Good Article Regarding Retools and Rebuilds..

[SameOldBlues]

Very interesting. The Blues are mentioned a few times in it too.

Id be interested in knowing what you came away with thinking after reading it.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/698179 ... -analysis/

[theograce]

Retool is the new buzzword for rebuild in many cases.

Nobody says rebuild anymore

[IsDurbanodoingtime]

Given that none of those Blues listed on trade boards are pending ufas, i don't necessarily think you are going to a sale this deadline or before especially if armey rhinks he is being lowballed. If he is giving the reins to Steen, give him the opportunity to make his mark this summer when teams jave greater flexibility. We are not in the position of losing an asset for nothing. Likely getting top five pick anyway. Just too difficult capwise during the season to move any of our 8 aav salaries without taking someone else's garbage in return.

[callitwhatyouwant]

a total tear down and saying "rebuild" unless something happens in your org that is toxic like what happened with the Blackhawks just isn't happening anymore. The Oil insider yesterday brought up a good point. Canada can sustain rebuilds. They don't win cups, their fans have nothing else to do. It's part of their culture. You can be bad at hockey and people will still go. In the states, there's very few orgs that can pull that off. Even the red wings during this "rebuild" had their attendance drop to the high 80s 90 percent number of capacity. That's some of the most fervent fan base that the states has to offer. So if your ownership group can't handle being at 80 percent capacity, a true rebuild is unlikely to happen.

No one wants to risk doing the full teardown because there haven't been too many teams that have been successful at it when they did it on purpose. San Jose, Buffalo, Detroit, Chicago, Utah/Arizona, Anaheim. The list goes on and on of teams that found themselves on the other side of 5 years and some of these teams are at 8-14 years of ineptitude.

If you can't figure it out in 5, you have a chance to poison the well, and lose a generation of fans. Those are fans you might never get back. You basically have the chance to capture fandom form the age of 10-17. If you don't get a kid to cement their fandom by then, you lose out. It's something like 40 percent of fans are established by 12, and 60ish percent by 17. If you are a bad team for half a decade, you just lost out on 50-60 years of a paying customer.

[juan good eye]

Given that none of those Blues listed on trade boards are pending ufas, i don't necessarily think you are going to a sale this deadline or before especially if armey rhinks he is being lowballed. If he is giving the reins to Steen, give him the opportunity to make his mark this summer when teams jave greater flexibility. We are not in the position of losing an asset for nothing. Likely getting top five pick anyway. Just too difficult capwise during the season to move any of our 8 aav salaries without taking someone else's garbage in return.

Absolute (bleep)

[PPG]

When you think about it, 80% of capacity is not a terrible number.
For the Blues that equates to around 15,000 per game.
For years back in the 1980's, the Blues never averaged more than 12,000- 13,000 per game.
It wasn't until they got Hull AND the Big Red moved to Arizona that things picked up.
Of course that was a completely different era.

[callitwhatyouwant]

When you think about it, 80% of capacity is not a terrible number.
For the Blues that equates to around 15,000 per game.
For years back in the 1980's, the Blues never averaged more than 12,000- 13,000 per game.
It wasn't until they got Hull AND the Big Red moved to Arizona that things picked up.
Of course that was a completely different era.

I mean it's not an insignificant number. The NHL is the most reliant on gate numbers than any of the leagues because it has the smallest TV deal. Some quick numbers for you.

NFL 17% ticket revenue
NBA 26%
MLB 31%
NHL 44%

Now I'm not so sure how reliant this number is, but the average ownership revenue comes from the whole gameday experience which apparently makes up 56 percent of the total revenue a hockey club is bringing in for the season.

So if you lost 20 percent of your gate, you are now at 35.2 percent ticket revenue. and 9.6 percent of your auxiliary income. 44.8 looks a whole lot different than 56 percent. That's 10s of millions of dollars, and if we are to believe hockey ownership across the league, that might be the difference between being solvent and not. Not to mention they say they need playoff revenue to truly turn a profit on a given season.

[Old_Goat]

When you think about it, 80% of capacity is not a terrible number.
For the Blues that equates to around 15,000 per game.
For years back in the 1980's, the Blues never averaged more than 12,000- 13,000 per game.
It wasn't until they got Hull AND the Big Red moved to Arizona that things picked up.
Of course that was a completely different era.

I mean it's not an insignificant number. The NHL is the most reliant on gate numbers than any of the leagues because it has the smallest TV deal. Some quick numbers for you.

NFL 17% ticket revenue
NBA 26%
MLB 31%
NHL 44%

Now I'm not so sure how reliant this number is, but the average ownership revenue comes from the whole gameday experience which apparently makes up 56 percent of the total revenue a hockey club is bringing in for the season.

So if you lost 20 percent of your gate, you are now at 35.2 percent ticket revenue. and 9.6 percent of your auxiliary income. 44.8 looks a whole lot different than 56 percent. That's 10s of millions of dollars, and if we are to believe hockey ownership across the league, that might be the difference between being solvent and not. Not to mention they say they need playoff revenue to truly turn a profit on a given season.

So many of the hockey fans cannot seem to grasp this whole concept of the importance of gate revenue relative to broadcast revenue. So, thank you for finding and posting these data points. Further to the other comments re capturing fans and how that is done in Canada, it's also a good reminder that MLB, NFL and NBA do not have near the percentage of leagues' team based in Canada as the NHL does.
People want winners all of the time and most are too impatient to wait. Maybe the Championship doesn't come, but the hope has to. Look at the dwindling attendance numbers in Baseball Heaven. I can remember only 3,000-4,000 fans in Busch II in late summer of 1973 & 1974 seasons, just a handful of years after a great Cardinals dynasty's last World Series appearance.

[callitwhatyouwant]

When you think about it, 80% of capacity is not a terrible number.
For the Blues that equates to around 15,000 per game.
For years back in the 1980's, the Blues never averaged more than 12,000- 13,000 per game.
It wasn't until they got Hull AND the Big Red moved to Arizona that things picked up.
Of course that was a completely different era.

I mean it's not an insignificant number. The NHL is the most reliant on gate numbers than any of the leagues because it has the smallest TV deal. Some quick numbers for you.

NFL 17% ticket revenue
NBA 26%
MLB 31%
NHL 44%

Now I'm not so sure how reliant this number is, but the average ownership revenue comes from the whole gameday experience which apparently makes up 56 percent of the total revenue a hockey club is bringing in for the season.

So if you lost 20 percent of your gate, you are now at 35.2 percent ticket revenue. and 9.6 percent of your auxiliary income. 44.8 looks a whole lot different than 56 percent. That's 10s of millions of dollars, and if we are to believe hockey ownership across the league, that might be the difference between being solvent and not. Not to mention they say they need playoff revenue to truly turn a profit on a given season.

So many of the hockey fans cannot seem to grasp this whole concept of the importance of gate revenue relative to broadcast revenue. So, thank you for finding and posting these data points. Further to the other comments re capturing fans and how that is done in Canada, it's also a good reminder that MLB, NFL and NBA do not have near the percentage of leagues' team based in Canada as the NHL does.
People want winners all of the time and most are too impatient to wait. Maybe the Championship doesn't come, but the hope has to. Look at the dwindling attendance numbers in Baseball Heaven. I can remember only 3,000-4,000 fans in Busch II in late summer of 1973 & 1974 seasons, just a handful of years after a great Cardinals dynasty's last World Series appearance.

Just a reference as well for what rebuilding means. The Cardinals are in the bottom 4 in spending this year. This is after 20 years of being a top 5 attendance team. The Cardinals fell to 19th in average attendance this year. That's not good. That's one of the most fervent fan bases and reliable fan bases in all of sports. Yet you see what happens when you blatantly don't try. You poison the well. Your average STL fan isn't stupid. They know when you are trying and when you aren't. Army at least is trying to get things right in STL. They have respected his trade offs before. But again, like other fanbases such as Detroit, you aren't going to get people thru the turnstyles and you can't sell them on a bucket of poop if you decide to go that way.

Respect to Yzerman, he has never said his team was a playoff team until they prove to him they are. His on site interviews at the draft are very much blunt like Army's. He will say, we aren't good enough yet, we need to get better.

[Old_Goat]

When you think about it, 80% of capacity is not a terrible number.
For the Blues that equates to around 15,000 per game.
For years back in the 1980's, the Blues never averaged more than 12,000- 13,000 per game.
It wasn't until they got Hull AND the Big Red moved to Arizona that things picked up.
Of course that was a completely different era.

I mean it's not an insignificant number. The NHL is the most reliant on gate numbers than any of the leagues because it has the smallest TV deal. Some quick numbers for you.

NFL 17% ticket revenue
NBA 26%
MLB 31%
NHL 44%

Now I'm not so sure how reliant this number is, but the average ownership revenue comes from the whole gameday experience which apparently makes up 56 percent of the total revenue a hockey club is bringing in for the season.

So if you lost 20 percent of your gate, you are now at 35.2 percent ticket revenue. and 9.6 percent of your auxiliary income. 44.8 looks a whole lot different than 56 percent. That's 10s of millions of dollars, and if we are to believe hockey ownership across the league, that might be the difference between being solvent and not. Not to mention they say they need playoff revenue to truly turn a profit on a given season.

So many of the hockey fans cannot seem to grasp this whole concept of the importance of gate revenue relative to broadcast revenue. So, thank you for finding and posting these data points. Further to the other comments re capturing fans and how that is done in Canada, it's also a good reminder that MLB, NFL and NBA do not have near the percentage of leagues' team based in Canada as the NHL does.
People want winners all of the time and most are too impatient to wait. Maybe the Championship doesn't come, but the hope has to. Look at the dwindling attendance numbers in Baseball Heaven. I can remember only 3,000-4,000 fans in Busch II in late summer of 1973 & 1974 seasons, just a handful of years after a great Cardinals dynasty's last World Series appearance.

Just a reference as well for what rebuilding means. The Cardinals are in the bottom 4 in spending this year. This is after 20 years of being a top 5 attendance team. The Cardinals fell to 19th in average attendance this year. That's not good. That's one of the most fervent fan bases and reliable fan bases in all of sports. Yet you see what happens when you blatantly don't try. You poison the well. Your average STL fan isn't stupid. They know when you are trying and when you aren't. Army at least is trying to get things right in STL. They have respected his trade offs before. But again, like other fanbases such as Detroit, you aren't going to get people thru the turnstyles and you can't sell them on a bucket of poop if you decide to go that way.

Respect to Yzerman, he has never said his team was a playoff team until they prove to him they are. His on site interviews at the draft are very much blunt like Army's. He will say, we aren't good enough yet, we need to get better.

By the way, I saw on a local newscast last night that the Cardinals were ranked SECOND in overall MLB attendance as recently as 2022! I've said many times to friends whom are new to the area and to my kids during the past couple of years, that they cannot take these fans for granted. Especially now that there is relatively more pressure on discretionary spending for many families.

[Cahokanut]

Full teardown/rebuilds.
Only happens after years of not being honest about the team you have.
While the players ages out and new talent either wasnt drafted or wasn't given the space to grow playing behind contracts.
It's the fake, 'we can complete. While not being real competitors. That causes the biggest fan lost.

Teams need to rebuild on the run and keep it honest. With everyone. Know when to fold it, have some balls and fold it.
Also around here a hockey trade means fourth liner, or vet defender. Two things that we have absolutely no need for. Unless they are to coach the team.