Rough times dudes

[Bacchk29]

Ok maybe i overreacted in trading Parayko

No. Parayko should have been traded 2 years ago and the rebuild fully embraced...the last 2 years have been wasted.

selling out almost every home game

The last 2 years make sense if that is their only objective.

If you want to have the Blues remain healthy and in St Louis then the franchise needs stable attendance

This isn’t 1983. So tired of this narrative. The partners have made money hand over fist since buying the Blues. 5th in the League in attendance TV ratings recently. Zero chance they go anywhere even if they’re bad for a couple of years.

[Harry S Deals]

Ok maybe i overreacted in trading Parayko

No. Parayko should have been traded 2 years ago and the rebuild fully embraced...the last 2 years have been wasted.

selling out almost every home game

The last 2 years make sense if that is their only objective.

If you want to have the Blues remain healthy and in St Louis then the franchise needs stable attendance

This isn’t 1983. So tired of this narrative. The partners have made money hand over fist since buying the Blues. 5th in the League in attendance TV ratings recently. Zero chance they go anywhere even if they’re bad for a couple of years.

Right, bad for a couple of years i agree. If this were to become a decade of futility somehow i would begin to worry

[MandatoryDenial]

Right, bad for a couple of years i agree. If this were to become a decade of futility somehow i would begin to worry

I don't see St. Louis becoming a Buffalo. One thing that the front office might want to do however is beef up the scouting department. I have been looking at the last few years of second round picks (when we picked them). I am not sure we are actually drafting well after that first round. We may need to beef up on that.

Edit: Nah, I am wrong here. What threw me was the lack of draft selections in this round.

[steve li]

Ok maybe i overreacted in trading Parayko

No. Parayko should have been traded 2 years ago and the rebuild fully embraced...the last 2 years have been wasted.

selling out almost every home game

The last 2 years make sense if that is their only objective.

If you want to have the Blues remain healthy and in St Louis then the franchise needs stable attendance

This isn’t 1983. So tired of this narrative. The partners have made money hand over fist since buying the Blues. 5th in the League in attendance TV ratings recently. Zero chance they go anywhere even if they’re bad for a couple of years.

It's always easy to spend someone else's money...

[BalotelliMassive]

This isn’t 1983. So tired of this narrative. The partners have made money hand over fist since buying the Blues. 5th in the League in attendance TV ratings recently.

Their television deal sucks to the point that they had to cut all of their talent from last season and combine it with radio.

[Bacchk29]

Ok maybe i overreacted in trading Parayko

No. Parayko should have been traded 2 years ago and the rebuild fully embraced...the last 2 years have been wasted.

selling out almost every home game

The last 2 years make sense if that is their only objective.

If you want to have the Blues remain healthy and in St Louis then the franchise needs stable attendance

This isn’t 1983. So tired of this narrative. The partners have made money hand over fist since buying the Blues. 5th in the League in attendance TV ratings recently. Zero chance they go anywhere even if they’re bad for a couple of years.

It's always easy to spend someone else's money...

How did you arrive at that from what I said?

[Bacchk29]

This isn’t 1983. So tired of this narrative. The partners have made money hand over fist since buying the Blues. 5th in the League in attendance TV ratings recently.

Their television deal sucks to the point that they had to cut all of their talent from last season and combine it with radio.

A lot of teams dealing with FanDuel are having issues with their TV contract. Doesn’t mean they’re having financial issues.

[sneptsmoustache]

From an equity standpoint this ownership group is swimming in equity...they paid $120m for the franchise in 2012, and the current value is estimated at $1.5B. You'd be hard pressed to find a better return on many investments, especially if they used leverage. Say for instance Tom Stillman put in $60m for a 50% stake, and he used $40m of his own money and borrowed another $20m, he has turned that $40m into something worth $750m. Far more money than he made from selling beer, presumably.

What's unknown is whether the organization is cash flow breakeven or not. They generated positive EBITDA in 2023 (around $9-$10m), but that doesn't necessarily translate to actual cash flow. Let's assume they burn a few million in cash each year, even so, they could simply borrow against their equity for many many years and still be WAY ahead. That's why it was a head-scratcher when they let JK go. Like, what did they save by doing that? A million bucks?

Put differently, this is nothing like 1983.

[BalotelliMassive]

This isn’t 1983. So tired of this narrative. The partners have made money hand over fist since buying the Blues. 5th in the League in attendance TV ratings recently.

Their television deal sucks to the point that they had to cut all of their talent from last season and combine it with radio.

A lot of teams dealing with FanDuel are having issues with their TV contract. Doesn’t mean they’re having financial issues.

The Blues called their change a "strategic realignment" - the strategy was to have a worse pbp team do tv and radio? No....it's a money move.

[Inglewood Jack]

From an equity standpoint this ownership group is swimming in equity...they paid $120m for the franchise in 2012, and the current value is estimated at $1.5B. You'd be hard pressed to find a better return on many investments, especially if they used leverage. Say for instance Tom Stillman put in $60m for a 50% stake, and he used $40m of his own money and borrowed another $20m, he has turned that $40m into something worth $750m. Far more money than he made from selling beer, presumably.

What's unknown is whether the organization is cash flow breakeven or not. They generated positive EBITDA in 2023 (around $9-$10m), but that doesn't necessarily translate to actual cash flow. Let's assume they burn a few million in cash each year, even so, they could simply borrow against their equity for many many years and still be WAY ahead. That's why it was a head-scratcher when they let JK go. Like, what did they save by doing that? A million bucks?

Put differently, this is nothing like 1983.

They could've been renamed to the Saskatoon Sasquatch - just rolls off the tongue.

As you state, they could borrow against equity for cash, but they probably want positive cash flow, or at least break even. They would still have to pay interest on the loans and would need to generate cash for that or take out higher loans to cover, and then when the loans are due, keep refinancing if the cash flow isn't there. Paper rich, cash poor?

[sneptsmoustache]

From an equity standpoint this ownership group is swimming in equity...they paid $120m for the franchise in 2012, and the current value is estimated at $1.5B. You'd be hard pressed to find a better return on many investments, especially if they used leverage. Say for instance Tom Stillman put in $60m for a 50% stake, and he used $40m of his own money and borrowed another $20m, he has turned that $40m into something worth $750m. Far more money than he made from selling beer, presumably.

What's unknown is whether the organization is cash flow breakeven or not. They generated positive EBITDA in 2023 (around $9-$10m), but that doesn't necessarily translate to actual cash flow. Let's assume they burn a few million in cash each year, even so, they could simply borrow against their equity for many many years and still be WAY ahead. That's why it was a head-scratcher when they let JK go. Like, what did they save by doing that? A million bucks?

Put differently, this is nothing like 1983.

They could've been renamed to the Saskatoon Sasquatch - just rolls off the tongue.

As you state, they could borrow against equity for cash, but they probably want positive cash flow, or at least break even. They would still have to pay interest on the loans and would need to generate cash for that or take out higher loans to cover, and then when the loans are due, keep refinancing if the cash flow isn't there. Paper rich, cash poor?

Yeah, fair point, but I'm wondering if they actually hold any debt. I went back and checked - the $120m purchase price was 50/50 equity/debt. Meaning they had $60m in debt at some point, but one would think that that's either been paid down or restructured or something. And the ownership group has been relatively stable since then. I guess it still boils down to whether the franchise is cashflow breakeven or not...if they are burning $20m a year in cash or something like that, I guess it would make more sense for them to tighten the purse strings. But I have no idea how much revenue sharing they get from the league, ticket sales, etc. I don't believe they make any money from concessions, as Checketts sold 20-30 year rights to that in 2005.

My guess is that they are burning some cash. The fact that they're losing out on a big chunk of profits from beer and hot dogs is probably the difference. Still, if they're sitting on that much equity, I'm not going to shed too many tears for them. I do think they could sustain a multiyear period of poor performance and still be fine, would just eat into their equity a bit.

Alright the more I think about this, the more I believe that making the playoffs is critical for this team. Let's say they get an extra $10m from revenue from a couple of rounds of playoffs...ticket sales, merch, TV revenue...that's super high margin and could be the difference between tapping into their revolver or actually squirreling away a few million bucks back into their cash account.

(Yes I am a finance geek and I just spent way too much time thinking about this instead of working)

[Blues Dave]

Good thread to make folks here think about lots of different scenarios. But unfortunately our Blues won't cooperate in being too terrible. They keep showing signs every once in a while of what the possibilities could be. We can pick out when our favorite players show their real good stuff, but one of the other fan favorites gets in the way, and messes stuff up. And then, we know what's coming. The player that messed something up before, does something amazing on another play. In my opinion, we have the rest of the team messing somethin up. Or making great plays.

But no matter what happens, Hof and Binny get most of the spotlight in bad situations, and not so much if it's them who does the amazing stuff. I just wouldn't do to much of anything major. At least fo a few more weeks, to see if Monty and the team can get their heads together to put us on the right track. I'm not happy at all with the way we're playing, but we can still take a bit more time. I wouldn't say this if I believed we could make some moves and all of a sudden become an instant threat to win the Cup, or close to it. I just don't see the odds of that happening.

[DawgDad]

Good thread to make folks here think about lots of different scenarios. But unfortunately our Blues won't cooperate in being too terrible. They keep showing signs every once in a while of what the possibilities could be. We can pick out when our favorite players show their real good stuff, but one of the other fan favorites gets in the way, and messes stuff up. And then, we know what's coming. The player that messed something up before, does something amazing on another play. In my opinion, we have the rest of the team messing somethin up. Or making great plays.

But no matter what happens, Hof and Binny get most of the spotlight in bad situations, and not so much if it's them who does the amazing stuff. I just wouldn't do to much of anything major. At least fo a few more weeks, to see if Monty and the team can get their heads together to put us on the right track. I'm not happy at all with the way we're playing, but we can still take a bit more time. I wouldn't say this if I believed we could make some moves and all of a sudden become an instant threat to win the Cup, or close to it. I just don't see the odds of that happening.

The Blues aren't just getting beat they're getting beat up. Snuggerud and Walker out multiple weeks now, Toropchenko out, too, Thomas banged up. Neighbours hasn't found the net yet since he's been back. On top of a general veteran power outage offensively.

On a positive note Holloway shows signs of returning to form and there is still some energy from the backline guys. They will need much more, offensively, without slipping defensively with 2/3 of the 4th line energy out. I'm at the point of giving up on higher expectations from the veteran forwards and the lack of goals from defensemen not named Faulk is a deepening concern. Not realistic to expect callups to move the needle short term. On that front, Dvorsky needs to do SOMETHING offensively at ES, he's into Buchnevich dysfunction territory.

[joerubtube]

The Armie system has once again mastered the art of making a 4 line team of forechecking, hard workers.
It is kind of mind boggling that a team can stay afloat in the NHL without one single glimmer of scoring talent year after year. Just watch other teams. For the most part they all have something called a scoring threat. We can’t forecheck forever.

[Hazelwood72]

The Armie system has once again mastered the art of making a 4 line team of forechecking, hard workers.
It is kind of mind boggling that a team can stay afloat in the NHL without one single glimmer of scoring talent year after year. Just watch other teams. For the most part they all have something called a scoring threat. We can’t forecheck forever.

We rode the 4-line and forecheck strategy to a Stanley Cup in 2019. However, we had bigger, more mobile players, and more talent back then.

When Army jettisoned Petro, Bortuzzo, Perron, Maroon, O’Reilly, Barbashev, and other physical players, and when JayBo’s heart gave out, and when Steen and Gunnarsson aged out, and we didn’t replace them with similar type players, you can’t play that style successfully.

[Absolut]

Now saying trust the process. Thought cards would have ruined the phrase around here..