Carolina is now hockey country.
I know that sounds weird. After all, it's NASCAR country, what with the sport being based out of Charlotte. And it's college basketball country, as anyone who's ever had their eardrums blown out by a Dick Vitale game call knows. It would be college football country, if any of the three local schools could manage to combine pointing themselves at the right end zone, hiring a coach who doesn't use the rule book for Kleenex, and a willingness not to run off the star quarterback to the land of dairy and badgers.
But it's hockey country, too. In seasons when the Hurricanes are even half-decent (which is to say: not lately), the local arena is the loudest in the league. Give the local fans, many of whom are transplants from up north - they don't call the town of Cary "Containment Area for Relocated Yankees" for nothing - something to cheer about, and cheer they will. Emphatically. (Also: people around here enjoy watching people clobber other people with sticks. But I digress.)
And coming into this season, there seemed to be a lot for Carolina fans to cheer about. The team made some intelligent, aggressive moves in the offseason. Their best talent was young and hungry. They'd cleverly broken their habit of recycling their old coaches - the Canes and Paul Maurice were the R-Pat and K-Stew of the NHL - and were prepared to give successful interim coach Kirk Muller the reins for a full season. Things, in short, looked bright.
Odds are, if you're reading this, you know that things didn't quite work out as planned. The lockout of the players by the owners, which wins hands-down for "dumbest labor dispute in the history of major US professional sports", knocked the season off the blocks. Sure, we're getting a 48 game speed dating round, but to be blunt, it ain't going to be the same game. Yes, the rules will be the same, but the short, crowded schedule, the newly contorted schedules, the shortened prep time the teams have and the wear and tear that players who've been playing in Europe have put on their bodies - these all mean that the familiar, if not entirely level, playing field of an NHL season has been tilted. Whatever happens on the ice this year, it's going to be different than what would have happened if the original, full schedule had been played.
But in the midst of thinking about this, there's still room to get a good laugh. The most recent came from a discussion on local sports talker 99.9 (surnamed "The Buzz" - why are all sports radio stations "The Buzz", "The Ticket" or "The Big Hitter"? Why can't just one of them be "The Situational Left Handed Reliever Who Gets Murdered By Right Handed Batters"?) wherein it was indignantly proclaimed that all through the labor dispute, nobody thought of the fans.
This is amusing on a couple of levels, not the least of which being that 99.9 is A)owned by Capital Broadcasting, which happens to be a minority owner in the 'Canes and B)is the flagship station for the 'Canes radio network. Good on the hosts for demonstrating some independence, but c'mon. Of course the two sides thought of the fans. They thought of fans as customers. They thought of fans as revenue. They thought of fans as sources of revenue that teams might try to hide from the players' union, which nearly produced a deal-breaking setback. You get the idea.
What they didn't do was think of the fans as a sort of dewy-eyed romantic partner, working toward a solution in order to keep from having the Cam Ward jersey-wearing fanatics from sitting in their bedrooms and writing wistful Facebook entries about how much they miss hockey. Because, to be blunt, they had no reason to, and there was no benefit to either side to do so. For the owners, the threat that the fans would abandon the sport if the lockout went on too long was actually leverage - hey, players, sure we're asking you to take a pay cut, but it beats what you'd make selling cars in Kitchener. And if the fans get too mad about missing their hockey, well, there might not be any league at all. As for the players, holding fan desires over their own professional needs would have been a suicidal negotiating position.
And that, on a basic level, was how it should have been. What the players owe the fans is good effort on the ice, particularly for the paying customers. They're not the ones who initiated the lockout; they weren't the ones sitting on season ticket money; they're under no obligation to sacrifice part of their livelihoods to people who pay for their services - and that's what a ticket or an NHL Leaguepass is, payment for entertainment services - except as doing so makes those folks more likely to ultimately continue funding their profession.
That's not what was going to happen here, nor was it what was being asked for. Fans who don't understand that the lockout was about business - hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of business - and are mad that they didn't get the goo-goo eyes as the process went along are deluded and, dare I say it, self-important.
If they're really that upset, then they'll vote with their wallets. They won't come back to games, they won't buy jerseys, they won't listen on the radio or watch on TV. And maybe some - a few - will. (Note: If you're one of the numbskulls who is still mad at the players for striking, which they did not do, the sport may in fact be better off without you) But most won't. They may stay away for a few games; they may wave protest banners from their seats; they may wait a year before renewing tickets. But baseball and football and basketball have all shown: the diehards come back. They always come back.
Which, in the grand scheme of things, is exactly why there shouldn't have been consideration of the fans in the negotiations in the first place.
6 comments:
My biggest peeve with the lockout was not "think of the fans!" You're right, they did, and as a revenue stream and that's all.
My problem is that the average salary for players in the NHL was about $1.5million/year, and they're quibbling about a few percentage points on $3.3 BILLION dollars.
A boycott won't work, as you say. Diehards will still return (I'll watch on TV, I won't go to any games this year, not like I often do). And thus the only risk is the loss of the casual fan, who didn't put much money into the league anyway.
I'm just annoyed at the blatant greed that showed in this lockout from both sides.
I strongly disagree that the Hurticanes have the loudest arena in the NHL. That honor goes to the early Eighties edition of the Montreal franchise which was still playing at the Forum. I saw them play the Rangers there one night -- standing room tickets were, believe it or not, free! -- and that was the loudest crowd I ever experienced.
Bill - A couple of points on $3.3B is a Helluvalottamoney. And when your negotiating partner is so resolutely dishonest that you need to negotiate upfront how you're going to handle it when they try to defraud you, then I don't blame the players for holding onto every nickel they can. And remember, owners can amortize payroll - they're making out like bandits no matter what.
I'm less of a hockey fan than I am a Penguin fan (as Bill and Rich both know, I am a homer). The soccer fan in me was half-hoping that the NHL would fritter away enough of its goodwill to allow the MLS to jump into the "fourth sport" slot that the NHL seems so determined to vacate.
I feel like the NHL's expansion since 1992 has hurt it more than it helped. The labor-management disputes that have occurred since then seem to correlate with expansion into the southern US. Despite the success of the Hurricanes, I can't imagine hockey ever thriving in regions where there is never ice on the ground.
They definitely over-saturated Florida, but it's the same model as the LA Kings - go where the expats are. Well-run franchises do just fine in the South, just as poorly run franchises tank up north. (See: Islanders, New York). The real issue, I think, is that unlike MLB and NFL ownership, NHL ownership is focused on short-term cash flow instead of long-term franchise value as the real way they make money out of this gig, and as such they're doing a remarkable job of crapping the bed business-wise.
And it doesn't help that their hand-picked commissioner is regarded as the sort of guy who was given a hockey puck and then spent half an hour trying to open it.
Rich,
On the face of it, I don't object to either side saying "I want my fair share". I just wish they had done it BEFORE the season should have started, instead of missing almost half the season.
I WANT MY DAMNED PONY!
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