quote:

ORIGINAL: Lynn G.

Something occurred to me that has probably long been obvious to the rest of you. The Stanley Cup has to be one of the most difficult championships to win. A long, long season, and then an endless line of best of 7 series ... it's a wonder any team survives that at all.

Similarly long seasons and playoffs for basketball and baseball.

I have always felt that the Superbowl was the biggest prize of them all (showing my bias because football is my favorite sport), but a team can win the Superbowl by winning a mere 12 games. That suddenly doesn't seem like much of an accomplishment at all.

quote:

ORIGINAL: SoMnFan

Crosby signs one of those stupid toomanyyears toomanydollars contracts.
I've loved sports all my life, and rarely want to know much about the economic side.
But these type of deals turn me away from caring about why .... Even more.
Just too damn complicated sometimes.
I used to spew about my dream ... To see pro sports leagues where everyone who makes a roster gets the same pay.
If you win more, you get more bonuses. Collectively. As teams.
I think you'd see a better product. More room for controversy or cheating perhaps, but I certainly think you'd see mor competitive teams and owners.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jim Frenette

quote:

ORIGINAL: SoMnFan

Crosby signs one of those stupid toomanyyears toomanydollars contracts.
I've loved sports all my life, and rarely want to know much about the economic side.
But these type of deals turn me away from caring about why .... Even more.
Just too damn complicated sometimes.
I used to spew about my dream ... To see pro sports leagues where everyone who makes a roster gets the same pay.
If you win more, you get more bonuses. Collectively. As teams.
I think you'd see a better product. More room for controversy or cheating perhaps, but I certainly think you'd see mor competitive teams and owners.

But did that take them out of the running for Parise? Hope so

My new job with Tampa Bay lasted sixteen games. I was done just before Thanksgiving. I couldn’t get the team to play the way I wanted. It was a really crazy situation. The main problem was that the players were friends with the owners. When the players can go directly to the owners about team issues, that’s not a healthy situation. You are trying to instill discipline, and the players are out having a beer with the owners after the game.


 
Having players friendly with owners is an unhealthy situation that upsets the chemistry in the dressing room. Maybe you aren’t that friendly with the star who is having dinner regularly with the owner. Maybe you start to think he might be throwing you under the bus at those dinners.
Tampa Bay was an impossible scenario for a coach. The players knew it was a screwed-up situation, and I knew it was a screwed-up situation. The owners knew I wasn’t going to change, and I knew they weren’t going to change. After a short period of time, they decided I wasn’t the type of guy they wanted to run their team. I think they consulted with the players. The players didn’t really like the way I was doing things, either, so it was an easy thing for them to let me go.
Today’s players are very powerful. When I coached the L.A. Kings in 1993, there was one millionaire on the team. In Tampa Bay in 2008, there was only one guy on the team who wasn’t a millionaire.
Group ownership is also more difficult to deal with, for both coaches and players. Teams with single owners are better in so many ways. With a single owner, everyone knows where the cheques and the decisions come from, and where the buck stops. There is so much money involved now, so many tough decisions because of things like salary caps, that one voice is a lot more efficient than four or five voices. The most successful sports teams have single owners: Art Rooney of the Pittsburgh Steelers; Mike Ilitch of the Red Wings; Mario Lemieux of the Pittsburgh Penguins; Robert Kraft of the New England Patriots; the Steinbrenner family of the New York Yankees.
You can’t have it both ways as a coach. You can’t be a disciplinarian and a buddy. You can’t be disciplining guys, trying to convince them to do what you want, and have them out socializing with the owner. My termination was the right call because it wasn’t going to work and everyone could see that.
Calling it quits early was probably the best thing for me, because I could get on with my life without a long interruption, and could pick up with ESPN where I left off.