Raiden said:
Come on, why the negativity? At least the team is consistent, no?:biggrin2:
The Leafs are completely clueless, when it comes to salary cap economics. They spend most of their money on injury prone, high priced older players, then spend cheaply on half a roster of average players.
The problem is the ownership, and the fan base. If the Leafs lost every game in the season, the ACC would still be sold out. The MLSE consortium is led by the nose by a pension fund, that wants to earn a specific return on investment. They aren't concerned with winning championships.
To win in Sports, you need to have a primary owner who wants to own a winning team, even if he loses money to do so. The prototype is
Mark Cuban, owner of the
Dallas Mavericks. He made billions in the first
dot com He sold Broadcast.com in 1999 for 5.7 Billion dollars worth of Yahoo! Stock.
If he made 3% interest on 5.7 Billion dollars each year, that would be $171 Million.
Unfortunately, the ownership has no interest in selling the team. It's a cash cow. They would rather fight for the 8th seed, and a possibility of three home playoff dates, than tank a few seasons in a row, to get some young, cheap talent.
I lived in Montreal in the 70's, when it was a forgone conclusion that they would win the Stanley Cup every year. The attitude in Montreal was "Wake me up for the finals", and when they did win, it was "Pfft. It took them six games, and what about that game where they were trailing after two periods?".
I don't watch hockey anymore. If they wanted to improve the game, the first thing to do would be to ban the curved stick. You can't stick handle, or backhand the puck, with a curved stick. Any hit from behind, if a player doesn't have the puck, should be a five minute major, and a ten minute misconduct. Any player who has the puck, however, and doesn't have his head up, deserves whatever he gets.
It's a tough game, but hockey is for pussies, compared to a 'real man's' sport, like
Hurling,
Aussie Rules Football, or
Test Cricket. A Test match in Cricket can last 37½ hours, over five consecutive days.