NHL Revenues:Size DOES Matter

Back in May, the Toronto Star published figures which it said showed the average ticket revenue per game for NHL teams. Combining that information with the recently published Forbes list, I thought it would interesting to see which teams generated the most revenue from non-ticket sales sources (tv contracts, corporate sponsorships, marketing etc). Two conclusions: large US cities, even those with mediocre on-ice results and attendance like L.A. and Chicago, can still generate well above average non-ticket revenues, simply because of the sheer mass of advertising and corporate dollars available in those metro areas. The New York metro area generates $173 million between the three teams. A second team in Toronto would only have to generate non-ticket revenues equal to the Islanders ($40 mil)to be in the top ten in total revenues for the entire league. Conversely, the smaller Canadian cities, Calgary and Edmonton, struggle to produce non-ticket revenues. And one of the smallest US metro areas, Columbus, is in dire straits, producing more than a third less non-ticket revenues than the average franchise even before this year's anticipated drop in sponsorship income.
The list is below: if the details of revenue sharing (how much teams paid out and how much other teams received) were known the bottom of the list would surely change. Florida is an anomaly here, even if you assume they received revenue sharing funds, they still generated about as much in non-ticket revenue as Colorado or Minnesota. Again, the sheer size of the corporate market may be a factor in the Panthers' numbers.
1. Toronto $78 mil 2. NYR $75 mil 3. LA $63 mil 4. Boston $60 mil 5. NJ $58 mil 6. Det $56 mil 7. Montreal $56 mil 8. Chicago $55 mil 9. Dallas $55 mil 10. Tampa $54 mil 11. Florida $52 mil 12. Phil $51 mil 13. Anaheim $48 mil 14. Phx $48 mil 15. Wash $48 mil 16. STL $47 mil 17. Van $47 mil 18. ATL $46 mil 19. Car $45 mil 20. Buff $44 mil 21. Pitt $44 mil 22. Col $43 mil 23. Minn $43 mil 24. Nash $42 mil 25. Ott $42 mil 26. NYI $40 mil 27. CGY $37 mil 28. SJS $37 mil 29. CBJ $36 mil 30. Edm $33 mil

KHL Salaries

1. Avangard $30.8 mil 2. Ak Bars $23.7 mi 3. Atlant $20.9 mil 4. Salavat Yulajev $20.6 mil 5. SKA $19.6 mil 6 .Lokomotiv $19.6 mil 7 .Metalurg Mg. $18.9 8. Dynamo Moscow $17.8 mil 9. Serverstal $16.3 mil 10. CSKA $14.5 mil 11. Lada $13.4 mil 12. Torpedo $12.8 mil. 13. Barys $12.1 mil 14. Spartak $9.4 mil 15. Sibirj $8.2 mil 16. Metalurg Nk. $8.2 mil 17. Neftekhimik $8.0 mil 18. Vitjaz $8.0 mil 19 .Traktor $7.9 mil 20. MVD $7.3 mil 21. Amur $7.1 mil 22. Dinamo Rīga $5.8 mil 23. Dynamo Minsk $4.5 mil 24. Khimik $4.3 mil
Division leaders are in bold. Teams in italics are in last place in their division.

Salary figures are from the KHL website (http://khl.ru/news/2008/10/3/4320.html-an earlier news release (Oct 1, 2008) did not include bonuses or salaries for key players ). Currency conversion was done on 10/04/08 at the London Interbank Rate (25.9 rubles to one US dollar).
The league median is $12,5 million per team,which is a little above the minimum announced last June. The total league payroll is about $328 million. About all I can say about a league in which the highest payroll is more than seven times (700%) the lowest is good luck ever achieving parity.

DOES YOUR TEAM NEED IMPROVEMENT? FIRE THE COACH,
LEARN HOW TO PLAY DEFENSE,
AND, BY THE WAY, YOU MIGHT HIRE A NEW BACKUP GOALIE

I looked at 20 seasons, choosing the two teams from each season that improved the most in standings points: the median improvement was 24 points. DEFENSE: Thirty of the forty teams improved their GA totals significantly. The median improvement was 18.5 %, or somewhere north of forty-five fewer goals allowed . Improvements in offense were less dramatic at 9.5 %. COACHES: Not surprising that there were so many coaching changes, the 60% (24 of 30) dovetails nicely with the fact that 65% of these teams had declined in the standings during the previous season. Is there a "Bruce Boudreau effect" at work here? ROSTER TURNOVER: I tried to identify a basic 20 man roster and I don't think I'm far off. Obviously there were more roster movements (injury call-ups, rookie tryouts, veterans acquired in trade at the end of the season) but the median is 6 players out of the hypothetical 20, or 30%. Some teams made wholesale changes: in Mario Lemieux's second season, he had 11 new friends on the Penguins roster. ROOKIES: The median is 2 on the 20 man roster. A few like Lidstrom, Malkin (the Pens did not improve by a single point in Crosby's rookie year) were major contributors, but mostly these teams used rookies as supporting cast. GOALIES: The median is 1: there were a few cases where a number one goalie made a major contribution but most of the goalies added were either backups or junior partners in a shared goaltending arrangement. CONCLUSIONS: Anecdotally, many of these teams had made significant changes the year before their big improvement. So if the Chicago Blackhawks add some more defense this year, look out for them. Alternatively, what was Wayne Gretzky Thinking (he was thinking about Kurt Sauer?) by trading away two solid defensemen?

Draft positon and success

Using 200 NHL games as a standard, 90% of defensemen taken among the top ten picks, have achieved that goal, 65% of those taken in picks 11-20, 59% of those taken in picks 21-30. The most successful drafts in terms of d-men were 1979 (13 of 14) and 1998 (10 of 11).

D-MEN TAKE LONGER...BUT NOT MUCH LONGER

The median age at which the 80 defensemen currently in the NHL who were first round picks played at least half of their team's games: 20.5 years. The median for 85 centers picked in the first round: 20 years. Forty-three or 51% of the centers had played at least 41 games by age 19: by contrast,twenty-two or 28% of the defensemen had achieved this by the age of 19.It's a difference but not that significant when you consider that forwards can break in by playing 4th and 3rd line minutes (think Bryan Little, Martin Hanzal) and top flight defensemen rarely do that.
Measuring the quality defensive play is difficult statistically but I looked at offensive contributions and found that of the 38 defensemen who were picked on the first round and who showed offensive promise, the median age at which they first achieved their career average PPG was 22 years.

Drafting D-Men in the 1st Round: The Big Picture

Everything points to a bumper crop of defensemen being selected in the first round of June's NHL 2008 Entry Draft. Central Scouting has 15 d-men among its' top 30 North American skaters and 13 among its' top 30 European skaters. If the actual draft follows form, the first round should surpass the record 13 d-men selected in the first round of the 1996 draft. Unfortunately that 1996 draft was also the worst in history for defensemen, with only 6 of the 13 first rounders having played 200 NHL games to date. Prime failures include Jeff Brown (not Downtown Jeff Brown or Jeff Brown, the author of the Flat Stanley books, although he might have been a better pick),Mario Larocque, and Matthieu Descoteaux. These three played a total of 10 NHL games between them.

Surprisingly, drafting d-men on the 1st round has been a successful strategy .
A review of drafts from 1979 (the first year of the "Entry Draft") through 2002 shows that of 190 defensemen drafted on the first round, 140 or 73% have played at least 200 NHL games to date. 37 have played in at least one All-Star game. By comparison, 65% of forwards drafted on the first round have played at least 200 games. Considering that defensemen are competing for half as many open positions on a standard NHL roster, this difference is significant. It's also surprising given that there is general agreement that defensemen take longer to develop and because of the greater emphasis on offense in junior hockey.
Looking at the composition of today's NHL, 80 of the top 220 defensemen (in TOI) in 2007-8 were picked on the first round. The remaining 140 players came from a more or less normal distribution of the remaining draft rounds and free agents. To summarize, this research shows that the talents and skills that make for an NHL caliber defenseman are being accurately identified and ranked by draft order.