2022-2023 NHL Regular Season Thread

[ToddM]

Raising the cap just steals food from owner's kids' mouths.

[Troy McClure]

Lots of teams who actually make money have to be getting pissed about still essentially operating under covid cap restrictions. These teams are having these artificial cap numbers hurting their rosters.

This cap situation is going to force the Leafs to trade one of their awesome forwards when they easily have the money to keep them all and still throw more money at goalie and defense.

I wonder where Gaglardi fits here. The Stars desperately need the cap to go up to alleviate the Benn/Seguin deals.

The cap is tied to a hard percentage of "hockey related revenue" and isn't increasing because of all the escrow the players owe the league. So some teams are making money but the players "owe" the league, plus stuff like Arizona and their 5,000 seat arena drags down HRR.

The Arizona thing isn't why I call it artificial. This is multiple seasons of Bettman depressing HRR all because he has made this Arizona thing his white whale. Arizona brings in the smallest amount of revenue of any team, with things being even worse now than ever. The Coyotes being a bad business extended how long the escrow payback took and keeps the cap lower going forward.

[ScubaSteve]

The USD/Canadian exchange rate has fluctuated a lot over the years too. For a good while the Canadian dollar was very strong against the USD which artificially inflated the value of the Canadian franchises, which means artifically inflating the value and revenues of 20% of the league. I haven’t looked in a while but I’m not sure that’s the case anymore.

[Troy McClure]

The USD/Canadian exchange rate has fluctuated a lot over the years too. For a good while the Canadian dollar was very strong against the USD which artificially inflated the value of the Canadian franchises, which means artifically inflating the value and revenues of 20% of the league. I haven’t looked in a while but I’m not sure that’s the case anymore.

This is part of the reason why Quebec City is a destination of last resort for relocation or expansion. The NHL was quick to move Atlanta to Winnipeg, and Winnipeg has turned into one of the lowest money generators in the league. Quebec City wouldn't be much better.

[Math]

The USD/Canadian exchange rate has fluctuated a lot over the years too. For a good while the Canadian dollar was very strong against the USD which artificially inflated the value of the Canadian franchises, which means artifically inflating the value and revenues of 20% of the league. I haven’t looked in a while but I’m not sure that’s the case anymore.

This is part of the reason why Quebec City is a destination of last resort for relocation or expansion. The NHL was quick to move Atlanta to Winnipeg, and Winnipeg has turned into one of the lowest money generators in the league. Quebec City wouldn't be much better.

This, and many other reasons such as politics (the current owner of the arena and an eventual team is a die-hard french separatist), taxation rate (the highest of north America), french market (can't expand the market outside the city limits), low corporate support and market size: the metro area is 1M people but it can't expand outside its limits. If you go west you are in Habs territory, south in Bruins territory, and there's nothing north and east. The potential is almost non existant. The new arena is also poorly located and won't drive any additional revenues from nearby commercial areas like shops or restaurants that are all significantly far from the no man's land on which it has been built. And going for a walk to do something else by -30 degrees is not really tempting.

[The Frugal Gourmet]

I remember a few people saying every bit of the above before they went there and getting shouted down.