What's a stafford?

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"Call a cop he robbed Delmore blind!!!"
Rick Jeanerette after Marty Biron's diving save back in 2000.

"I'm going to go to the spa and have a hot tub and massage and relax," Miller said. "That's it, and it's back to work tomorrow." Ryan Miller after clinching the North East division.

A man who better score some fucking goals.

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"Counting all the assholes in the room, I'm definitely not alone!" ~ Michael Poulsen, Volbeat, Still Standing.

Pominville earned his contract with his play, stop trying to say he didn't. Look at the numbers on Pominville, he earned his contract.

Earning a contract and living up to the contract are two totally different things.

18 goals, 12 assists for 30 points in 57 games
34 goals 34 assists for 68 points in 82 games
27 goals 53 assists for 80 points in 82 games

79 goals, 99 assists for 178 points in 221 games, that doesn't earn the contract he got then?

67 goals 114 assists and 180 points in 237 games after signing the contract. Actually, Pominville is still real damn close to the same amount of points he was earning before he signed his contract, and after he signed it.

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that averages out to about 24 goals per season. that isnt worth his price. pominvilles play has dropped off drastically. he may be producing, but he isnt the two-way player he was.

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And more than 1 in the playoffs.

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just call me Brad

Twitter @BUrbanowicz13

Even with his 80 point season, he averages 0.8 points/game. He gets paid $5.3 million a year. I know many of you will probably think anything anywhere near a point a game is worth $5.3 million. I don't, and I think that's why we'll be seeing either another lockout or the contraction of the league within the next 10 years. It's unsustainable to pay players like Pominville and Stafford (and many, many more throughout the league) that kind of money. It's unsustainable.

With all due respect some of the Pegula hype is getting a little bit silly, and this is an example of that. Stafford played great hockey all season long except for a few dry spells and some injuries. Statistically, he was likely less productive offensively when Pegula took over. I don't think Pegula has or will ever effect EVERY single aspect of the on ice team ALL the time.

It's becoming Crosbyish

I don't know man all the off ice issues Pegulas making are pretty big things that really actually convert into better performance on the ice.

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"If you want to know what I've been doing lately, I've been driving around from Tim Horton's to Tim Horton's, rolling up the rim. Haven't won anything yet. Thanks." - Lindy Ruff

As long as revenues keep climbing, so will the cap. So goes the cap, so goes salary inflation.

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mechaphil

They say revenue keeps climbing, and could reach $3 billion this year. But something's rotten in Denmark. Golisano ran the Sabres as a business and didn't spend to the cap, and despite strong attendance and merchandising, when Pegula bought the team, he took on $20 million in debt. Everybody knows about troubles in Phoenix, Atlanta, and Florida, and of course Dallas and Tampa have been through some pretty harrowing times in the past two years. My point here is I'd like to see how many teams are actually in the black. My guess is that more than half the teams in the league are losing money when all the numbers are added up. I stand by my unsustainable claim.

I'm not saying it's not unsustainable, I'm just saying that it's not going to stop.

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mechaphil

The fact that the Sabres have $20 million in debt doesn't really mean anything. There are plenty of companies who have debt that are more than surviving okay. You need more data than the $20 million in debt to assume that the Sabres are in some type of trouble. Taking on debt is not necessarily an indicator of bad things to come.

/accountant

ETA: Just because the Sabres have $20 million in debt doesn't mean there's a deficit, which is what I think you're trying to imply. The Sabres could be perfectly in the black, with some debt on their books.

A business that just sold for close to $200M that's carrying $20M in debt is absolutely nothing. It's a trivial number.

What I'm trying to get at is that in terms of fan support, the Sabres have a lot going for them, way more than many other teams in the NHL. But even with that support and with a self-imposed spending limit, the Sabres were still not making money (or at least not much). That doesn't bode well for the league as a whole if you ask me (which you didn't, but that never stopped me before).

You don't know that they aren't making money.

Beth can certainly back me up on this, but in corporate accounting, it's not difficult for a company to look like they have a loss while at the same time generating profits. Businesses want to reduce their tax burden any way possible, and legal manipulation of the tax code happens every day.

One thing my company does is a yearly special; one year of our service for basically the price of 10 months. We run it in December, as a holiday promotion. Once someone pays us, we have the cash, but it's deferred revenue; we haven't yet provided the service. So, on the books, it's a liability. As each month passes, that liability starts to count as revenues, which are eventually taxed.

At the end of the day, we're providing the same service, even at less profit, but it's a larger benefit because with the accounting games, we have larger liabilities.

Same thing could happen with Sabres season tickets. They have your cash, but they haven't provided you the services yet, so that's a liability on the books.

It's all accounting games. This is why accountants can make big bucks. Working the numbers (legally) to reduce tax burden is a HUGE benefit to large businesses.

I wish I could see the Sabres' financial statements, then I could really give accurate insight to what's on their books. But I'm just purely guessing at this point.

Tom is right about the deferred revenue for one, but also, companies will take on liabilities for many reasons, not just for sheer "debt", so to speak.

Unearned revenue, like Tom was saying, could be a factor, they could have done a major project that they decided to finance instead of pay cash for (i.e., to stay liquid), they could have outstanding accounts payables (debt owed in the short term, generally for supplies and the like), they could have issued bonds, etc. There are plenty of reasons to have a liability that doesn't preclude to financial trouble.

Most importantly, you are confusing two different financial statements. There is a balance sheet, which has all the assets, liabilities, and equities. Your assets equal your liabilities plus equity. For example you take out a loan, you receive an asset (cash), but you also incur a liability (the need to pay that cash back, eventually). Having liabilities do not mean a company is not doing well financially. To really gather that information, there are a series of financial ratios you could use that determine if a company is insolvent (in fiscal trouble), or near insolvent.

The other financial statement I am referring to is the income statement. The income statement is exactly what it sounds like. It shows all your revenues less expenses to arrive at your bottom line, net income. That's where your profits and losses are shown. You can't make the connection that the Sabres debt implies their profits are down. That doesn't prove a correlation.

Aaaaand I killed the thread with accounting speak.

i find it funny that currently the as below is Tax Resolution Services

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PSA: I am an overly sarcastic person. If you take me at my word, then i will most likely anger and offend you.

I'd like to see the balance sheets too. Just some simple post it note math tells me that if most teams are spending to the around the cap of approximately $60 million, then player salaries league wide would come to about $1.8 billion. If the NHL took in close to $3 billion in revenue last year, then they'd be sinking 60% of revenue into player salaries. Now, I'm not sure what the average percentage of revenue labor costs account for in most industries (wasn't easily found by a Google search), but 60% seems pretty high to me. Especially when you consider that that's only PLAYER labor costs, and doesn't factor in salaries of all other staff, like management, coaches, trainers, janitorial staff, retail employees, etc. Then of course, you have the cost of buying equipment, the maintaining of facilities (refrigeration and humidity control no doubt being a major expense in this sport). There's also advertising and plenty of other expenses that I'm sure I'm missing here.

It's just hard for me to see how running an NHL team could be profitable (or even could cover costs) for 30 different businesses operating in that financial atmosphere.

Two major things I think you're forgetting are sponsorships and endorsements. These teams probably make a great deal of money from that, in addition to ticket sales and merchandising.

I think Phil once provided the correct term in that owning a sports franchise is what is called a vanity asset. In appearance it looks like a very valuable asset, but in reality they generate losses. At the same time, owning a sports franchise is probably wise for someone generating a lot of income because the losses offset any income they have, thus reducing their tax liabilities. I don't really know, though, since I don't access to the information.

But to kinda refer back to your post, I ultimately think that contraction is inevitable and should happen. If you look at the NBA, for example, the superstars are clustering together and the other teams can't even compare. Having a large amount of teams mean that too many average players enter the league and can't compete with teams that have a conglomerate of super stars. Having fewer teams, in my opinion, makes it more competitive and interesting.

Your accountant speak is making me scared. Make it stop!!!

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"Counting all the assholes in the room, I'm definitely not alone!" ~ Michael Poulsen, Volbeat, Still Standing.