Yes I am talking about hockey in the middle of summer, come on I've been starving for hockey for the past two years... ever since the apocolypse of hockey happened. I think the end was marked by the mark of the beast otherwise known as Tampa Bay winning the cup. But if you've looked at the NHL its insane, every major star is on a different team now. Guys are signing left and right to any team. Guys who were franchise players with Colorado are signing with the Columbus Blue Jackets (Adam Foote), the Blues star Defenseman is now with the Oilers (Pronger), and Detroit is no longer the dominating Yankees of Hockey anymore. Now they may turn into something else, with a younger team, they may turn into the oakland a's of hockey because frankly that's what they got going on right now, tons of young talent and they've smartly let go of their aging over the hill super stars. Its crazy... hopefully they'll actually get around to playing this year.
Posted by holtonian at August 4, 2005 10:13 AM | TrackBackhockey? what's that? never heard of it.
Posted by: bobw at August 4, 2005 11:30 AMWhere are you? Up in CT yet?
Posted by: Scott at August 4, 2005 01:14 PMI'm afraid that the Blues may look more like the Devil Rays (young players short on talent), but the fortunate thing is that it's going to be very hard, or maybe impossible, to put together a team of high price talent. The set cap, I think between 33-38 million this year, will most likely go down next year to closer to 31-36 million because it is based on league revenue, which is predicted to be lower than the last full season it was based on.
It may go even lower in the next few years because a ton of casual fans are returning anytime soon. Honestly, as a lifelong hockey fan, I'm not rushing out to spend money on an NHL game...
Umm, I thought you were the one who was insisting vociforously over on my blog that I shouldn't complain about the lockout and that it was good riddance if the NHL died.
Also, enough knocking of the Lightning, at least our fans are coming back after the lockout, because we actually cared about the game (and no, it's not just bandwagon because of the team, they sold more than 10,000 tickets to a minor league game in the middle of the lockout, in the middle of football season). And, I'm going to be seriously mad if people in traditional markets, the ones who supposedly care about hockey, stop going to games and make the cap fall and make us lose all that we built, because it sure ain't going to be people in Tampa who make revenue fall, we're looking to sell out most games this year, and single game tickets are going to be extremely hard to come by.
Posted by: Kathryn at August 26, 2005 02:10 AM