[Calgary4LIfe]

Originally Posted by burn_baby_burn

We always see lists and articles explaining how around 50% of revenue comes from the seven canadian teams. All seven teams are in all in the top half of the league in revenue per team (Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver are in the top five I believe). However, money doesn't seem to buy victories north of the border.

With a salary cap, you can only spend so much on talent, although all the Canadian teams should be able to afford to spend to the cap ceiling. The one advantage the Canadian teams should have is being able to hire top notch management, coaching, and scouting. Not to mention the benifit of seeing CHL prospects play in your own rink in markets like Calgary and Edmonton. However, like you pointed out, the Canadian teams continually fall short when it comes to drafting.

Does the location and climate limit the potential for Canadian teams?

I may be generalizing here, but let's look back at history for each team in the last 20 years.

Toronto - why they have not been very good at drafting perplexes me. There really is no reason. The economic hardships faced by other Canadian teams don't necessarily come into play for Toronto. They simply sucked, and I haven't looked into it much at all. Posters who have followed Toronto can enlighten us on that one.

Montreal - Should have been considered much like Toronto as being 'relatively unaffected' by the climate during the 90's-early 2000's. However, they were. Ownership issues, a horrible lease deal that had them paying 11 million a season (or something like that - though I can't quite remember exactly through which years). I can definitely see that they probably cut their drafting and development department.

Ottawa - this was a new franchise that had the 'luxury' of entering the NHL at the start of the '92/93 season. What I mean by that, is that they started with the mindset that they needed to build through the draft, so I would imagine their drafting and development program was somewhat robust (makes sense - but I don't have the numbers). They did quite well in their history for the most part - Yashin, Alfredsson, Spezza, Redden, and numerous other important pieces. They were a team that I would say was built through the draft, and supplemented well through trades/FA signings. Again, they did well because they entered that 'dark period' in the best possible position - a lower salary coupled with a brand-new interest from a market hungry for hockey, and the direction of requiring to build from the draft.

Vancouver - I may be wrong - but I don't think they were bleeding much money through the dark ages. I wouldn't say they were healthy - but they were in a much better position than most Canadian teams. I do think they probably had cut their drafting and development programs by some margin to help stay afloat, as I don't think they were impervious to the market conditions like Toronto was.

The other teams you can generalize as being the same - Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg. They all ran the risk of losing their organizations (and of course, in Winnipeg's case, they did - and not counting Quebec who lost their team as well, but no point in including them here as they do not exist now). Edmonton almost lost their organization to Houston, but was saved by a public ownership group - the Edmonton Investors Group. Calgary almost lost their organization to Portland. These teams were massively struggling in every possible facet related to running an NHL team.

In Calgary's case (and I am generalizing here to include Oilers and Jets - which may not be 100% accurate, but I am guessing it was much the same), they cut their drafting and development budget substantially in an effort to stay afloat financially. They went from one of the best drafting (if not the very best drafting) team in the NHL, to one of the worst (possibly the very worst). You could see the immediate impact over subsequent years in their drafting records. I think that in hindsight, Calgary did very well in drafting and development GIVEN THEIR BUDGET (emphasis on budget here - they were poor at drafting, but I would bet that their dollars spent divided by number of NHL players drafted was actually pretty decent). They still managed to draft and develop enough legitimate NHL players - but not nearly enough to actually be much good. I think most NHL teams had between 8-10 scouts in North America alone at the time - Calgary had 1 full-time scout, and 2 part-time scouts when Darryl Sutter took over as GM.

Not only did their scouting department get cut, but the Flames shared their AHL affiliate with other NHL organizations through periods of their existence. I believe Carolina was the last team that Calgary shared their AHL affiliate with. They simply did not have a development program.

In Calgary's and Edmonton's case in particular (with Winnipeg moving, and seemingly drafting decently in Phoenix since, while the 'New Winnipeg' from Atlanta being a budget team when they relocated to Winnipeg - may not be exactly the same scenario here) they suffered financially.

It was just 'enough' I guess that they survived in Canada. It wasn't until about 2002 or so that the fortunes started changing somewhat for the Canadian teams. Darryl was often criticized for being a terrible drafting GM - but he had little to work with. As the team's financials started doing better (especially after the fabled '04 run that launched this team far into the black again), the Flames slowly (too slowly, I think) started expanding their drafting and development programs. You can really see a linear progression over the years - it came very slowly, but it did start happening. Slowly but surely, NHL players started trickling in as the team adjusted its' drafting philosophies, and went through capable (and often, incapable it appears) scouting staff. I am not sure where Calgary ranks in terms of its' drafting and development program today - there hasn't been this much depth and skill in the prospect pool since mid-to-late 80's - but I think we can all agree that it is substantially better than it has been through most of the 90's and early 2000's.

I do think that some teams were slow to adjust - Calgary and Edmonton for sure - possibly Vancouver. Winnipeg has a lot of good young talent on the team, so it is tough to include them here - American teams had less pressure to compete now and Atlanta probably had more of an emphasis on drafting during its' hisotry. Montreal is a team that was slow in adjusting, but probably drafted better than any Western Canadian team. Again, you have to go back in time and look at their scouting department year-to-year starting from the early 90's to accurately gauge if it was incompetence, or a symptom of cost-cutting, through each team.

I do think that it takes a relative short period of time to dismantle a solid drafting and development department, and it takes a much longer period of time to build one up. Prospects take time to develop, and it may take a few years to realize that what you are doing is not working, or you run the risk of changing something that perhaps was working very well, but wasn't given the time to show its' worth (for instance, you may have a couple of very good scouts adept at picking prospects in the later rounds through whatever methodology they employ, but they get fired before the prospects develop and transition into the NHL, and replaced by a new scouts who may very well be incompetent).

Ottawa I think has been the best Canadian team in regards to drafting over the years - and that is why I say they had the relative 'luxury' of entering the NHL when they did, when their focus was on drafting. Calgary (and other teams) had their focus on maintaining a certain level of competition (spending money on trying to keep their own stars) - in hindsight a focus they simply could not continue on (MacInnis, Gilmour, Nieuwendyk, Suter, etc., all left one by one as they simply took too much of the budget to allow the Flames to fill-out their roster) - but the market pressures were there in those markets to do just that. In hindsight, the Canadian teams should have focused on drafting and development (except Toronto, who were still making money relative to the US teams). It was a critical error I think on every other franchise in Canada. Instead of trying to remain competitive (Oilers coming out of their dynasty years, Calgary coming out of its' Stanley cup year, Vancouver was a competitive team going to the Stanley Cup final in the first half of the 90's, etc. - Canadian teams were dominant), these teams should have 'blow it up' and started a rebuild - would have had cheaper younger talent that would have remained competitive, and would probably have saved the organizations money.

Why Toronto has been so inept at pretty much everything is bewildering to me. They have more resources than 95% of the teams. They did not suffer through the 'dark ages' in Canada much. They exist in a area of the world that is the 'hometown' (generalizing Ontario as a hole, not just the city itself) that produces the most hockey talent in the world, easier signing FAs before the salary cap world, and being able to out-spend even the majority of the US franchises during that time on drafting and development - in my opinion, they have been the biggest failure of an organization for the last 30 odd years.

My bet? Unless the economy in Canada collapses and the dollar plunges again, you will see dominant Canadian teams again. Many have accepted that rebuilding is necessary, and the market is more accepting to that. The salary cap will ensure a reasonable level of competition now (though Edmonton with their terrible records over the last 'x' amount of years and Buffalo this year being one of the very worst teams of the modern era are in direct conflict with that theory). The teams like Ottawa, Calgary and Montreal that have all seen a huge influx of investing into those programs should eventually become successful again, and the ones that haven't will continue floundering (or at least the ones that seemingly haven't developed a sound drafting and development program - maybe there isn't a positive correlation with having a big budget in drafting and development and seeing positive results, but there does appear to be a very positive correlation with having a very small budget with respect to drafting success).

Just my take on the Canadian teams' struggles relative to their drafting/development programs from the late early 90's through to now. Maybe some of it makes sense, maybe none of it does - but either way, sorry for the very long post!!