Spare me the nostalgia for a theme song that probably couldn’t identify any of the great folks at ESPN, who spent years on the airwaves without mentioning the NHL, even if LeBron James and Tom Brady hum it.
Don’t tell me how much the NHL will benefit from the exposure of having its games on any of the Disney platforms, streaming or otherwise. Here’s what I’ve always wanted to know: What would an adult outside of Bristol, Connecticut, possess to ever refer to a television network as “the mothership” or “the global leader”?
There’s one thing and one thing that only matters about the NHL’s media rights agreement with Disney, ESPN and their affiliate brands, including the Hulu streaming service, and that’s the money.
This is Slap Shots ‘Rod Tidwell moment: show me the money and tell me how quickly introducing it into league earnings can erase the NHL Players’ Association escrow debt that threatens to strangle the league after its expiration of the current collective labor agreement.
That’s all that matters.
The salary ceiling, under the agreement forged last summer, cannot rise more than $ 1 million per season until the escrow debt is paid off. Aside from that, if a certain amount of escrow debt remains in the ledger in 2024-25, the parties should devise a formula under which the PA would repay the competition in full after the expiration of 2025-26 of the CBA. Won’t that be fun? Children who are currently 13 years old and play bantam hockey should pay for this.
The deal with ESPN is estimated to be worth approximately $ 420 million per year. A secondary package to be negotiated or finalized with a second media rights partner is expected to be approximately $ 200 million. That clearly represents a substantial increase from the $ 200 million per total that the NHL receives under its current agreement with the NBC networks, but it probably isn’t the grand slam home run – OK, natural hat-trick – that the league might get. before the pandemic hit. .
Escrow debt at the end of this season is likely to be around $ 900 million. If the players just return their half of the incoming TV money, that’s what, about $ 310 million each? So it would take three years in cash for media rights to offset the current debt.
Except that debt will almost certainly increase as a result of the annual wage cost overrun. It is still unclear what next season’s protocols might entail and whether full halls will be allowed in the league. But even as competition revenues bounce back to the $ 5 billion mark projected for a completed 2019-2020, escrow deductions were 14 percent.
After next season’s bail is capped at between 16 and 18 percent, it will be capped at 10 percent in 2022-23 and at six percent in the next three years of the deal. So unless the NHL generates additional revenue-generating initiatives, there will be spills every season, and no one knows exactly where and when it will stop.
Maybe the NHL will thrive with exposure to ESPN, maybe the network will direct other properties to its Plus streaming site and hockey will reap additional benefits from that. But this deal was all about the money. The NHL will only be in debt to ESPN if this deal can cover the PA debt.
Not so much this season, if it all went wrong at Buffalo, but even when Taylor Hall had its Hart Trophy season in New Jersey 14 years ago (what is that? It was only three years ago?), There were people all over the league talk about how the winger was an ‘me’ man in a ‘we’ sport.
Would the Islanders, the Ultimate We Team run by the Ultimate We Guys, Lou Lamoriello and Barry Trotz, dare to bring Hall into the mix as a rental car on the trade deadline if Anders Lee’s injury is as serious as it might seem?
Here’s the rule about Lamoriello: there are no rules.
If you think you know what he’s going to do, you don’t know.
Honestly, ESPN includes a group of professionals who will certainly handle hockey with tender loving care, although it is inevitable that the network will do its best to call a halt to the sport as it regularly does with most of its other properties.
If there’s a petition that needs signatures to get Gary Thorne on next season’s play-by-play people roster, you can just add mine electronically at this point.
Snapshot, about halfway through. Elite Eight: 1. Islanders; 2. Tampa Bay; 3. Toronto; 4. Carolina; 5. Vegas; 6. Washington; Florida; Pittsburgh.
Mid Season, Biggest Disappointments: 1. Dallas; 2. Colorado; 3. Columbus; 4. Nashville.
Mid season, biggest surprises: 1. Chicago; 2. Winnipeg; 3. Los Angeles; Florida.
Who would bet that the seven-game suspension imposed against Tom Wilson for his cheap shot that concussed Brandon Carlo was down to a Sixth Avenue that was just as annoyed as the rest of us by the Department of Player Safety to comb the fine print to allow repeat headhunters to go free?
You realize, don’t you, that during Friday’s games, seven of the NHL’s top 13 goalscorers were born in the US, three of them from Canada?
Who had 36-year-old Dustin Brown in seventh place in the league in scoring goals, with 13 through Friday?
Better question: Who, even a few seasons ago, still had Brown on the Kings at the age of 36?
Maybe in the competition?
Is there more separation between 2015’s first and second overalls, Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel, or between 2016’s Auston Matthews and Patrik Laine?
Finally this Quick Quiz: Is Laine the new age Marian Gaborik?
Responses will be judged by visiting professor John Tortorella, who will most likely not be tenured after the semester.