Senators ink Spezza with 7-year, $49 million contract
OTTAWA — Senators center Jason Spezza agreed to a $49 million, seven-year contract extension Friday that allowed Ottawa to lock up the final member of its potent first line. The 24-year-old would have been a restricted free agent after this season but now will be with the team through 2014-15. He joins Daniel Alfredsson, who is signed through 2011-12, and Dany Heatley, who agreed to a $45 million, six-year extension through 2013-14 last month, as franchise cornerstones…. “Jason Spezza is a great example of what the future holds for the Ottawa Senators and our fans,” owner Eugene Melnyk said in a statement. “Without question, Jason belongs here in Ottawa and he continues to be an integral part of our organization’s long-term plans.”
It’s no secret that I love the game of hockey. The NHL version is still the fastest, most exciting spectator sport known to mankind. The problem is not the game. The problem is the numbnuts who seem intent on running the game I love into the ground.
OK, so Jason Spezza is a talented player, and I can understand Ottawa’s desire to compensate him fairly based on what the market dictates as the going rate. But what if the market is completely out of whack? What if the market is creating a situation in which ridiculously high salaries translate into ridiculously high ticket prices? What if those ticket prices make it nearly impossible for families to afford to be able to take in an NHL game?
Prior to the 2004-05 lockout, I would have said that the National Hockey League was in ascendance. Attendance was up, interest was on the upswing, and the league had a national television contract- a relatively sweet deal with ESPN. Thanks to Gary Bettman’s intransigence, and the collective greed of the owners and players, all of those things are now in reverse. Hockey is once again a regional sport, most Americans couldn’t care less, and the only television outlet that will touch the NHL with even a ten-foot pole is Versus, which still hasn’t figured out how to effectively translate the excitement of the arena experience onto a television screen. Low budges and poor production values will do that, I suppos. Most Versus telecasts resemble an Irish wake on ice. The announcers, while knowledgeable, have not a clue about how to translate the action into terms that will create excitement for American viewers…not that many Americans are even bothering to watch.
My biggest pet peeve about Versus is that they only broadcast NHL games on Mondays and Tuesdays…and then only games with 7pm ET face-offs. This means that those of us who live on the West Coast are S.O.L., because that means a 4pm PT face-off, and by the time I get home from work, the game is already at least halfway through the second period. Why would I bother, especially if the game is another one of those scintillating Atlanta-Florida grudge matches that not even a true hockey fan would watch without downing a six-pack of Molson prior to the opening puck drop? If your only source of hockey is Versus, you’d never know that good hockey is played west of Detroit. Apparently, no one told them that Anaheim won last season’s Stanley Cup.
Once the Stanley Cup playoffs roll around, I’ll sit up and pay attention, but right now there’s no reason to, because it’s not like the NHL and Versus are doing ANYTHING to cater to those of us who consider ourselves to be real hockey fans. If I didn’t know better, I think that the NHL and Versus just don’t give a crap about their fans…because that’s exactly the impression they’re creating. Sadly, that’s OK, because I have plenty of other ways to keep myself occupied.
You’d think that after the 2004-05 lockout clusterf—k that the NHL would be bending over backwards to cater to and expand it’s fan base. Yeah, you might think that…but you’d be dead wrong…and few things send that message louder and clearer than NHL games being broadcast on a third-rate cable channel like Versus while clubs pay reasonable, but not great, talents $7 million per year to play in a place most Americans couldn’t find if you gave them a pair of skates and pushed them down the Rideau Canal in mid-December.
Game on, eh? Or not….
