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When the NHL and NHLPA were engaged in their death struggle during 2004-05, I read a lot about salary caps and their likely impact. My view was that the NHL was probably going to end up with an economic structure like the NBA. I’m probably not even enough of an NBA fan to qualify as a casual fan but my understanding is that the NBA’s middle class has largely disappeared and teams have a few guys making incredible amounts of money, a small middle class and a large number of guys earning around the league minimum. Looking at the numbers in hockey though, that’s not what’s happened in the past four years.

Whenever you’re looking at this stuff, you need to have a little context. I’m comparing player cap hits in 2005-06 with the cap hits in 2008-09. I’m using the adjusted cap hits, so it allows for players spending part of a season in the NHL. For the 2005-06 data, I used NHLSCAP.com; for last season, I used nhlnumbers.com.

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I thought that this was kind of cool and hadn’t seen it before. The league was still going strong when I stopped wintering in Dawson Creek about 12 years ago, with guys like Marcel Capelle, Gene Cooper and and Dan Brennan playing for the Canucks. The big rivalry as of the late 1990’s was with Hythe, who had a team made up entirely of guys named Toews and Wallan and were, unfortunately, better than the Canucks. Fun hockey to watch though - I’ve never seen a trainer scale the glass to go into the stands since then.

Those of you who don’t read OilersNation will have missed a bizarre dispute over Gilbert Brule’s waiver status for 2009-10. It all started as a result of Jason Gregor’s answer to a question from a reader about the waiver status of Oilers players next season. Gregor (a professional reporter) responded:

Gilbert Brule doesn’t have to clear waivers at the start of the year, but once he plays three NHL games then he would have to.

Rob Schremp, Devon Dubnyk and Liam Reddox don’t have to clear waivers. They have only played three pro years, and have yet to play 160 NHL games, plus they are under 25. I have no idea why anyone would think Reddox needs to clear waivers. If a player has played four years pro, then he has to clear waivers regardless of how many NHL games he has played, or if he is over 25 years of age when the season starts.

Chorney and Peckham don’t have to clear.

Bubble guys that need to clear are Pouliot, MacIntyre, Jacques, Potulny (although I don’t think he has a chance of making team) and Stone.

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The reasons for Judge Baum’s rejection of Jim Balsillie’s offer to buy the Phoenix Coyotes is available online. Looking at some of the early stories, it seems to me that the story in Canada is probably going to be that the Coyotes will not be playing in Hamilton next year. That looks to be true. There are a lot of interesting pieces in the decision though. Like this, on the NHL’s right to approve Balsillie as an owner:

“Significant to the court here regarding the objection to the transfer of the ownership to the Phoenix Coyotes is the fact that in 2006 the NHL approved PSE to become a member of the NHL. The court has the firm sense that if the only issue here was PSE purchasing the Phoenix Coyotes [no relocation term] there would be no objection from the NHL. The law implies in every contract a convenant of good faith and fair dealing. Even where one party retains, by virtue of the contract, a right of approval or disapproval or a discretionary power over the right of the other, such parameters must be exercised within the parameters of good faith.”

PSE is Balsillie’s corporate alter-ego here. Reading between the lines, that reads to me like a pretty strong statement that the judge wouldn’t be convinced by any arguments that the NHL doesn’t like Balsillie as an owner, if a dispute ended up in front of him about it.

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Paul Kelly, per Puck Daddy:

Q. Viktor Kozlov(notes) signed in Russia earlier this week. There is also talk in Russia that Avangard Omsk is trying to get Michael Nylander over to the KHL. This brings the following question: in the absence of the transfer agreement between the NHL and the Russians, how can a player, like Nylander, with an NHL contract go and play it Russia?

KELLY: Technically, he can’t. Unless the Capitals take certain steps to end his contract by buying him out or something like that. And this is one of the issues we have had with the KHL. We should be respecting each other’s contracts. The NHL shouldn’t be signing any players under contract in Russia, and vice versa, they shouldn’t be signing guys who have NHL obligations. We will watch that very carefully, but they should not permit players, who have contractual obligations elsewhere, to sign.

Never in my life did I think I’d see a union leader who opposed greater opportunity and choice for the members of his union. I pointed this out to someone else, who wonders if this extends to players making trade demands - does Paul Kelly think that they should shut up and honour their contracts? I don’t know if this is just a poorly considered response or what, but if I played in the NHL, I would expect that my union’s position on this was, at worst, “No comment.”

Bizarre.

From Kevin McGran, Toronto Star:

The NHL is threatening an indemnity fee on top of a relocation fee – pushing the price tag for the Phoenix Coyotes to perhaps more than $400 million – if bankruptcy court judge Redfield Baum allows the team to move to Hamilton.

“Relocation is separate from indemnity,” said NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly. “There may be indemnity fees owing if a franchise were ever located in Hamilton.”

Daly is, I think, relying on the NHL constitution when he makes this statement - it provides for both of these fees. From an economic perspective, I don’t think that Bill Daly can be right about this. As I understand things, the judge has basically spelled out the formula here by which a fair price is determined: Value of the Hamilton Opportunity - Value of the Phoenix Opportunity.

As I see it though, the value of the Hamilton opportunity has to either include the indemnity that would be payable to the Leafs and Sabres, or allow for it; in my view, you can’t calculate the value of Hamilton without knowing the indemnity payout that has to be made to the Leafs and Sabres.

This could result in a situation in which the value of Hamilton to the league is nothing. Say, for example, that the league determines the fair price of a hockey team in Hamilton (in terms of the value of the revenues) to be $350MM but that it also concludes that the damage done to the revenue streams of the Leafs and Sabres equals $375MM. In those circumstances, the value of Hamilton to the league is zero - the rights that it owns in Hamilton are worth less than the damage that would be done to the rights that the NHL has already sold in Buffalo and Toronto.

I don’t know that it’s all that crazy to think that the value of the opportunity to the NHL may, in fact, not be worth that much, and that most of the value would consist of taking away rights from Buffalo and Toronto. When you buy an NHL team, you’re essentially buying revenue streams. In this case, the 1/30th share of centrally generated revenue has already been purchased from the NHL by someone. The rights to sell local games on TV in Southern Ontario belong to the Maple Leafs. The territorial rights belong to either Buffalo or Toronto; I’m a bit fuzzy on this point. It’s not at all clear to me what, exactly, the NHL has to sell here that wasn’t already purchased when the Jets, Maple Leafs and Sabres came into the league. Arguably, whatever additional payment Balsillie has to make should be divided between them.

If anything, you could argue that NHL owners are probably getting a windfall here - collectively, they would be getting the rights to the Phoenix market back if Balsillie were allowed to move the team. Even if they (other than Buffalo and Toronto) got $0 for Hamilton, it’s hard to see that they’re not ahead, as they’ve already sold the rights to play and televise games in Hamilton and the right to receive a 1/30th share of centrally generated revenues. Where’s the loss?

I read Jamie Gordon’s piece on Dany Heatley at the recommendation of David Staples. I am something less than impressed. Per Gordon:

It isn’t shocking because Heatley’s actions and attitude this season belied assertions that he enjoyed the pressure that rained down from the 19,153 fans who normally fill Scotiabank Place to capacity and demand nothing but the best from their professional hockey representatives.

It’s a kind of pressure that that brings out greatness in some, and crushes others (re: Joe Corvo).

By mid-season, it was clear he was unhappy. By the end of the season, he was just plain belligerent.

The team placed an ‘A’ on his jersey in what was supposed to be a harbinger of the 28-year-old’s graduation from talented scorer to a two-way leader who could be tip of the spear in a club’s battle for the Stanley Cup.

He buckled. Hard. It all started out well and good. Heatley played the part early, acting as a spokesman for the squad as it hobbled out of the gate under new coach Craig Hartsburg. Then, as the season rolled on, he started rolling his eyes or making sounds of disgust at those who would dare ask what was wrong with the team or him specifically.

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Interesting. Tom M. Tango, a bright guy who I’ve referenced here before, has acknowledged that he was one of the Coleman Analytics guys. Tom doesn’t strike me as a dumb guy and I’m inclined to give a little more weigh to to their work, with the knowledge that he was involved. Interestingly, given the “clutch” stuff that Mike Smith was talking about (and which was panned by this group, here and here), Tom also recently wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journaltalking about playoff clutch.

The 2007-08 Edmonton Oilers were a lousy hockey team at ES. They were outshot 1984-1710. They were outscored 181-157. Bad times.

There was a great deal of discussion at Lowetide’s this past week about defensive and offensive zone faceoffs and whether or not they affect a player’s scoring numbers. There seems to be a general consensus that a wide swing one way or the other will have some impact, but nobody seemed to know what the impact would be. I wanted to get a sense of that, so I took a look at the splits from the 2007-08 Oilers after offensive zone faceoffs and defensive zone faceoffs.

I was surprised at how extreme it is. In the thirty seconds following offensive zone faceoffs, the Oilers were dominant, outshooting the opposition 217-121 and outscoring them 18-10. After defensive zone faceoffs, they were the flip side, getting outshot 315-161 and outscored 26-16. There’s still a marked edge after 45 seconds, which is basically an entire shift. One’s like being the best team in the NHL, the other is like being the worst.

Assuming that this is in some way typical of NHL teams as a whole and that’s its not an effect created by lousier players tending to get the defensive draws - I would think that it is typical and that offensive and defensive zone draws are spread widely enough - then guys who are taking a lot of defensive zone faceoffs are going to be taking a bit of a hit on their numbers, whereas guys who start a disproportionate amount of time at the other end of the ice are going to look better than they otherwise are.

How big of an effect are we talking about? Tough to say. The numbers I’ve assembled say that the Oilers and their opposition were taking about 29.3 ESS/60 in the 45 seconds after taking an offensive zone faceoff and allowing about 18.6 ESS/60. Now, sometimes there would be situations where you’ve got multiple faceoffs in a 45 second span, which will drive my numbers down, but there does appear to be a substantial effect. If you figure a .920 save percentage, you can probably figure on something like 2.4 ESGF/60 and 1.5 ESGA/60 as the expected outcome in the 45 seconds following an offensive zone faceoff, with the reverse being true when you start with a defensive zone faceoff. These numbers do strike me as being somewhat low across the board, to be honest - I’m not sure why that is. It seems to me that, while the spread is probably about right, there should be more shots for/against and goals for/against.

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