NHL Hockey thread

[Barrister]

The hit wasn't that bad.  Chara was beat to the puck so he took the man and he just hit the guy and it was in a bad spot on the ice.  Chara did not go after the guys head in any way and if that was into the boards at any other part of the rink then there would have been no problem.  Chara should only have gotten a 2 minute interference penalty on the play.

No he souldn't have a 2mins penalty. When illegal actions results in injury you get a 5min major.  That's the rule.

This.

I'll Accept Chara wasn't deliberately trying to injure him.  But if you're involved in a penalty and someone gets seriously injured, you should receive a multi-game suspension.

[Barrister]

Those of us obsessively following the situation in Phoenix have known that the proposed deal was outrageous for months, both it has received absolutely zero attention of scrutiny outside of Winnipeg.

Until recently.  I probably post only one article out of 20 these days, but here's a good one from Forbes:

Warren Meyer
Coyote DenMy ProfileMy Headline GrabsMy RSS Feed


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Key Battle Over The Sports Economics Model
Mar. 10 2011 - 11:40 am | 0 recommendations
By WARREN MEYER
A  battle is underway challenging the very heart of the professional sports economics model — and it is not the NFL labor negotiations.  The unlikely fight is between a struggling league (the NHL), a suburb with delusions of grandeur (Glendale, Arizona), and a small, regional think tank (the Goldwater Institute).   At stake is a critical source of value for nearly every professional sports team:  taxpayer subsidies.

While the NFL's Superbowl is held in different cities each year, locations for the game used to have one thing in common:  They were warm weather tourist cities like New Orleans, Miami, or San Diego.  But recently we have seen the NFL award their big game to cities like Detroit, a record cold Dallas, Indianapolis, and New York.  It turns out the NFL has changed its decision-model for choosing Superbowl cites.  Rather than choose the city best able to attract fans, it now chooses the location best able to attract government subsidies.

Four of the seven Superbowls between 2008 and 2014 will be held in cities where taxpayers have built their football clubs brand new stadiums.  In each case, the NFL held out the promise of a future Superbowl — music to the ears of powerful hotel and retail interests — as a deal-closer on a contentious publicly funded stadium proposal.

Consider the Arizona Cardinals new football stadium in Glendale, for example.  In part due to the promise of a Superbowl bid, the local taxpayers paid $346 million of the total $455 million cost of the facility — a building that will be used just three hours a day on ten days a year for its primary purpose.  By contrast, in 2010 Forbes valued the Arizona Cardinals at $919 million, meaning well over a third of the franchise's value accrues from the public subsidy of its retractable roof palace.

If anything, this example from the NFL understates the importance of public funding of stadiums.  Why?  Because of all the major sports leagues, the NFL gets the lowest percentage of its total revenues from its stadiums.  Leagues like the NBA and in particular the NHL, are far more dependent on stadium revenue for their well-being.

Let's again return to precocious Glendale.  In 2003, the city agreed to publicly fund $180 million of the $220 million cost of building a new arena for the Phoenix Coyotes hockey team.  Whereas Glendale's subsidy of the Cardinals represented about a third of that franchise's value, their $180 million subsidy of the Coyotes represents over 130% of the current $134 million value of the team.  Stuck in Arizona and losing as much as $40 million a year, the team is literally worthless without ongoing public subsidies.

Given the importance of public money to professional sports revenues, it should be no surprise that NHL commissioner Gary Bettman rushed to Phoenix this week to fly cover for yet another proposed taxpayer giveaway.  Because, incredibly, those crazy folks in the City of Glendale are attempting to subsidize the Phoenix Coyotes yet again.

Specifically, the city has proposed a new $100 million bond issue whose proceeds would be handed to private investor Matthew Hulsizer so he could buy the team.  Another $97 million would be paid to Hulsizer over five years in a sweetheart no-bid stadium management deal.  At the end of the day, between this deal and the original stadium giveaway, Glendale will have spent nearly $400 million of public money on a a team worth $134 million, a team that still has not presented any plan for becoming profitable.

Enter the Goldwater Institute, a local Libertarian-Conservative think tank.  Goldwater has a long track record in Arizona challenging certain public subsidies as violations of the Arizona Constitution's "gift clause."  This sensible Constitutional provision says that neither the state nor any municipality in it may "give or loan its credit in the aid of, or make any donation or grant, by subsidy or otherwise, to any individual, association, or corporation."

The issues in Glendale are fairly complex, and are made worse by the city's lack of transparency in these dealings .  The city argues that it is not subsidizing the purchase of the team, but rather is merely buying the rights to charge for parking at the arena, a right others argue the city already owns  (if the city does not own the parking rights, it raises a separate issue that the City transferred these rights to the team sometime in the last 10 years, apparently with no scrutiny and no compensation).   One wonders why,  if the team really does own parking rights that are objectively worth $100 million, the buyer does not use them as collateral for private financing.

The Goldwater Institute's fairly sensible questioning of the deal vis a vis the gift clause has ignited a firestorm.   We shouldn't be surprised to see Mr. Hulsizer lashing out at Goldwater — after all, Goldwater is standing in the way of his feeding at the public trough to the tune of $200 million.  But the NHL, the City of Glendale, and our local paper the Arizona Republic (after all, the sports section drives a lot of revenue) have all piled on Goldwater.  Glendale has even threatened a lawsuit against Goldwater.

Most intelligent people understand that a lawsuit by a government body against a private group for its excercie of free speech will likely not go over well with the voters (or courts).  So Glendale has come up with a novel critique — repeated by Commissioner Bettman —  that by questioning the constitutionality of the deal, Goldwater has driven interest rates on their pending bond issue up by as much as 150 basis points.  Goldwater stands accused, in other words, of tampering with a public offering.

But this argument is a sham, and demonstrates just how desperate the NHL is to keep the public gravy train going, and how desperate Glendale is to paper over the terrible decision it made 8 years ago when it initially built the stadium.

There are in fact many factors other than Goldwater influencing the price of Glendale's proposed bond issue.  For example:

•The major bond ratings agencies recently put the city of Glendale on a credit watch list
•The bond issue depends on the success of the Coyotes franchise, which has lost money every year it has been in Arizona (including $40 million this last year) and for which no roadmap to profitability has ever been proposed.  Remember, the parking rights are worthless if the team fails or leaves town in the next 30 years.
•Sales tax revenues that are pledged to pay for the bonds (as a backup if parking revenues fall short or the team goes into bankruptcy again) are way down in both Arizona and Glendale.  Tax receipts in Glendale are already pledged to other bond issues, so in some sense this is a second mortgage.
•One of the consultants who prepared the parking revenue forecasts for the bond issue is being sued by purchasers of another municipal bond issue for fraudulently inflating potential stadium revenues in a deal that was initially highly rated but now has fallen to junk status.
•A dearth of new municipal bond issues in the first quarter has made it difficult for market participants to forecast yields, particularly for longer duration bonds like these, so it is no surprise initial forecasts of the issue's yield may have been wrong.
As Darcy Olsen of Goldwater has observed,  "Hulsizer could get a private loan to buy this team like most businesses do.  They finance their investments not on the backs of taxpayers but take the risk privately where it belongs."  Of course, this would break the business model that has come to dominate professional sports.

The NFL labor negotiations going on this week are contentious, but are merely about how to split the pie between owners and players.  The fight here in Arizona is about whether the size of the pie they are splitting will continue to be enlarged at the expense of taxpayers.

http://blogs.forbes.com/warrenmeyer/2011/03/10/a-key-battle-over-the-sports-economics-model/

It's an interesting thought - is this deal so outrageous, so scandalous to the taxpayers, that it might form the tipping point over subsidies to pro sports in general?

[viper37]

No, it won't be the tipping point.  I wish it would be, but it won't.

Why?  Panem et circenses.

People bitch about subsidies, but they're the first to attend the games of their favourite sports team.  It's no different than ancient roman nobles paying for games in the arena to help their election.
That a city gave 200 million$ to private interest for building an arena will be forgotten by the time the next elections come by; in Quebec city, people love hockey and if there's a new team, they'll forget that silly financial plan; in Glendale, no one really cares about hockey, so it won't be noticed.  I haven't seen any Tea Party rally in Glendale to rally against waste of public money...  Goldwater in an exception, not a norm.

[Barrister]

No, it won't be the tipping point.  I wish it would be, but it won't.

Why?  Panem et circenses.

People bitch about subsidies, but they're the first to attend the games of their favourite sports team.  It's no different than ancient roman nobles paying for games in the arena to help their election.
That a city gave 200 million$ to private interest for building an arena will be forgotten by the time the next elections come by; in Quebec city, people love hockey and if there's a new team, they'll forget that silly financial plan; in Glendale, no one really cares about hockey, so it won't be noticed.  I haven't seen any Tea Party rally in Glendale to rally against waste of public money...  Goldwater in an exception, not a norm.

Arizona Tea Party Patriots will hold a protest about the Yotes next week.

http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/westsideinsider/121332

Glendale is certainly noticing - the entire reason Glendale is tryng to save the Yotes is because they're worried they'll be stuck paying the mortgage on jobing.com with no tennant to pay the bills.

[crazy canuck]

They should just let the NHL die so that it stops taking up valuable TV time during March Madness.

[Barrister]

They should just let the NHL die so that it stops taking up valuable TV time during March Madness.

You make baby Bobby Hull cry. 



Edit: post changed to honour my current avatar.   

p.s. a good summary of where the whole story is at as of today:

http://www.azcentral.com/community/glendale/articles/2011/03/10/20110310glendale-phoenix-coyotes-deal-overview.html

[viper37]

Glendale is certainly noticing - the entire reason Glendale is tryng to save the Yotes is because they're worried they'll be stuck paying the mortgage on jobing.com with no tennant to pay the bills.

They don't want to pay a 100 million mortgage, so they go and borrow another 100 million$ and they agree to pay 97 million over a few years... it really ain't making any sense.

[Barrister]

Glendale is certainly noticing - the entire reason Glendale is tryng to save the Yotes is because they're worried they'll be stuck paying the mortgage on jobing.com with no tennant to pay the bills.

They don't want to pay a 100 million mortgage, so they go and borrow another 100 million$ and they agree to pay 97 million over a few years... it really ain't making any sense.

Ding ding ding ding ding!

[Zoupa]

The hit wasn't that bad.  Chara was beat to the puck so he took the man and he just hit the guy and it was in a bad spot on the ice.  Chara did not go after the guys head in any way and if that was into the boards at any other part of the rink then there would have been no problem.  Chara should only have gotten a 2 minute interference penalty on the play.

I'm sorry, what?

[Barrister]

Looking at anything shot-by-shot Zapruder-style will often be deceiving.

[Zoupa]

Looking at anything shot-by-shot Zapruder-style will often be deceiving.

You also have Pacioretty saying Chara was pushing his head directly towards the post. Is that also deceiving? 

I can't understand how you guys think there's no intent here. Dude is a veteran of 12 years in the league, Norris trophy winner. He knows where he is on the ice, and where that hit is going. Factor in the history between the 2 players, Chara's history of rage on the ice, the fact that it's 4-0, the fact that there's 15 seconds left, the fact that the puck is 60 feet away.

He's a piece of shit. Montreal police have launched an official investigation.

It's dumb, but the NHL is run by morons, so whatever.

[PRC]

I'm sorry, what?

Exactly, his arm is on Pacioretty's shoulder.

[Barrister]

Looking at anything shot-by-shot Zapruder-style will often be deceiving.

You also have Pacioretty saying Chara was pushing his head directly towards the post. Is that also deceiving? 

I can't understand how you guys think there's no intent here. Dude is a veteran of 12 years in the league, Norris trophy winner. He knows where he is on the ice, and where that hit is going. Factor in the history between the 2 players, Chara's history of rage on the ice, the fact that it's 4-0, the fact that there's 15 seconds left, the fact that the puck is 60 feet away.

He's a piece of shit. Montreal police have launched an official investigation.

It's dumb, but the NHL is run by morons, so whatever.

Wow - for a man who grew up in France, you sure have drunk the Habs kool-aid haven't you! 

I'm on your side to the point I think he should have been suspended for awhile.  Whether or not he tried to injure him, it was an illegal hit, and so if an injury results you're responsible.

Good luck with an investigation.  This is miles away from the Bertuzzi incident.

[Zoupa]

I'm sorry, what?

Exactly, his arm is on Pacioretty's shoulder.

Well, let's see how you react when a kid's arm is on another kid's shoulder one day, and then he dies.

"Hockey is a physical sport".

You guys make me sick.

[Zoupa]

Wtf does is matter where Chara's arm is anyways? You can use your tippy toes to send someone head first into the boards, it's still boarding.