NHL Financial System & Media Broken

New York Islander Fan Central | 7/19/2012 03:36:00 PM |
The expression you get what you pay for applies on all fronts for this day, it's almost gotten to the point if it's worth being a fan of the NHL any longer.

I now understand why John Pickett felt the way he did when it was no longer fun for him to own the New York Islanders.

If the New York Islanders did this with Shea Weber (who should sign for every dollar he can make) I would be just as disgusted. Weber belongs with his home grown team.

The teams that draft, develop properly are punished because other franchises are simply not as good so a corporation makes an offer to break another corporation? 

This is not free agency or how it was designed to work.  We saw this joke long ago when Cablevision pulled this with Joe Sakic, but now it's new/improved.

Is the NHL becoming that permanently broken system known as MLB?

The usual owners needing to be saved from themselves, with more joining the club. Ed Snider of Comcast/NBC/ Smg tells Paul Holmgren he wants another new toy, he does what he's told or Bob Clarke is returning as gm.

How long before Illitch, Pegula, Dolan, Leipold, do this to the next top restricted free agent?

What's next an NHL owner must have a corporation with more than ten billion in assets willing to write off  massive red ink on several front-loaded contracts or that market is not sustainable? Do we have five or ten franchises like the Pittsburgh Pirates, who make a profit by spending as little as possible in a new facility? 
 
I'm glad  the Islanders now protected themselves by signing Tavares, Okposo, Grabner last summer, but the day is coming where they cannot keep these players or anyone who becomes a franchise player here.

For all my criticism of Brian Burke, I respect his stance on front-loading which at some point likely will cost him his job with a corporate ownership in Toronto.  Montreal will not front-load at this time, but the pressure is on for Molson running the Canadians.

The pressure is on all the teams not front-loading. 

Pittsburgh got their slots-based facility, welcome to the front-loaded club. 

This blog has been writing about these front-loaded contracts for years, the system's broken, the usual suspects are forcing more owners to follow suit.
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On the other end of the spectrum, obviously the NHL media industry is financially broken, so you get what you pay for there also which is the bottom of the barrel.

No, that has nothing to do with teams that own professional media outlets, that's another club where writers are an extension of the teams p.r department like Snider's salseman, Tim Panaccio at Csn. 

This would explain why when I post articles here, it takes a much longer time to pick through fan sites on Google (including New York Islander Fan Central) or outlets that pay to advertise there looking for that one professional media outlet that has a direct quote from a player.

NHL.com media relations are run so poorly by unqualified disasters like former Daily News Ranger  salesman, John Dellapina/Frank Brown, the articles read like tabloid journalism from a p.r department so badly managed NHL teams cannot have local viewing parties because it would hurt television ratings, with more unqualified writers coming off like they are an extension of the teams p.r wing.

Then of course, the Pens media can call up the NHL and demand an Islander viewing party be cancelled even though it's a game Dolan's Msg scheduled long before the party was announced, then Bill Daly comes out on cue, and makes it an Islanders issue? 

Did Dellapina or Brown get these jobs only because the NHL office is in New York, and no one else  wanted to relocate here? Anyone remember during the last lockout the only professional media covering negotiations in New York City were from Canada?

Hasn't anyone learned NHL media relations coordinators are not NHL writers, or newspaper writers do not qualify them to be media relations coordinators for an entire league?

This is why things are done so poorly. 

In the five years of writing New York Islander Fan Central, the NHL professional media has fallen off  the cliff forever, some of it is self-inflicted by not hiring professionals to do what they do best.