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Friday, June 2, 2000
Crunching numbers
Two announcements this week proving that the NHL must surely go the way of the Roman Empire, the lambada and the hula hoop:
1. Vancouver Canucks announce that they lost $34.4 million in the nine months ending March 31, OR $12.7 million more than they lost over the same stretch one year earlier.
2. Edmonton Oilers proudly announce that they have secured the services of an untested junior hockey refugee named Michael Henrich for a mere $975,000 per season, plus a lucrative bonus package.
Put them together and anyone above the intelligence level of a patio brick would have to reach one simple conclusion:
The people running both teams are nuts.
Mr. John McCaw, the reclusive Seattle moneybags who just divest himself of the basketball Grizzlies for a tidy $160 million US, should get on the horn post haste, call fellow zillionaire Paul Allen in Portland and say "OK, so you didn't get the Phoenix Coyotes, but have I got a team for you!"
Before signing anything, the 37 (give or take a hundred) people now running the Oilers should have asked young Mr. Henrich a simple question:
"Uh, kid. If you don't play hockey, what other job offers do you have that will let you enter the labour force at a starting salary of $100,000, never mind 10 times that plus bonuses?"
McCaw would flip the Canucks in a minute if they were a cell phone company or a shopping mall and were dripping so much red you'd think they'd ruptured an artery. What's so special about hockey?
By what mysterious process does the game lobotomize its team owners the instant they sign the papers? (Duck, Gretz! Those aren't hair-clippers!)
In what business outside professional sport do you create instant millionaires out of kids, and commit to doing it again the next year and the one after that, before they've proved they can play in the NHL for a period, let alone a career?
If the same kid applied for a job with one of McCaw's myriad other companies and demanded $985,000 a pop locked in for three years -- "Oh, yeah! And I want one of them lucre ... lucra ... really big bonus packages" -- how fast would his butt be down the elevator shaft?
Now, I realize it's a dip in the Fantasy Land hot tub to suggest that some owner would chip a line in the ice and say: "Here I make my stand. You're a 20-year-old kid. You majored in hockey with a minor in public spitting. Take a quarter-mil or hit the road."
It's also a given that figures lie and figure filberts fib, and that when the entire Orca Bay pot is totalled, the net loss won't be quite that bleak.
But it will be bleak enough that, were it any sane business, it would be up for sale or the blinds would be drawn and there'd be a sign on the door:
CLOSING OUT SALE!
MARK MESSIER, REDUCED TO CLEAR!
FREE CARRYING CASE WITH ANY
PURCHASE OVER $1 MILLION
The owners wet their own beds dreaming of Stanley Cups. They were so busy being sportsmen they forgot to be businessmen, and they signed a collective bargaining agreement that made them the bank vault and the players pimply-faced Al Capones.
In any other business, they'd sell, move, or fold. One day, they'll remember how they got rich.
It wasn't by pouring dollars down sewers.
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