the most recent episode of "For Pete's Sake: The Podcast". You can listen to the entire episode below.The Stanley Cup Playoffs began last night, opening one of the most exciting events on the annual sports calendar. But as entertaining as the playoffs are, the league behind them, the National Hockey League, is still being operated by some of the most incompetent people in sports.
If you're a fan of the game, and even if you aren't, this should come as no surprise. After all, the NHL is the same league that has experienced three (yes three!) lockout-shortened/cancelled seasons since 1995. After the 2005 lockout cancelled the entire season, the NHL lost ESPN, who opted out of their deal to broadcast games nationally. The NHL ultimately struck a deal with the obscure Outdoor Life Network (OLN), making pro hockey quite difficult to find on national television. After spending some time in TV Siberia, the league caught a break. OLN had morphed into NBC Sports Network, which has become a household name in America. The crisis was averted, but it's still hard to overlook the mistakes the NHL made, as well as the damage which could have come from them.
Recently, I was reminded of what is, perhaps, the most glaring example of the NHL's incompetence to date, when they were tricked into allowing a swindler named John Spano to take control of one of their franchises in 1996.
The story of Spano was retold in the ESPN 30 for 30 film "Big Shot", directed by 'Entourage" star and lifelong New York Islanders fan Kevin Connolly.
Along with being a con-artist, Spano was an entrepreneur and avid sports fan who dreamed of owning a professional franchise. In 1996, the Islanders were in the market for new ownership, so the NHL and Spano got together, an event the league would grow to regret.
The problem for the NHL and the Islanders was that Spano wasn't worth nearly as much money as led people to believe, and the league, ever so anxious to be hoodwinked, didn't bother to check him out. To be fair, the Islanders didn't do their due diligence either, so Spano, who didn't have a pot to piss in, took control of the struggling franchise and ran it for four months!
After four months of lies, forgeries, missed payments, and bounced checks, a proverbial light went off in the NHL's head.
Ultimately, the gaffe didn't cost the league financially. In fact, the Islanders ended up selling for $30 million more than Spano had agreed to pay. However, the stigma from being so thoroughly and publicly embarrassed, remains to this day.
All of this is in the past, right? Surely the NHL had learned from their mistakes, and is now operating like a well-oiled machine, right? You wish!
While it's hard to imagine them ever topping the Spano fiasco, the NHL continues to institute changes to the sport/league that make little to no sense. So, in honor of the playoffs, here are five examples from the current season, showing how inept the NHL really is:
1. GROWING THE SPORT
In comparison to the NFL, NBA, and Major League Baseball, hockey is already at a disadvantage. For whatever reasons, the sport itself isn't as popular among Americans as football, basketball are, making it even more infuriating that the league continues to miss the boat on marketing their sport and league.Last week, the NHL announced that it would not be sending players to the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The league has sent players to every Olympics since 1998, and it's been quite a positive for them, especially when Team USA is competitive. The Winter Olympics are one of the rare occasions when Americans care about hockey. The same can be said about the Summer Olympics and gymnastics or swimming. Nobody cares about those sports for almost four years, but during the two weeks of Olympics coverage, they tune in in huge numbers. So why wouldn't the NHL try to capitalize on having the spotlight? Because they're stupid, that's why.
The NHL and the International Olympic Committee are at odds over who will cover the costs of NHL players participating in the Olympics. Typically, the IOC will pick up the tab for participating athletes, but they're a little hesitant to do so for a bunch of professionals who happen to be millionaires. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman wasn't having any of that and instead decided the league won't participate. That decision isn't sitting well with the players because they actually really enjoy going to the Olympics. In fact, Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals has said he's going to play for Team Russia in Pyeongchang regardless of what Bettman and the league say.
Is it just me, or is there a really simple solution to all of this that will make all sides happy? Why doesn't Bettman just allow his players to participate, under the condition that they're responsible for all the costs involved. Isn't that essentially what Ovechkin is saying he's going to do anyway? This way, the IOC and NHL are off the hook for any costs, and the players, who can certainly afford it, can go to the Olympics on their dimes. Such a solution would equal two weeks of free advertising for the NHL, so I wouldn't expect it to happen anytime soon.
Instead, perhaps the NHL can stage another World Cup of Hockey, like they did last Fall. What? You didn't know about the World Cup? That's not too surprising. Most people didn't know it was happening and those who did were treated to a dreadful and boring event.
Maybe the NHL is just more comfortable when nobody is watching. They've certainly had plenty of practice.
2. MARKETING
In recent years, and in an attempt to capitalize off the popularity of March Madness, the NHL has instituted a "bracket challenge" for fans to participate in. This is asinine, and rather unoriginal. Bracket challenges don't work in hockey the same as they do in college basketball. In fact they don't work at all.The NCAA tournament is single elimination, lasts only three weeks, and features 68 teams. All of these factors are essential to the success the NCAA has had with bracket challenges, and unfortunately, the NHL doesn't possess any of them.
You know what makes filling out a March Madness bracket fun and exciting? It's little things like the fact that 68 teams makes the number of possible outcomes nearly impossible to fathom. Also, it's a single elimination tournament, which dramatically raises the chances for upsets. Furthermore, with so many teams participating, and so many outcomes possible, it's highly unlikely that a large swath of people will have identical brackets. Finally, the NCAA Tournament only lasts three weeks, so even if you have a perfect bracket, you won't have to wait too long to find out.
Now let's look at the Stanley Cup Playoffs, which consist of only 16 teams trying to win four seven-game series' to get to the top of the mountain in June. Obviously, with only 16 teams as opposed to 68, the number of possible outcomes is greatly reduced. Furthermore, when a team has to win four games to advance, it becomes much easier to predict the winners. Seven game series' all but eliminate the "any given Sunday" mentality. In the NCAA Tournament, underdogs only have to beat the favorites one time to advance, so anything is possible. An underdog being required to beat a favorite four times, including at least once in the road, is a much more monumental task. Finally, the Stanley Cup Finals won't end until sometime in June. i don't know about you, but I don't want to stare and analyze my bracket every day for the next two months.
At the end of the playoffs, I'm predicting there will be thousands of brackets that accurately predicted the outcome, and plenty of others who will possess a perfect bracket but will have forgotten about it by time the playoffs are finally over.
At the end of the day, the bracket challenge isn't a big deal and won't cost the NHL anything. However, it's just another example of how out of touch the NHL is.
Can't the NHL do any better? Can't they come up with an idea that brings viewers to the table? At the very least, can't they fire whoever came up with the Stanley Cup bracket challenge for a lack of creativity?
3. SCHEDULING
Starting this season, the NHL instituted bye weeks, like we see in football. Every team was given five days off at a random time in the middle of their season. Why did the NHL do this? I have no idea, but once again, it didn't turn out well.Other than the fact that every team's season was interrupted at a time of the league's choosing, with complete disregard for how they were affected, the bye weeks also meant that every team had to play on back-to-back nights an inordinate amount of time.
This past weekend was the perfect example of this. On Saturday, 28 of the 30 NHL clubs were in action. The next day, 20 of the 30 clubs were in action, meaning that a whopping 18 teams had to play back-to-games, at the very least. And this went on all season. From a fan's perspective, it isn't easy to tune in to watch your favorite team play five times a week. For the players, I would imagine that playing night-in and night-out would take a toll/
So why doesn't the league just eliminate the bye weeks and do a better job of spreading out the schedule? Because that would make far too much sense.
4. PLAYOFF FORMAT
The NHL introduced the current playoff format for the 2014 Stanley Cup Playoffs. The scheme is a throwback to the 80's and early 90's and was designed to prioritize division rivalries, but to nobody's surprise, the league screwed this one up too.Between 1982 and 1993, the top four teams in each of the four divisions made the playoffs and played each other in the first two rounds for the right to advance to the subsequent conference final. Beginning in 1994, the format was changed along with the divisional structure of the league. From then through 2013, the top eight teams in each conference made the playoffs regardless of division affiliation. The three division champions from each conference were rewarded with the top three seeds for the playoffs. This represents the most fair and logical format available. The NBA and NFL still do things that way. But this is the NHL we're talking about and "logical" isn't a word they're very familiar with, so they overhauled the entire playoff system to its current state a few years ago and nobody is happy about it.
This is only the fourth season the NHL has operated under the current playoff design, but it's already proven to be terribly unfair, especially to teams who play in good divisions.
When the league first made the switch, they didn't simply go back to the old format of four teams from each of the four divisions. Instead they tweaked the rules to allow the top three teams from each of the four divisions to make the playoffs, with two wild card teams from each conference, and regardless of division, making up the slack. What this has resulted in is a terribly unbalanced tournament that doesn't make any sense, and only serves to hurt the most successful teams. 2017 is a perfect example of this.
The Metropolitan Division was, hands down, the best division in hockey this year. Three of the top four and four of the top seven teams in hockey come from the Metro, including the league's best two teams. Take a look at the Eastern Conference standings below, courtesy of NHL.com.
As you can see, the top three teams from the Metro, Washington, Pittsburgh, and Columbus, all elite teams, will be forced to go through each other, just to reach the conference finals. Meanwhile, the fourth Metro team, the New York Rangers, as a result of being the top wild card team, get to move over to the Atlantic Division bracket with mediocre teams like Boston and Ottawa.
For being the top overall seed, the Capitals still have the luxury of playing the lowest overall seed in the first round. For being the last team in, Toronto was shifted to the Metro bracket, where they'll face Washington. Should Washington advance, however, they will either play Pittsburgh (111 points) or Columbus (108 points) in the second round, while the winner of the Canadiens (103 points)/Rangers (102 points) will face the winner of the Ottawa (98 points)/Boston (95 points) in the second round.
For the sake of argument, let's assume the Capitals, Penguins, Rangers, and Bruins are all victorious in the first round. That means the top overall seed, Washington (118 points) would play Pittsburgh (111 points), while the fourth best team in the Metro, the Rangers (102 points) will face Boston (95 points), and the Bruins would have home ice advantage. There is so much wrong with all of this, it's almost comical.
First and foremost, where is the incentive for a team like Washington to win the Presidents' Trophy and the Metropolitan division if that means a great team like Pittsburgh is waiting for them in the second round? They'd be better off finishing in fourth place, like the Rangers did, and facing either Ottawa or Boston in the second round, than finishing in first and playing Pittsburgh. Furthermore, why should Pittsburgh, the second best team in the NHL, have to face the best team in the NHL in the second round? There should be zero chance of those two teams meeting before the conference finals. And why on earth would a team like the Bruins get home ice over the Rangers? Why is it so much better to finish third in a lousy division, than fourth in a great division?
I just provided you a scenario where the top two teams were essentially punished for their success, while the least successful team was rewarded with a lesser opponent and home ice advantage. And what's worse is that this hypothetical scenario is a very real possibility. Washington is the best team in hockey and the Penguins, Rangers and Bruins all lead their series' 1-0. On what planet does any of this make sense? Why, Planet NHL, of course.
For the record, if the NHL were to revert to the pre-2014 playoff format, the Eastern Conference seeds would go as follows: 1. Washington, 2. Montreal, 3. Pittsburgh, 4. Columbus, 5. NY Rangers, 6. Ottawa, 7. Boston, 8. Toronto.
The current playoff structure is just the latest example of the NHL's incompetence, but it's probably made more of an impact than any others to date. At the end of the day, it's just another gimmick that the NHL hoped would spark the interest of fans. Like all the other novelties before, it's luster wore off rather quickly. But this is worse. The current playoff structure has had a negative effect on the sport, and nobody from the players to the fans, is happy about it. The NHL needs to fix this pronto. But I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.
5. SHOOTOUT
While we're on the subject of gimmicks, how about the most notorious gimmick of all? After the most recent league lockout in 2006, the NHL decided to eliminate ties, and instead decide games that were tied after a single overtime, with a shootout. I'll admit, even I was intrigued by this, but that didn't last too long.
The shootout in hockey is kind of like interleague play in baseball. It was fun at first, because it's something we had never seen before. After a while, though, it just got old. As a 14-year old Yankees fan, it was pretty exciting to watch my team play the Mets in a regular season game back in 1997. After 20 years though, this 34-year old baseball fan couldn't care less in 2017.The lore of the shootout, as well as interleague play, simply wore off.
Of course, there are those who have always argued that deciding games on shootouts is not fair, and that's certainly debatable. What isn't debatable, however, is that shootouts have no place in the postseason. Even the NHL got this right, as shootouts have never been used during the playoffs. Ironically, though, the one thing the NHL got right on this, is the biggest problem with it.
While virtually everyone agrees that shootouts shouldn't be part of the playoffs, the fact that they still exist during the regular season means that the playoffs and regular season are played under different sets of rules. This is profoundly unfair and inconsistent with all other major sports leagues. Could you imagine if the NBA adjusted the shot clock to 20-seconds in the playoffs, or the NFL widened the goal posts? We'd rightfully laugh at them if they dared to try such things. Well, don't look now, NHL, but the whole world is laughing.
To be completely fair to the NHL, they are operating at a disadvantage. Hockey really isn't America's sport, and competing with the likes of the NFL and the NBA is no picnic. Truth be told, even if the league wasn't completely inept, they'd still be the fourth most popular league in America. But that isn't an excuse for continually handcuffing yourself. Unfortunately, the NHL hasn't gotten the memo.
Enjoy the playoffs while you can, hockey fans, before the NHL ruins them too.
