I found this pic of an obvious cheap shot to our goalie.
Its back in the old Met Center.
Posted on 02/18/2005 11:35:24 AM PST by Alberta's Child
A brief timeline of the modern National Hockey League. I posted some of these items on a long thread the other day, and I though I'd take the time to build on it some more . . .
1. In 1967, the NHL expands from the "Original Six" teams (which is really a misnomer because the league varied from 4 to 10 teams throughout the first 25 years of its existence from the 1917-18 to the 1942-43 seasons). The Original Six play in their own division, while the new expansion teams -- which include the California Seals, Los Angeles Kings, Minnesota North Stars, Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins, and the St. Louis Blues -- are assigned to their own division. It will be several years before these expansion teams are truly competitive . . . the Stanley Cup is won by Original Six teams in 4-0 sweeps in the Finals every year from 1967-68 to 1969-70.
The 1967 expansion also marks the beginning of the National Hockey League Players' Association. Alan Eagleson is named the executive director of the NHLPA, a role he would fill for almost 25 years.
2. The Buffalo Sabres and Vancouver Canucks join the league for the 1970-71 season, and the divisions and playoff format are modified. The Original Six teams continue to dominate the league through the 1972-73 season.
3. The Atlanta Flames and the New York Islanders are added between 1972 and 1974. The Kansas City Scouts and Washington Capitals join in 1974-75, bringing the league to a total of 18 teams.
The World Hockey Association begins play in 1972, and becomes a credible competitor to the NHL when Chicago Blackhawks star Bobby Hull is signed to a $1 million WHA contract and NHL legend Gordie Howe comes out of retirement to join the league.
4. In 1973-74 the Philadelphia Flyers become the first team from the post-1967 expansion era to win the Stanley Cup. They win a second consecutive Cup in 1974-75 over the Buffalo Sabres -- the first time two post-1967 expansion teams meet in the Finals.
5. The first obvious signs of economic strain in the NHL appear in 1976-77, when the California Seals move to Cleveland and become the Barons and the Kansas City Scouts move to Colorado and become the Rockies. The Barons only last two years in Cleveland before they merge with the Minnesota North Stars.
1977 also marks the year John Ziegler is named commissioner of the National Hockey league, replacing NHL icon Clarence Campbell -- who had served in that position since 1946.
6. The World Hockey Association folds in 1979 under a mutual agreement with the National Hockey League, in which four WHA teams (Quebec Nordiques, Hartford Whalers, Winnipeg Jets, and Edmonton Oilers) are permitted to join the NHL.
The Edmonton Oilers become one of the top teams in the NHL almost immediately. Their best player is the legendary Wayne Gretzky, whose relationship with the team is based on a contract with Oilers owner Peter Pocklington that dated back to Pocklington's ownership of the Indianapolis Racers of the WHA (more on this later). The WHA was able to get first crack at the 17 year-old superstar from Brantford, Ontario because NHL rules prohibited teams from drafting junior players until they turned 18.
7. In 1980-81 the Flames move from Atlanta to Calgary, becoming the fourth team in western Canada. The Colorado Rockies move to the new arena in the New Jersey Meadowlands in 1982-83 and become the New Jersey Devils. The 21-team configuration is the most stable in recent decades, lasting from this point until the addition of the San Jose Sharks in 1991-92.
During this period, the league's conferences and divisions are named after legendary figures from the game's storied history in North America. The Prince of Wales Conference (the eastern teams) includes the Patrick and Adams Divisions, while the Clarence Campbell Conference (the western teams) includes the Norris and Smythe Divisions.
8. The 1983-84 season ends in some controversy, as the Pittsburgh Penguins are accused of of deliberately losing games late in the season to secure the #1 selection in the 1984 draft. A young phenom named Mario Lemieux was in the process of tallying 133 goals and 282 points while playing for Laval of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League that year. Lemieux is drafted by the Penguins in 1984 and immediately makes his mark as "the next Wayne Gretzky."
9. The 1987-88 Stanley Cup playoffs descend into chaos when New Jersey Devils coach Jim Schoenfeld is suspended by the NHL for an incident in which he (allegedly) tells a referee Don Koharski to "go have another donut, you fat pig!" after Koharski ejected him from a playoff game between the Devils and the Boston Bruins. The Devils get an injuction against the suspension in Federal court, and Schoenfeld coaches the next game. The NHL referees walk out in protest, and the game is officiated by college and high school officials called in at the last minute. Through it all, John Ziegler -- the commissioner of the NHL -- cannot be reached while he is on vacation in Europe . . . DURING THE STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFS.
10. In the late 1980s, Pocklington decides to sell off part of the Edmonton Oilers through a sale that would make them a publicly-traded company (similar to a move the Boston Celtics had attempted around that time). His biggest problem is Wayne Gretzky . . . even though Gretzky is playing under a unheard-of 21-year contract, this contract is not with the Edmonton Oilers -- it's a personal-services contract with Peter Pocklington. To get Gretzky on the Oilers' balance sheet, Pocklington must tear up his old contract and sign Gretzky to a new one with the Oilers. But Gretzky indicates that he may only play another 2-3 years, so Pocklilngton is effectively forced to trade him to the Los Angeles Kings for an enormous pile of cash just to prop up the team's balance sheet in advance of the IPO.
11. Bruce McNall, the owner of the Kings, immediately becomes a celebrity among NHL owners and one of the most famous team owners in all of sports as a result of this trade. He is appointed the head of the NHL Board of Governors, and is later instrumental in hiring Gary Bettman as commissioner in 1993.
The hiring of Bettman is questioned by many long-time hockey fans, since he is a New York lawyer who spent the previous 12 years as a senior executive of the NBA. Well-founded stories persist to this day that Bettman had never even watched a hockey game until he was hired by the NHL. He is tasked by the NHL with growing the league into a "big-time" sport in North America, and one of his first orders of business as commissioner is to discard the traditional conference and division names and replace them with bland geographic names similar to every other major sport.
12. The establishment of the San Jose franchise is another key milestone of economic instability in the post-1967 era, for this marks the first time the league "re-expands" into a market that it had abandoned fairly recently (when the Seals left for Cleveland).
13. The "Wayne Gretzky era" reaches its peak in 1992-93 when the Kings advance to the Stanley Cup Finals with a stirring victory over the Toronto Maple Leafs in the Campbell Conference finals. But a relatively obscure Montreal Canadiens team ends the Kings' playoff run in the Finals and wins the legendary franchise's 24th Stanley Cup. As of 2005, the 1992-93 Canadiens are the last team from Canada to win the Cup.
14. Alan Eagleson, the head of the NHL Players' Association from 1967-1991, is indicted for fraud and embezzlement in 1994 for his dealings with the NHLPA and is later convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prision.
15. In what will probably be remembered as the start of the NHL’s current misfortune, the New York Rangers win the Stanley Cup in 1994 -- their first Cup victory in 54 years. The popularity of the NHL seems to be at its height, due to the extensive media exposure and great story lines in the playoffs. The Rangers win the Finals in seven games against Vancouver, after beating their cross-river rivals in New Jersey in a seven-game Eastern Conference Finals that is still remembered by many as the greatest NHL playoff series of all time.
With the Stanley Cup in New York and former NBA executive Gary Bettman at the helm as commissioner, the NHL seems poised to take its place among the other major North American professional sports leagues. Nobody would have known it at the time, but big-time NBA-like status would come with a serious downside for many hockey fans -- it will be ten years before another team from Canada appears in the Stanley Cup Finals.
16. The 1993-94 season also marks the first of many franchise moves that seem to be completely at odds with the notion of hockey as a winter sport. Only a few years after they made the Stanley Cup Finals, the Minnesota North Stars are sold to an owner who promptly moves the team to Dallas. Over the next few years the Hartford Whalers will move to North Carolina, the Winnipeg Jets move to Phoenix, and the Quebec Nordiques move to Denver. By this time, Edmonton is the only WHA franchise left in its original city.
All of these moves are based on the misguided notion that hockey is a big-time television sport, and these teams are worth more money in southern U.S. cities with large potential television audiences than in northern U.S. and Canadian cities with great fan support but small television markets. In a twist of irony, the NHL effectively determines that a city with 500 hockey fans among 3 million people is a stronger market than a city with 200,000 hockey fans among 500,000 people.
17. The 1994-95 season is delayed by a lockout when the NHL’s collective bargaining agreement expires, and is shortened to 48 games. The Stanley Cup stays in the New York City area as the New Jersey Devils win their first championship after an improbable run through the playoffs as the #5 team in the Eastern Conference.
In a bizarre turn of events, the playoffs are marked by a series of media stories about an ongoing dispute between the Devils and the owner of the Continental Airlines Arena, the New Jersey Sports & Exposition Authority. In the midst of the playoffs, rumors whirl about a potential lawsuit against the NJSEA for breach of contract, under which the team -- which would go on to win the Stanley Cup, mind you -- would immediately vacate the arena and move to Nashville. During the course of the dispute Gary Bettman makes a number of public comments in support of the team’s potential move. He is interviewed on the Fox network at the Continental Airlines Arena between periods in the last game of the Finals, and must shout his responses to the Fox announcers to be heard over the cries of "Bettman sucks!" emanating from the crowd in the arena behind him.
18. The Devils settle their dispute with the arena landlord and go on to become one of the most successful franchises in the NHL over the next decade, winning the Stanley Cup in 1999-2000 and 2002-03 and losing in the Finals in 2000-01. But their on-ice success is tarnished by an abysmal off-ice performance that is symbolic of the "big-time" NHL. Despite winning three Stanley Cups in nine years, the team can’t even sell out many of its playoff games in that period.
19. Los Angeles Kings owner and former conquering hero Bruce McNall is indicted and convicted on multiple counts of bank fraud in 1996, and is forced to sell off many of the Kings' assets. It turns out that his financial empire was all smoke and mirrors, and he effectively had a net worth of ZERO while he owned the team.
Over the next few years in the 1990s, the NHL goes through a series of embarrassing episodes with the New York Islanders in which successive prospective owners come forward to buy the team, only to have their financial plans fall apart under close inspection by the league (a close inspection that the NHL implemented only in the aftermath of the McNall debacle). In at least one of the cases, the buyer's plan is predicated on utterly fraudulent financial arrangements.
20. Mario Lemieux retires in 1997 after a career marred by injuries and a battle with Hodgkins Disease. The Hockey Hall of Fame grants a special waiver of its normal three-year requirement for retired players before they are eligible for induction, and Lemieux is immediately elected to the Hall.
21. The Pittsburgh Penguins teeter on the brink of financial collapse on a number of occasions in the late 1990s. Mario Lemieux is forced to take a partial ownership of the team in lieu of his deferred payments on his original contract with the team. He really has no choice in the matter -- if the team were to go bankrupt, his "guaranteed" contract would be worthless.
In 2000, Lemieux -- who is already a fixture in the Hockey Hall of Fame -- returns to the ice in a desperate attempt to boost sagging attendance for the Penguins and restore some value to the franchise. When the NHL players are locked out by the owners in 2004-05, Lemieux finds himself in the peculiar position of being on both sides of the labor dispute.
22. The addition of the Minnesota Wild and Columbus Bluejackets franchises for the 2000-01 season bring the league to its current total of 30 teams.
The New York Giants of the mid-1980s were a classic example of this . . . Jeff Rutledge was the backup to Phil Simms, while Jeff Hostetler was drafted in the hopes that he would be the future of the franchise -- and spent most of his first few years as the #3 quarterback.
The salary cap doesn't allow teams to have that kind of depth anymore . . . so the rookie becomes the #2 quarterback, and the #3 quarterback is some guy like Vince Evans or Jeff George who has been in the league for about 70 years and sits by his phone waiting for a call from a desperate team.
Best photo in all sports IMO.
Bobby Orr's flying, diving goal to win the Stanley Cup for Boston on May 10, 1970, is the most famous Stanley Cup goal of all time, capturing in one incomparable, unrepeatable moment all the unique abilities of the greatest defenseman ever to play the game.
from:
http://www.halloffamememorabilia.com/main.php?mod=510&al=695
Another stupid thing, for example, is the clause in Scott Steven's contract (from NJ) which states that he will ALWAYS be the highest paid player on the team, unless he gives the Devil's permission to pay someone else. Clauses like this are routinely placed in player's contracts.
When the Devils wanted to resign Martin Broduer a couple of years ago, they had to go to Stevens and get permission to make Brodeur the highest paid player. Fortunately, Stevens being the guy he is, said "no problem" and Brodeur got his money. I believe Mark Messier had a similar deal with the Rangers and Bure had it in Florida. Sorta kinda ties a GM's hands when he does have the cash and can't spend it because of egos.
The problem is the league doesn't make enough money to support that price tag. This is one of the big problems of the NHL's arbitration system, when you have teams like the Rangers over paying players can demand more money than they're worth and if their team won't give it to them they can go to arbitration and the lawyer will tell the team to pay them more. It's not just Roenick's business, I mean he's no dummy if somebody offers him more than he thinks he's worth he should sign, what the heck it's their money. But when you look at he comparative revenue streams the NHL simply shouldn't have an $8 million players, the league doesn't make enough money to support that pay scale.
And like I said, pay scales work from the top down, if the top players are worht $8 mil then the second teir players are clearly worth at least half that, and the 3rd line guys should be pulling down $2 mil. There's no way to get those 8-12 guys below the $2 mil mark if the marquee guys are making $8.
The pay scale your proposing is exactly the system they have now. Think about it this way, at each step down in talent (which in hockey is easily mapped as a step down on the line chart) halves the players salary, and your marquee (line one) guys are worth $8 mil, then your line 2 guys get $4 mil and line 3 gets $2. The only way to keep that second teir lower than $2-4 mil is to drop the marque guys below 8.
Well part of that punchline is that the #3 QB spot has been largely wasted through history, it's only there for when 2 QBs get hurt. It's hard to even learn the ropes from there since it's usually the #2 guy QBing the practice squad.
The salary cap only hurts a team's depth chart if the GM is stupid. All GMs that use the cap as an excuse for a pathetic depth chart (and there are plenty) should be drummed out of the league. These are GMs that would have lousy depth charts any way (and there were plenty of teams with bad depth charts before the cap) and have found a convenient excuse for their own short comings.
Misleading. Anyone who's been to the Continental Arena knows the location is problematic for a number of reasons, not the least of which is one concourse for 19,000+ people. A lot of fans choose to stay home for that reason. Why put up with the nightmare of a "sold-out" CAA when I can watch the game on center-ice in the comfort of my own home.
There's another dumb clause where the player is garaunteed being a top 5 in their position, you see it some in the NFL too.
Plenty of dumb clauses out there. My least favorite dumb contract clause is defered salary, mortgaging the future for pipe dreams today.
Well, that depends on how you define "marquee" as well. Scott Stevens is a marquee player, but not in the same way as Brian Leetch, for example.
Roenick, btw, is not the only guy to say he would take less money.
The way you keep the money coming in is to keep the fans coming in, and the fans want to see competitive teams. The only way to make the league more competitive is to give the moeny to the guys who can compete and the lower-tier guys have to suck it up. After all, they play a game for a living.
Heck, I played minors for a season and I would have KILLED to sign with a big league team for peanuts compared to what the 3rd and 4th liners are getting now for being "defensive specialists". There are tons of guys that would tell you the same thing.
The problem is that because those guys in the middle are making far more than their value you can no longer pay the players that make you a contender. The money is in the playoffs, not so much the regular season.
not sure about that one...
there were some real personalties back then.
I had Devils season tickets for three years and playoff games were always sold out, except for individual seats scattered across the arena. I remember one year, I think it was 200-01, where SRO tickets were being sold for playoff games,the first time I can ever remember seeing that except for the old Ranger/Islander playoff games.
The issue for the Devils in terms of attendance is that there are three other teams within 50 miles, the arena only holds 19,000 and the traffic on Route 3 and the turnpike is A NIGHTMARE. Additionally, you see a ton of kids at these games too, and the kids stay home on weeknights, you know.
if you saw the sheer numbers of children at a Devils game, as a GM you'd be happy. This is your FUTURE fan base.
I found this pic of an obvious cheap shot to our goalie.
Its back in the old Met Center.
To begin with, I'm not even certain if what you've posted there is actually a clause in his contract. I've seen references to it as an "unwritten agreement" that exists between Stevens and the Devils. On a number of occasions over the years he has publicly encouraged the team to sign players to bigger contracts if he thought it would help the team -- most recently back in 2000 or so when Pavel Bure was being shopped around by the Florida Panthers -- but GM Lou Lamoriello has usually shied away from these deals for high-paid mega-stars. His overall managing style is to build a deep roster by paying ten players $2 million apiece instead of paying one guy $8 million and settling for third-rate players by spreading the other $12 million amond nine guys.
The lone exception to this came near the trading deadline in 1999-2000, when the Devils were in need of a scoring threat and the Vancouver Canucks were looking to trade an aging Alexander Mogilny. The Devils were willing to break the "agreement" with Stevens in this case because Mogilny had another year left on his contract and as part of the trade the Canucks would pick up at least half of his salary for the final year.
This agreement between Stevens and the Devils -- whether it was an actual clause in his contract or an unwritten agreement -- wasn't based on Stevens' pride, and certainly wasn't intended to tie the hands of the team's management. Stevens had signed a long-term deal with the Devils back in the late 1990s for a lot less than he could have gotten on the open market if he had become an unrestricted free agent. He loved living in New Jersey, and he saw how successful the team was under Lamoriello's "depth-oriented" style of building a team. What he was basically telling the team was that he would play there for less than he could get elsewhere, but he didn't want the team to then turn around and take the money they saved on his contract and use it to pay some exorbitant salary to an unrestricted free agent from another team.
I think Brodeur may be playing under a similar type of arrangement. A few years ago he signed a long-term deal with the team for a lot less than what other top-level goalies were getting paid elsewhere in the NHL.
That concourse hasn't changed since the day the arena opened in 1981 or 1982. That's a pretty lame reason for why the team can't sell out playoff games in 2003 while they played to a lot of capacity crowds ten years earlier.
It's written into the contract. It's come up before, and not just with Brodeur. Stevens had the same deal when he left Washington for St. Louis, and the Devs inherited it in the Shanahan fiasco. It may have been modified in more recent contract negotiations or perhaps after talking with Lou man-to-man subsequent to that.
But, I know for a fact that I read it again in the NY Post that same year Brodeur was due for his payday.
If you remember back to the pre-cap days, the #3 quarterback (not the #2) could usually be seen walking the sidelines with headphones on and carrying a clipboard, relaying plays between the coaches in the press box and the coaches on the sideline. It's almost as if that roster spot was DEFINED as a "quarterback apprenticeship!"
Man, that's a shame. You didn't even pay any mind to the 1994 team? And to think -- I hated those bastards after Matteau scored that sh!tty overtime wrap-around goal against my Devils. LOL!
P.S. that arena is always FULL TO THE BRIM when the Rangers, Flyers or Leafs show up during the regular season.
The only playoff game that I can't remember seeig a full house was night when the weather was abominable. A full foot of snow on the ground and rain on top of it. I risked my life that evening to go, too.
If half the stories I've heard about the Calgary and Edmonton teams of the 1980s are true, then it's a wonder there weren't more NHL players run through the legal system somewhere. LOL.
Yes, that is why I pointed out it is just one of many in my post. The team isn't marketed nearly as well as it should be, that's obvious. What is also obvious to just about every fan of the team I know is that they've needed a new building for years.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.