Jan Schedule Here

1/2 the country will get Pittsburgh / Philly for the season's first game (bunch of goons except giroux / crosby), and the other 1/2 will get a great game between Chicago and LA.

I know a lot of hockey fans are pissed off, but speaking from where I sit in the media business, it had to happen this way, you can't have that many teams being cashflow negative (not counting royalties, which doesn't count for much in cities like Phoenix, Nashville, Carolina, etc; and would still not count for much in cities like Halifax, Hamilton, Quebec City so go frick yourself it's better to have teams in the southern US). The new deal is much better for everyone. Under the old arrangement a bunch of teams would fail in the next couple of years, and only big market teams would be in serious contention (insert joke here about more than 1/2 the teams getting into the playoffs, but whatever you a-hole probably watch the NCAA tournament and it's no worse than that).

I've heard a lot of noise about people cancelling their tickets and not watching the games when they come back. Honestly I don't give a frick what you do. But if you think you're making an impact you won't be making much of one. There's guys like me that can't afford to take their family to a game normally that will gladly scoop up your tickets. You're going to watch from home. You know you will. And if you don't? who gives a frick? you not tuning into the game only had an opportunity cost of $0.75 in advertising to the team anyways. less games mean that they all matter more. To put this into perspective, since a lot of you are caps fans:

- the caps lost $1M last year all in not counting royalties.
- in order to break even they would have had to have sold around $10m of merchandise. That's 80k ovechkin jerseys. The caps only had 54k people watch per evening in the DC metro area. That's piss fricking poor. Maybe the caps made money, maybe they didn't. But it sure as shite wasn't anything more than basically breaking even there's no way that the caps would have been able to afford 1 marquis player @ $4m+ a season including royalties.

A shorter season makes for a more competitive season. Going to be a lot of fun!