The Bubble Bursts

There has been a Rathje sighting. Unfortunately, it was in Vancouver, where he’s working out and waiting for the deal that seems nowhere to be found. Dean Lombardi has come out and said things are at an impasse.

If so, it could be a long wait. If (as a semi-educated guess by me) is close to true, and the two sides are about $500K apart for this season, it could be 20 games before the pay lost to missing games overtakes the money he’s holding out for. If they’re demanding more, or if they’re demanding a multi-year deal, it could be longer. But assuming it’s only half a million dollars (well, “only”…), I bet about game 15, Rathje might get itchy about settling. Or maybe not.

The track record of the Sharks says that the deal on the table is reasonable. That implies that Rathje, or his agent, aren’t. If I knew Mike Rathje, I’d tell him to stuff a sock in his agent’s mouth, fly to San Jose, and sit down with Lombardi without his financial weasel, um, advisor. And see what happens. Because sitting in Vancouver and waiting for this deal isn’t doing any good, and as far as I can tell, rathje’s agent is the one causing this problem, not the Sharks.

More on the possible sale of the Sharks:

Rumors about the possible sale of the Sharks circulate. I’ve speculated on this a bit, but thinking about it more, I have another angle, which makes it even less than it seemed. The Gunds aren’t getting any younger. Perhaps the easiest explanation for this is “estate planning”, trying to set things up so that the sharks and those holdings continue moving forward if anything happens, while also making sure they don’t get nailed by the government in taxes. Most of the Gund holdings are private and closely held. This could well be nothing more than an attempt to re-arrange their finances and equity in a way to make things easier to pass along and keep intact in an estate. Let’s hope that odesn’t happen for many years, but estate planning is something you can’t wait until the last minute on….

Is Korky moving on?

Rumor surfaced today of Korolyuk to Ottawa for Chris Phillips (one must guess, as part of a package, I’m not sure I can convince myself it’s a value trade straight up). The big question for me is — what’s the ulterior motive here?

Perhaps the rumor is straight up, and it’s really being discussed. I don’t believe it for a minute. Here’s why — it seems to have leaked out of the Sharks side of the trade, and the Sharks never, ever leak. Or more correctly, they just don’t leak stuff by accident. So if this really did come out of San Jose, why?

Could it be — the team’s kinda struggling, and the sharks are floating the trade rumor to point out that if they don’t get it together, management’s going to make some changes? (and hint: it ain’t the coach going….).

Could it be — Mike Rathje, the lone NHL holdout now that Kaberle has traded, who’s agent has gotten into a bit of a pissing match with Dean Lombardi? It just so happens that f the Sharks bring in Chris Phillips, the need to sign Rathje any time soon goes way, way down, and the Sharks have made it painfully clear they’re willing to let Rat sit (and rot) until his agent gets a clue and comes to terms?

Could it be — since Korky has evidently asked for a trade, they’ve floated the rumor to let him know they’re working on it? And maybe they even are? Might make the guy feel a little better, and that can’t hurt his game. Korky was showcased in the Hawks game, and frankly, didn’t exactly help his stock around the league.

Could it be something else? Sure. The one thing I’ve learned about Lombardi is that whatever you expect to happen, he’ll do something else. And when he does, you’ll usually look at it and say “duh, I never thought of that….” — and it makes sense, unlike most of what Mike Milbury does…

It looks to me like the time has come for the sharks and korolyuk to shake hands and head off in different directions. Chris Phillips would be nice, as part of a package (he is, IMHO, worth more than Korky is in return, but we have to be careful not to overpay) — unless you think Rathje is going to sign soon. If he does, we have a numbers-game problem on the blueline (even if rathje DOESN’T sign, we have that problem, given the way Jilllson is playing…).

It seems to me the Sharks are playing mind-games with Rathje here. More power to them. Rathje needs to quit waiting for miracles, look at the Kaberle contract, and split the difference and get into uniform. Will he?

We’ll see. Lombardi is clearly not going to cave any time soon, and he’s made it clear he’s not going to make it easy for Rat to sit back and wait for concessions. Let’s hope it doesn’t last much longer; make no mistake, the Sharks are a better team with Rat on it than without him; but Rat is not the kind of player that gets huge bucks. Why? No offense, and a quiet but not imposing physical presence. The kind of defenseman rathje is can make an NHL team, but it isn’t the kind of defenseman that generates the big bucks. His agent evidently doesn’t realize that. He better figure it out fast.

The bubble is bursting — pro sports in america heading for a fall.

Something unprecedented is happening in pro sports in america. Prices are falling. For the first time in basically forever, the average ticket price in the NBA dropped — 2.3 percent. Not an individual team, but the entire league. Due to dropping revenues and special clauses in the CBA, NBA players are finding out that 10% of their salary is being deducted from their contracts (remind me to read the fine print on my next paycheck…)

Over in football-land, advertising is exceptionally soft. Rumors are that Monday Night Football, which is having decent viewership numbers, is going to lose as much as $200 million this year (it’s a $650 million a year contract), and the rest of the NFL broadcasts are hurting too. Rumors are circulating that after the season, the networks are going to the NFL to discuss these contracts (read, they’re going to demand cuts in the numbers).

In baseball, as soon as the Diamondbacks win the world series (I’m not pro-diamonbacks, but I know better than to bet against Schilling and the Unit), the CBA expires, and there’s a good chance all hell will break loose. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll find a way to avoid a strike, a lockout, a major fight with the players — but heck, they’ve never done it before, and the Germans have outlawed miracles….

All over the sports landscape viewer numbers are down, advertising revenue is imploding, and the golden eggs have this funny smell to them.

The huge bubble known as pro sports is starting to burst, folks. After adding what seems to be 300 cable sports channels, where there are six hockey games, five basketball games, eight baseball games and every college and NFL game in the universe available free or by Pay Per View, the sports leagues have found out something: that you can have too much sports on TV. The market is beyond saturated.

They’re also finding out that you can’t keep raising ticket prices and other prices infinitely, either. The NBA got hit first here, because, frankly, they marketed around Bird and Johnson and Jordan, and they all retired and the NBA found the new kids simply weren’t marketable — the downside of personality marketing, and something minor league teams could have told them long ago (market the team, not the people. Or do both, but give fans a hook to the city, not a player who’ll be in Cleveland when he signs that next contract…). Baseball is seeing playoff tickets go unsold, and not because of September 11th. Because fans looked at the prices, and said “TV’s good enough”. And the question in baseball is not “do we contract”, but “by how many teams, and who?”. Baseball IS going to fold franchises, the only questions are how fast, which ones, and what kind of stink the union will make about it. Montreal is history; tampa is probably history, and I sure wouldn’t be at all surprised if a couple of other teams join them before this is all finished. If not 2002, then 2003. But if it waits until 2003, I’d bet on there not being any baseball in 2002, either. Scary thought, no?

And in Los Angeles, the 2nd market in the country is still telling the NFL they like having all their football on the boob tube. And the NFL is freaking, because if other cities figure that out, wh’s paying for the new stadiums and the seats in them?

The reality is, pro sports have seen massive increases in revenue in the last 20 years; in many cases, the last decade. Now we get to watch how the leagues, teams and players deal with a gravy train where the wheel has fallen off, and the fans are saying “no, thanks”. Will players realize endless raises and outrageous salaries for journeymen are over? Will it be easy? Or tough? Bet on tough.

What’s this mean for hockey? Of the four major sports, Hockey may be the best set to deal with this, although why may not be obvious. Here is why I think Hockey will weather the storm: First, Bettman has a clue, and has seen this coming for a while. Those of you who hate Bettman, get over it. Without him, this league would have been in horrible trouble long ago, and the Oilers and Coyotes would have been sold and moved by now, and canadian hockey would be in even worse shape, effectively dead. Second, hockey never got addicted to the great teat of TV revenue. It tried — it should now count its blessing that it never hooked up to this the way the NFL and Baseball did. Third, the NFL doesn’t have to worry about a new CBA until 2004. It’s going to be a bit painful getting there (just ask the Oiler owners, who just had a cash call made — but that was misunderstood and overblown by much of the press, it’s not as big a deal as all that); but by 2004, the NFL TV contract wars will be fought, the baseball contraction wars will be fought (we hope, If they’re still fighting, baseball will be dead…), and the NHL can simply point to what’s happened to all of the other leagues and say “see? Let’s talk”.

Baseball’s going to have it worst (as usual) because of a combination of being first to renegotiating a CBA after the bubble bursts, having a tradional hostile relationship with the union (which always wins!), and worst, having an ownership group that can’t agree on the shape of a baseball, much less key strategic issues like revenue sharing or fiscale stability. The union doesn’t have to work hard to win labor fights, they just sit back and let the owners shoot at each other until everyone is wounded, and then step in and plant a flag. Until the baseball owners figure that out and fix their own house, baseball’s in deep trouble. I’m not holding my breath.

Hockey has its issues — but ownership seems to be more or less on the same page, without being stuck in the “league offices uber alles” mentality of the NBA, or the “TV money uber alles” mentality of the NFL. This gives them flexibility, but also the strength of building consensus, something Bettman does better than pretty much everyone (selig talks a good talk, Bettman delivers. Stern and Tagliabue issue edicts).

The good news for fans is — prices are going to stop going up; maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but the peak is here. Teams may try pricing to delay the inevitable, but the ones that do will likely regret it. Players may try to pretend it’s not happening — but when teams start folding, it’ll get their attention. And unlike baseball, I think hockey players are sharp enough to learn from the disasters of other sports (and, in general, I think hockey players are more reasonable than other sports….)

The bad news: it’s not going to be fun. Even in hockey, where TV revenues aren’t huge, advertising hits (boards, programs, broadcast, naming rights, etc) are going to hurt. You’re likely to see more and more advertising layers (on the ice, on the uniforms, in the broadcasts) to try to make up the difference. The real answer, however, is to get the cost of the sport down to an acceptable, manageble level — and that is going to mean lower prices, but also reduced supply. That means fewer games on TV, folks.

It might also mean dead franchises, or moved ones. Canadian teams are far from safe. And there will be unhappiness during the transition. But for pro sports to survive, they have to realize that it’s going to happen whether they like it or not, and simply deal with it. Hockey has the opportunity to come out of it least hurt, and most able to build on what they have; if they’re reasonable and intelligent about it. Fortunately, I think hockey has the leadership to do it.

The last ten years, pro sports have all be climbing the hold mountain of cash. What they didn’t realize was that it’s a roller coaster, and the other side of that hill is about to arrive. Fasten your belts, and put down that coke.

The bubble has already burst in the NBA, and it’s only going to get worse. All hell is about to break loose in the NFL, because TV revenue is going to go down drastically, whether the NFL wants it to or not. And in baseball, god, I don’t want to think about it. They have everything but the four horseman throwing out the first pitch — and they have trouble not screwing it up in the good times.

Think the dot-com bubble collapse was bad? Stay tuned. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

The sharks, the TV, advertising, and money.

This is a response to Jzap that took on a life of its own. Apologies for the length, and for the marginal sharks content…

On 10/20/01 9:40 AM, “John LastMinute Zapisek 209/17″ wrote:

>> [Chuq] The Monday Night Football game on 10/15 was between two
>> teams with a combined zero wins. . . . And it had a larger TV
>> audience than a key game in the baseball playoffs.
>
> I think it’s easy to read too much into this.

Yeah, but its only one of all sorts of indications, from reduced viewership numbers to the significant drop in kids playing little league…

> Football is played once a week. In the regular season, a baseball
> team plays TEN TIMES as many games as a football team.

But that kind of ignores that this was a key playoff game and the worst MNF game in years. And baseball still couldn’t beat football’s numbers.

If it was typical game to typical game, sure. But that much difference in quality?

>> There are large numbers of unsold tickets to playoff games as
>> well.
>
> That’s more telling — unless those empty seats are due to FOX
> forcing a weekday afternoon start on a game which the fans and
> teams would much rather have played at night.

It never used to stop people. It’s more a case of cost than time.

>> But if advertising revenue goes down, the only way to prop it up
>> is to cut supply, making each commercial worth more because there
>> is less competition for the dollars.
>
> Perhaps I don’t understand the context, but that sounds VERY
> counter-intuitive.

> It’s hard to cut the supply of minutes in a day And cutting the
> supply of eyeballs is hard, too

> Any TV executive who thinks he’s being smart by driving
> eyeballs away from TV to some other medium is shooting himself in
> the foot,

> If you’re talking about cutting the number of advertising minutes in
> a TV hour by replacing them with programming…

But that assumes that all programming is the same, that all advertising rates are the same, and that audiences are the same. None of which is true.

> Guess I’m having trouble imagining a scenario where cutting back the
> supply of minutes available to advertisers really works. –jzap

This gets complicated really fast. I apologize in advance if I confuse the hell out of you, or oversimplify things too much…

Take a station like Fox Sports Bay Area (please! ba-dump). It’s on the air 24 x 7. The number of minutes it broadcasts is fixed, it doesn’t change.

But what it broadcasts in those minutes differs over time. At one end, you have locally produced sports broadcasts (sharks, warriors). At the other end, you have those 2AM paid infomercials. In between you have locally produced programming (the regional news programs, for instance (which actually come out of chicago. Go figure), syndicated sports (the Pac 10 game of the week), syndicated programs (Bass Fishing weekly). That kind of stuff.

The problem, of course, is that the money you charge for a 30 minute infomercial is a lot less than what you charge for commercials during 30 minutes of a Sharks game (or you better HOPE it is…).

So — just show more sharks games, right? Not necessarily.

Each game has a certain number of commercials sold for it. The more games you broadcast, the more commercials you have to sell. That’s fine, as long as you have sponsors to buy the commercials and eyeballs (that’s us, the fans) to sell them. If the viewing audience shrinks, if there are fewer eyeballs, the sponsors aren’t as interested, so you have to drop the cost of the commercial to keep them buying. Drop it too low, you start losing money. And that’s not what you want…

Or — if, say, you hit a recession, or all your sponsors (hello, webvan!) go out of business, you find yourself with more commercials to sell than sponsors have money to buy.

In a sellers market, the price of something goes up. In a buyers market, it goes down. Or perhaps you don’t ‘sell out’ at all (we noticed watching football over the weekend that there were a few instances where they *should* have gone to commercial, and didn’t. It looks like the NFL had unsold inventory.

Even worse (for football) is the rumor that the networks are planning to go to the NFL after the season and demand concessions on the TV contracts. The advertising market has imploded, even for football, and the networks are losing their shirts. ABC pays $600-650 million a year for Monday Night Football. The estimate this year is they’re going to lose $200 million (and that number is somewhat futzed — the networks also use sports to promote their other shows, so there are off-book ‘internal’ commercials that add value to the broadcast, but not to $200 million, folks. You can only promote Friends so many times….

One of the things pro sports has found out (the hard way) is that there IS a limit to how many games people will go to, and watch. For every hard core fan that watches every game, buys full season tickets, knows every player on the taem and most on the farm, there are a dozen who scan the sports page, go to 5 or fewer games a year, and watch it on TV when they have time.

You keep adding more games to TV, and eventually, you saturate the market. The eyeballs stop growing. Worse, the eyeballs spread out across the broadcasts. But it costs the same to produce them — you just can’t charge as much because there are fewer eyeballs attached.

That’s why places like Tampa show fewer broadcasts. There are only so many eyeballs. The cost to broadcast a game is fairly fixed — you can’t save a lot of money. But by not broadcasting a game, you save the costs of that broadcast, and the reality is, most of those eyeballs will switch to other games. You’ll lose some, but not nearly to the level of the reduced production costs.

Fewer games equal reduced costs, more eyeballs attached to the games left to broadcast, which means higher ratings, and higher advertising rates. And since you’ve cut games, you’ve also cut the NUMBER of commercials you run, so advertisers have fewer chances to buy, so you start moving the market from a buyers (more commercials than advertisers) to sellers (more advertising than available commmercials). That also encourages higher ad rates.

All within reason, of course. It’d be a very complex spreadsheet (and a lot of educated guessing) to figure out how to maximize revenue here. If you cut too many games, you cut a lot of cost, but you piss off the fans and risk alienating them. You also have fixed costs (staff salaries, for instance) that don’t change as you change the # of broadcasts. And even if you cut games to 1, that doesn’t mean you can raise your ad rates infinitely; raise them too high, and the advertisers will go spend their money on NASCAR instead.

So you have a half dozen high-wires to walk simultaneously. Guess wrong on one of them, and things go blammo in your face. Set rates too low, and you lose money. Too high, the advertisers don’t buy (and you lose money). Too few games, you piss everyone off and you can’t make money because you have too few adds to sell. Too many games, and your rates drop because you can’t sell all your ad inventory at profitable prices.

All of this is coming to a head because we’re coming out of many years of economic prosperity and growth, which meant there was money to throw around, and lots of advertising. The economy is faltering (at best), and so companies are digging the foxholes. One of the first things to get cut is advertising. So demand weakens, so you have to cut prices to keep selling ads, and…

(I won’t even get into things like mass buys, Run of Schedule, PSAs, cross-promotions, and package deals (that include things like board and magazine purchases as part of a package). Suffice it to say, even if the ad card says $500 per 30 second commercial, not everyone pays that).

One thing you have to remember is that the fan is NOT the customer. The advertiser is the customer. You are the product sold to the advertiser; your eyeballs collectively is what the advertiser buys. And the sports program is what is created to convince you to watch, so they can throw ads in your face. So when you complain about what a network does, that it doesn’t care what the fans think, you’re RIGHT. As long as the eyeballs show up, you, the fan, can be ignored, in the name of (a) keeping the advertisers happy, and (b) maximizing how much money they make on selling those eyeballs to the advertiser. And they know, and you know, and they know you know, that they can jerk you around, and you’ll still watch.

Hockey, since it is less dependent on media dollars, is going to suffer less as those numbers decline (and they will; sports is at its peak at generating income; it’s downhill from here. But that’s another article). But as we move forward, I expect you’ll see more teams cut the number of games broadcast. For a while, we were headed towards “every game, except in chicago”, but the finite number of eyeballs meant that at some point, aggregate viewer numbers was going to max out. There is a tradeoff here: attracting fans and building audiences on one side, money on the other. The pendulum is swinging back towards the money. So expect somewhat fewer games, but not huge changes; you won’t see it cut to 20 or 30 games (except in chicago, of course), but you won’t see 80, either.

And don’t expect to see loosening of the Fox Sports blackouts. Fox knows that Joe Casual Fan only tunes in for a certain number of games a year. They certainly don’t plan on him wasting a set of those eyeballs on a broadcast they aren’t selling to advertisers if they can help it….

Remember, they don’t care what you think. You’re the product. And you’ll show up anyway. And they know it. Unless they do something amazingly stupid, like cancel the world series. And even if they do — 95% of you will be back in a year. That’s why we’re fans… We complain, but we keep showing up.

Opening Night

First off, serious congratulations to Barry Bonds for hitting #71. Now, bud, relax and see how high you can take it. (let it be noted for the record, also, that Bonds did it in the midst of a nasty pennant race, while both McGuire and Maris had nothing to play for but the record). Jesus. I’m still typing this, and he just hit 72. I need to type faster!

Opening night. Detroit. I like that — both because the Sharks start off with strong opponent, and because it looks like opening night keeps a lot of season ticket holders from selling the seats to the idiot red wing fans. Down where we are, it was quite timid. (the downside, I now realize, is that those stupid wings fans were all moved up into 226 where they hit critical mass — but perhaps a little barbed wire and a firehose?)

Last night, I saw two teams eyeing each other, and thinking “this is a team we have to beat in the playoffs”. It’s not often you see teams feel they have to make a statement on opening night, but both teams clearly did. In my preseason projections, I picked Detroit in the west. Let me rephrase that slightly — my god, the Wings are a damn scary good team. Better than I thought they were. Much. When you start seeing Hull and Robataille on the third line; whoof.

The BIG risks at detroit are injuries and tired legs. If they can stay healthy, if Bowman can spread the minutes around so this team isn’t dead in April, watch out. Those aren’t SMALL risks, either — but never bet against Bowman.

What *I* took out of last night’s game, however, was that as good as Detroit was, the Sharks played them well. Not their equal, but the Sharks seemed better than I expected, too. Even more surprising, they kept showing signs of a power play, something Shark fans aren’t used to.

Losing 4-3 in OT to the best team in hockey? Giving the best team in hockey a legitimate scare?

I’ll take that.

Maybe I’m not an idiot for picking Los Tiburones for third in the west. I liked what I saw last night — pride, determination, and a pretty damn good hockey team.

My three stars: Shanahan, Ricci, Sundstrom.

Referees: Billy McCreary (B+), Kelly Sutherland (B).

McCreary is a veteran ref, and seems to have good rapport with the players. He’s more than willing to discuss and explain things. The league is cracking down significantly on a number of things, especially any contact of any kind to the head with anything. Another one is delay of game; this nailed Todd Harvey, who fell on the puck and instead of a whistle, got a double-minor. This is to keep players from taking the lazy way out to a whistle and a faceoff, and speed up the game. I’m all for it. Amusing side note of this — after the Harvey penalty, Sundstrom was in the same situation and basically flopped onto the puck, and suddenly remembered the rule and did a great example of a cat falling in a pond; he bounced up and got off the puck quickly (and humourously….) to avoid the call.

McCreary called a good, solid game last night, fair to both sides, fair to the new interpretation of the rules. If they call it this way all season, I’ll be happy with the changes.

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen Sutherland ref before, but he comported himself well. Unlike some junior refs, he didn’t sit in a corner and watch (to his credit, unlike some SENIOR refs, McCreary didn’t tell the junior guy to shut up and get out of his way; of course, some of the junior refs, that’s how they’re most effective). He made a couple of tough penalty calls at key moments, when many refs (senior ones, too) would have swallowed the whistle. And he made the RIGHT call on them.

One instance here — Sutherland made a call down in the crease (the Chelios slash). As you know, Chris Chelios has never taken a penalty in his life, and he disagreed a bit. Sutherland was calm and firm, and Chelios went to the box (whining, but not to the point of a Robataille or Hull, who are hall of fame whiners). As the teams were lining up for faceoff, suddenly I head a “hey! hey!” — it turns out it was McCreary, who got Sutherland’s eye, and did a quiet fist pump. The meaning was clear in context: good call, gutsy call, right call.

Lots of senior refs don’t support their partners that way. The good ones do, and that’s how you encourage the young refs to become good, veteran refs. Kudos to the zebras.

As I talk about the reffing, I’ll only discuss linesmen when something really good or bad happens. They do a good job, they’re generally quite competent, and it’d get boring saying that all of the time. The place where there’s the most variability is in face-offs. Last night, I noticed they were allowing a huge amount of cheating; the lines they added a few years back for foot placement are being routinely ignored now. Might as well paint them out. A couple of times the cheating got so bad McCreary stepped in and yapped at players — in both cases, he was ignored and they kept cheating. Go figure. (linesmen, FWIW, are in a no-win situation. They really shouldn’t allow too much cheating, but they get yelled at for throwing players out of the face-off circle and/or refusing to drop the puck. No win situation for them…)

Jillson impressed me. He’s young, he’ll make mistakes, but he didn’t look too out of place — and it was the Wings. Hannan is no rathje, but he did okay (he was also -2, though). Suter was too aggressive, which bit us a couple of times, for instance the Shanahan shortie on the 2 on 1 against Jillson. Suter needs to be more careful there and not get caught and hose his partner. His partner did what he could.

Up front, Nolan was -3, Selanne -2. Offense from thornton, Matteau, harvey, the offensive studs. (in reality, I think this says more about who our first line was up against than how they performed; take this as a very GOOD thing, that when the opposition shuts down our studs, our role players step up and contribute. We need that)

The sharks sagged a little after the first shortie, faded a bit in the third as Detroit hit its stride, and really did a great job coming back late. The OT goal was a fluke bounce. I’ll take it.

Other notes —

I thought I was mostly over crying during the anthem. Dennis’ rendition proved I’m not quite past that. Not complaining, you know, just noting.

I like the new organist. Laurie, I think, called it right — he’s NOT an organist. He’s a keyboardist. I liked Sealy — this guy’s good, in different ways. I think he may have more flexibility down the road as he settles in.

The sharks have made a few changes in the arena. Most notable — they now have projectors in the ceiling that shine down on the ice, and when they do, they show what’s on the jumbotron. I found that a cute touch. I like it. Sharkie’s pre-game video wasn’t up to the caliber of some of his classics, but was pretty good. The other video, however, kicked some serious butt.

I don’t miss the fireworks one bit (if you haven’t heard, the league has banned pyrotechnics in the buildings, because of the post 9/11 concerns)

Finally, a few notes around the league:

Watched opening night in boston, where the bourquester’s jersey was retired. A good ceremony, except that every time Sinden’s name was mentioned, everyone booed. Now — I’m no fan of Sinden — but there’s a time and place for everything, and THAT IS NOT THE TIME. My god, let Bourque enjoy his time. Fortunately, Bourque finally told them to shut up (they did), and reminded them that Sinden was responsible for the two most important decisions in his career: to make him a Boston Bruin, and to allow him to leave Boston to win a Cup. Soemtimes, folks — just shut up and let people enjoy the moment. Show some class.

Watched an early Sabre’s game, too. They’re a shadow of themselves. Not going anywhere folks. And the Rangers: tonight, they sucked big-time. If THAT is the Rangers, it’s a long, long season in the city. Berard, by the way, is wearing a 3/4 visor, but not a full face shield. Definitely more than a standard visor, though. And Fleury came back from rehab down about 10 pounds and ready to roll. Let’s hope he can handle the tedium and stress of a full season.

One major mea-culpa: in the summer, I strongly criticized the rehiring of Pete Stemkowski. Well, I listened to the radio broadcast last night, and I thought he did okay. Not great (he’s no Drew; but few are), but not bad. IF that’s how Pete’s going to talk this season, and IF he can sustain it and IF the Sharks can work to keep him working like that with Dan (admittedly some Ifs, I thought he started okay last season and faded, but there were clearly extenuating circumstances) — I think he’ll be okay. So I’m going to shut up and see what I think in 15 games, and give him the fair shot I didn’t give him this summer. He’s clearly worked on it; Dan and the Sharks have clearly worked with him, and I’m going to give him the chance to make it work.

Finally, some personal notes, for those silly enough to still be reading:

After last season, I made some changes and took some time off. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and struggling with what I want to do, what I’m actually up to doing (there are days when the burnout looms heavy, and days when it doesn’t. There are fewer of the bad ones now, though, so things are getting better), and what’s good/appropriate for the list.

I’m still feeling my way around all of this. I do know I want to avoid the “yes he did no he didn’t” stuff, since I feel that’s where I create the most hassles for the list. I also have wanted for a long time to focus more on longer pieces, things that explain and hopefully illuminate. So I’m dusting off an idea I’ve wanted to do for a long time, which is Teal Sunglasses, which is me talking about what I think deserves talking about. Sometimes it’ll be sharks-centric and I’ll post it (as well as post it on chuqui.com with my other babblings). Other times it’ll be hockey-centric and I’ll post a pointer to it on chuqui.com. I think I have the time and energy to try to do this — whether it’s proven out, we’ll see. If you like it, let me know. If you don’t, that’s fine, too. And if you have stuff you want to hear my babble about, I’m open to suggestions.

And always remember, it’s only my opinion. Just because it’s mine doesn’t make it right, or make it better than yours. I put a lot of time into watching and studying hockey (and I’m lucky enough to have Laurie as a resource — trust me, most of the time, when I sound smart, I’m channelling here, folks — the rest of the time, she probably worked late….) but that doesn’t make me right, or better, or anything but someone with a remote and an opinion…..

Since I’ve started dipping my toe back in the list, AT LEAST fifteen of you have either sent me e-mail or tracked me down at the arena to tell me you were happy to see me back on the list. I can’t tell you folks what that means to me — it’s made deciding to get involved again a lot easier, and it’s given me the motivation to try to find a way to be involved that I enjoy and want to do, and which makes this a better place. And hopefully, when I screw up, you’ll tell me that, too. But — thanks. I just can’t say what it meant for you folks to do that, because you didn’t have to, and nobody asked you to. It means more than you would believe.

Hey! It’s hockey season, and the Sharks don’t suck. What more can we ask?

Drop the friggin’ puck already!