BleedsRangerBlue

The offense revolved around Jagr, and still does. If anything, it revolves him too much. It's become too predictable, and teams are shutting him down. That's why the offense has sputtered. Jagr is a great player, but a terrible leader. He can be the go-to-guy. He just can't be the captain.

Jagr thought the team had the best chance to win if he didn't go. The Wild usually don't send out Gaborik on the shootout. The Sens, with all the talent they had, were really bad on shootouts last year. The only questionable thing is this is supposed to be the coach's decision, not the player's. Yes, Jagr showed poor leadership, but that doesn't mean he quit on the team or anything. Most Rangers fans agreed that Jagr would've made a sh*tty captain. He even said himself that he did not want any part of it. He still plays hard. He's just no Messier. He wouldn't have the balls to guarantee victory over the Devils like Messier did in 1994.

that was my point; if the Rangers traded Jagr it would've been to rebuild

You want Jagr? Bergfors, Zajac, and 2 first rounders, at the VERY LEAST. Look what J.D. got for Tkachuk. Look what Lowe got for Ryan Smyth. Look at all the trades that went down today. Sheesh. And why would the Rangers want Gomez? If Sather pulled the trigger, that meant the Rangers were giving up on the season. What good would Gomez do? Deadline dealing 101: You trade veterans for prospects and picks, and vice versa. You want to get rid of Gomez and get another vet? make a 3 way trade, either that or 2 separate deals. That's what the Islanders tried to do, and it almost worked, only the Blake deal was vetoed by the league since they got it in too late.

The average payroll last year was $44 million without a salary cap. Under the 32-42 mil payroll range, average payrolls can expect to be around $37 mil. So your saying the new proposal will make the average payroll $47 mil??? The Red Wings' payroll last year was well over $70 mil...Leafs over $60 mil. They won't be able to spend that much, and yet the average payroll will rise? makes no sense.

First of all, the cap is at $20 mil and it is only for the first year. If the WHA establishes franchises in 10 of the major hockey cities, it will have a competitive advantage over the NHL franchises operating with inferior players. It will generate more revenue and the cap will be raised in subsequent years. What will happen in the long run is you will have two leagues that are equally competitive, which will lower overall talent and increase salaries. Then perhaps the leagues will merge like the NFL and AFL did.

I think all along the Player's Association is just pissed at the owners for trying to break the union. So now they're out to break the NHL. See, two can play this game. Cuz what happens when the NHL uses AHLer's next season while the WHA signs all the locked out players? The WHA is going to end up with a better product than the NHL...and that's the main bargaining position the players have.

Actually, the Rangers wouldn't be hurt (at least not for a couple of years) by Bettman's $32-38 mil payroll range proposal, cuz their payroll is about the same as the Devils' right now, and also they won't make the playoffs so they don't have to share any revenue ! The teams that would be hurt the most are the teams at the extremes, the Leafs and the Predators. The teams that would probably benefit the most are the mid-level market teams, such as the Devils.

None of your replies really agreed with or refuted anything I said, but it looks like you probably haven't even read Bettman's proposal or the rest of the player's proposal other than the 24% rollback that the media claimed to be a marketing ploy. Also, at this rate, the NHL is done anyway. If there's a lockout for two years, a lot of people will have already found substitutes for hockey. And my whole point was that the league as a whole (and probably every team in the league to varying amounts) was going make profits for 3 years even if salaries DO go up.

Objectively, the union's proposal works a lot better than Bettman's proposal, especially if it were a 3 year deal like it was last time. Under Bettman's proposal, overall league costs AND revenues will go down at the same time, and also the Predators would fold within the next 5 years. I don't understand why Bettman can't accept the proposal for a 3 year deal. It might be better to shut down hockey under the past CBA, but I can't seriously accept the claim that it's better not to have hockey than to operate under the union's proposal. If salaries shoot up again in 2-3 years, then that would prove that a salary cap is needed, and the players would be more inclined to accept a salary cap. But I don't believe that will happen because the owners will be smarter this time around and not overestimate the growth of the sport. Also, the comparison to the NFL is a good point. Under Bettman's proposal, there will essentially be no trading, because no one is going to have enough cap room to accept a player making more than a couple of million dollars. So the only way to get better would be to draft well, so teams that aren't very good will have to wait 5 years for their draft picks to develop, while in the NFL it'll take Roethlisbergr exactly 0 years to develop.

Dammit, there aren't any cities in those countries (other than Russia) big enough to support a league of the magnitude that would be able to compete with the NHL, which is too bad, cuz the threat of a rival league (especially one that could be successful) would be exactly what is needed to pressure the two sides into getting a deal done.

Nice, according to Eastside Hockey Manager he becomes an NHLer. ...Actually, wouldn't Europe be able to support a high revenue professional hockey league? I know they have NFL Europe but the problem with that is probably the quality of play. So instead of having elite leagues for separate countries, wouldn't it be possible to have like a 10 team NHL Europe (just to get started, if they want to expand later they can), with teams in London, Paris, Berlin, etc? All they need is a few superstars to get them going and they already have that. Also, imagine how good the quality of play would be with so few teams. They could also get a huge TV deal from the U.S. and Canada as I'm sure a lot of people would watch it, since the NHL will cease to exist.

Both sides need to impeach their respective leaders so we can get negotiations going.

Parity should actually be measured in terms of variance amongst all the winning percentages in the league in the regular season. So yeah, Brooks' examples are terrible. But I do agree with him that winning teams in smaller markets don't necessarily increase revenue much. The Devils have won 3 Cups in 10 years and the Rangers have missed the playoffs 7 years in a row, and yet the Rangers still exceed the Devils in revenue. And does the salary cap necessarily increase parity? Most people are misled by this term, which actually means that teams have more or less the same amount of talent. So does the NFL have parity, or just unpredictability because of a 16 game schedule and a 1 game playoff series? Do the Cleveland Browns have the same amount of talent as the New England Patriots? Also, the cap at $38 million won't do anything for Nashville when they can't even spend that amount, so revenue sharing is necessary. And taxing playoff revenue and using it for revenue sharing is ludicrous, because that would actually make it so that teams, especially the small market teams, NOT want to make the playoffs. It's amazing that under this plan the Rangers wouldn't have had to share any revenue the past 7 years, while under the PA's proposal, they would have given up $5-$10 mil per year.

While it's true that a bigger city has potentially a bigger market, the "market" only counts as people who seek that product, or one similar to it. So it's not necessarily true that Phoenix has a bigger market for hockey, at least not currently. For example, the market for hockey in NYC is low right now because the Rangers suck (if there's a season, you can expect half the arena to be empty even with the 10% price cut), but it could potentially become huge when the Rangers start winning again. So whether franchises in Phoenix, Miami, Nashville, etc can survive will depend on the league instilling a new marketing plan, something that the union has proposed and Bettman has promised on carrying out after the CBA is resolved.