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Vancouver Off-Topic / Current EventsThe off-topic forum for Vancouver, funnies, non-auto centered discussions, WORK SAFE. While the rules are more relaxed here, there are still rules. Please refer to sticky thread in this forum.
theres nothing on the market for goalies but if oilers do pull an offersheet for doughty and try to aquire schiends, nabby or rask this team is gonna make a run for sure
Hemsky smyth and horcoff still around from the 2006 oilers cup run
The Toronto Maple Leafs have taken a first small step over the economic edge and begun making their way down the slippery slope toward European-style shirt sponsorship.
This morning, the Leafs will debut a credit-card sized patch on the chest of the team’s practice jersey advertising the Purolator brand. It’s one element of a larger sponsorship deal that has the Canadian shipping giant paying the club an amount in the low seven figures, according to MLSE sources.
The Leafs become the sixth NHL franchise to take advantage of the league’s new (and in certain U.S. markets, desperate) search for additional revenue streams.
At this point, it’s an experiment contained to morning skates and the off-season.
But this is where it starts - on a practice jersey even the die-hards don’t give a damn about. This road leads, of course, to the sacramental cloth the players wear on game days.
Shirt sponsorship in the modern, splashed-in-big-letters-across-the-front sense started in Germany’s Bundesliga in the early 70s. It was deeply unpopular. Within a decade, everyone was doing it.
For the biggest soccer clubs in Europe, it is a colossal source of revenue. Manchester City recently signed a 10-year, $625 million sponsorship deal with Etihad Airways, the major component of which is their shirt-front billboard.
Nearly every sports league in the world has sold off its uniforms. Except here.
North America is an island in the larger world of professional sports, actually and ideologically. We are new countries with old traditions. The uniform colours don’t change year to year. The logos don’t ever really change. The symbols mean something.
This is the dangerous ground the NHL must now contemplate crossing while balancing several clubs in dangerous financial decline in one hand, and tradition in the other.
History has generally shown that, in that fight, money wins.
Any sort of switch that smells of commerce will be welcomed like a skunk at a garden party. Europeans (and eventually, everybody else) got used to it, but their transition was relatively simpler.
In Europe, there is little tradition of splashing a team logo across the front of a jersey. Most teams feature a small badge over the heart. That left a lot of unused real estate to play with.
In order to reap maximum financial advantage, NHL teams would have to make room by getting rid of their team logos.
Nobody in Raleigh is going to kick too hard if the stylized hurricane is bumped. Just try replacing the winged tire on Detroit’s jersey with a Chrysler logo. In the current climate, it’s impossible.
But, let’s say the NHL left this up to clubs to decide. And let’s imagine that a few of the fringe or nearly bankrupt outfits decided to try it out. As soon as the predictable backlash petered off, how long would the Original Six hold out?
How much would it cost, say, a Bell or a Rogers or a TD Bank, to convince Toronto to remove the maple leaf from the jersey front?
“That would be blasphemous,” MLSE VP Tom Anselmi said yesterday, when the idea was put to him.
So you’d rule it out categorically?
Anselmi is that rare sort who thinks about questions before he answers them. He thought for a long while.
“Yes,” he said finally. “As long as I’m here.”
He won’t be there forever.
They don’t step on the lot ‘less they wanna buy. That’s the car salesman’s creed. It works the other way around, too – you don’t open up this can of worms unless you’re willing to sell.
This will happen. As long as there’s a serious buck to be made, business logos will migrate from practice jerseys to game uniforms. It’s going to happen because too many clubs in the NHL need the money to survive.
The maple leaf will never disappear from the Toronto jersey. But who’d bet it will always be front and centre if shrinking it or pushing it off to the side earns the club half a year’s worth of ticket revenue?
When and if the NHL’s most famous symbols begin to fade in the capitalist clutter, the purists will wonder if anything is sacred any more.
The slow creep of commerce across the ocean and into North American sport’s holiest of holies suggests that nothing ever was.
Oilers should give an offersheet to doughty since they are already done rebuilding. Have a dynasty running then blow team up which will rev up enough doughty to build a new arena in Edmonton
7.5mill 5yrs; hit and run away with a few stanley cups
That would be hilarious. The Oilers have already screwed LA enough this summer, then add this low blow.
I'm not sure about all this dynasty talk though, esp in this salary cap era. Their top end talent, if they can develop into game breakers within the 3 years of entry level contracts, can/will command huge $$ as shown by Tavares/Myers signings, making it difficult to keep them all in one place and still able to field a decent team around them. A fresh #1 pick, a top-end d-man, and even the league's best goalie does not turn the worst team last year into a cup contender, sorry.
And when I thought Datsyuk couldn't get any more awesome: Datsyuk to wear number 24 during pre-season instead of his usual 13 to honour fallen friend and former teammate Ruslan Salei.
And when I thought Datsyuk couldn't get any more awesome: Datsyuk to wear number 24 during pre-season instead of his usual 13 to honour fallen friend and former teammate Ruslan Salei.
Datsyuk - one of the few classy Russian players...
__________________ Do Not Put Aftershave on Your Balls. -604CEFIRO Looks like I'm gonna have some hot sex again tonight...OOPS i got the 6 pack. that wont last me the night, I better go back and get the 24 pack! -Turbo E kinda off topic but obama is a dilf - miss_crayon Honest to fucking Christ the easiest way to get a married woman in the mood is clean the house and do the laundry.....I've been with the same girl almost 17 years, ask me how I know. - quasi
So is it worth going to open practice ? Ive never been. I was thinking of going at 8am tomorrow. Posted via RS Mobile
Absolutely worth it. I only went to one session but I imagine staying for both would be even better as you get to see more players. Posted via RS Mobile
My buddy is at the CN tower right now - and he bumped in Brendan Shanahan. He shook his hand and let him be as he was with his family. What a fitting day as well - since it's my buddy's birthday!
__________________ Proud member of GRAPEGreat Revscene Action Photographers Enthusiasts
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