I am a follower of the NHL, and actually feel bad for teams that – year in and year out – can’t seem to climb out of the basement of the league.

I am thinking about the Buffalo Sabres, the Edmonton Oilers, and the Arizona Coyotes for example.

In fact, in light of the North American ‘franchise’ model, I worry that these cities will lose their teams as fan support falls away due to ongoing poor performance.

But why does such poor performance affect teams long-term?

In the case of the NHL, there is a salary structure in place that – theoretically – should mean every team has (relatively) similar access to the best players. So is it collective psychology?

But then, in football, you have teams like Leeds United and Newcastle, which have both plummeted from a respectable past and never recovered.

So, thoughts? Opinions?

I guess that once down in the lower reaches of the leagues, it becomes difficult to attract the best players and coaches. Plus, the general atmosphere affects the player, staff and fans, resulting in a general malaise.

Money

Certainly with American Football, the teams that have done well are the ones that maintain a level of continuity in ownership, coaching, personnel and key players despite the amount of change going on around them.

Cases in point The New England Patriots or The Pittsburgh Steelers.

And showing the way NOT to do it Buffalo Bills or Cleveland Browns.
The Bills have had 10 head coaches since Bill Belichick took over the Head Coach/Chief Warlock position at Pats in 2000.

Also, unlike say Basketball, paying Free Agents huge amounts has very rarely been good VFM. Better to draft well, develop talent from within and sign role players through free agency.

The oilers got McDavid as a 1st round pick and people thought he was gonna turn them around. The truth is a team is so much more than one superstar or individual. With a salary cap in place there is only so many players available with the high skill set. the likes of Mcdavid, Crosby, Kane etc all need good wingers and defence behind them to work their magic. Even in premier league football you can spend serious amounts of money and if the team doesn’t gel you’re not going to win games.

Not enough drugs?

Don’t struggling nfl teams get favourable terms from the league though, eg first go at the draft, financial assistance to keep the league close and to stop 1/2 big teams running away with it every year?

Quality coaching, man management and a winning mentality go an awful long way. The Canucks have been awful for a few years so a new coaching team this season and a player clearout of sorts. It looked to have helped but they’ve only won 2 games in 15 of late. The players they brought in haven’t performed. You need more than 1 star player, McDavid or Boeser. If the trades don’t work and you’re hamstrung with still paying for overinflated contracts like the Canucks are then it’s very difficult to drag yourself out of that.

I am a long suffering Sabres fan, playing the Blue Jackets overnight and I expect another humping. The Sabres downfall was caused by poor choices and lack of investment. Since Ruff left the coac has been terrible and apart from Eischel we haven’t got any really good players, well not enough good players, defence is awful and the two keepers are flaky.

Can’t see the Sabres leaving Buffalo just have to be patient.

But then, in football, you have teams like Leeds United and Newcastle, which have both plummeted from a respectable past and never recovered.

Leeds spent more than they brought in and paid the price, Newcastle haven’t won ANYTHING since midway through the 1900’s and probably never will.

More interesting for me is the state of North East football, with Scarborough, Darlington and Hartlepool out of the league, Hartlepool two weeks away from administration and Sunderland, Boro and Newcastle all really struggling, I don’t see a way back.

Why would a good player go to these places? Money’s nice to have, but presumably a young in demand sportsperson wants access to somewhere nice to live, nice places to hang out and waste your money on a flash sexy lifestyle. Sunderland? Buffalo? Might as well be Falklands United if you’re going places.

Think penalties come down to bottle v practice them so that they don’t

Why would a good player go to these places? Money’s nice to have, but presumably a young in demand sportsperson wants access to somewhere nice to live, nice places to hang out and waste your money on a flash sexy lifestyle. Sunderland? Buffalo? Might as well be Falklands United if you’re going places.

Didn’t think Edmonton was ‘The Place to Be’ but Gretzky stayed there long enough.

(Flames fan here)

Shows what I know the Sabres won 😆 we were using the keeper from our feeder team who made 44 saves.

Don’t struggling nfl teams get favourable terms from the league though, eg first go at the draft, financial assistance to keep the league close and to stop 1/2 big teams running away with it every year?

Yes they get the top picks in the draft and favourable scheduling (last place teams play the last place teams in other divisions) but they don’t get financial assitance. The Salary Cap is the same for everyone. Managing that salary cap is aguably the most important fact or in medium to long term success.

The Toronto hockey team does seem to be an outstandingly bad organisation. Play in the biggest media market in Canada [maybe the most valuable in the entire NHL as places like NY or LA aren’t religious about ice hockey], and they’ve not won a championship for 50 years? That just defies belief – especially as ice hockey, like basketball, is a sport with a small number of players on the field so superstars have profound influence on play.

Have to assume it’s a bit of an Arsenal situation where the owners are just happy to sit back and trouser the revenue season in season out.

I don’t know but if you find the answer could you please let my team – Edinburgh Rugby know?

As an aside, have any of you hockey fans watched Ice Guardians on Netflix? It’s about the heyday of the “enforcers” – the guys who looked after the superstar and went out to murder any of the opposition that hurt the star…or thereabouts (it’s a few months since I watched it and you guys would know more about them than me). It was a fascinating insight into the more brutal side of the game, the long term effects on the players themselves and some counter-intuitive results about injury statistics since the need for the enforcer role has wained. Worth a watch if you’re a hockey fan. I’m not but really enjoyed it.

Thanks for the heads-up, dd.

Leeds spent more than they brought in and paid the price,

That was a long time ago and not the reason we’re where we are. The reason is that we have had a succession of shyster owners who either used the club to fill their pockets whilst selling/mortgaging every asset we had and not investing in the team (Bates), pretending to be Middle East big boys but were actually asset strippers who didn’t have two beans to rub together or was all mouth and no trousers with a huge ego, trying to do everything on the cheap and sacking managers when ‘over entertained’ on various substances.

Hopefully the new chap will finally run us properly. Signs are good so far as he is undoing the damage caused by the rest of them that should provide a platform to build on.

Gretzky did stay a long time, but what did he do then, marry an actress and move to LA, then onwards to New York.

Leeds are overdue a run of competent management and could do ok this time. Needs a genuine big cash injection to be stable in Prem League these days, don’t see that coming.