Erie Otters 2024 - 25 Season Thread, Part I

[NOA]

It only gets better when the team does <sarcasm>.

I've heard this complaint a lot, and unsure of the actual reason other than probably bandwidth.

It’s called being cheap.. or poor, however you want to look at it
To have a good production team or video costs a bit more money and the team has never been able and/or willing to spend money on things like that which is obvious when they can’t even spend money on other more relevant things like coaches / players. So, imo it just speaks to their budget. If they had a great video production but the same on ice product, I would be concerned about where they are spending their resources.

 

[WestPAPuckFan]

Any news on Schaefer's return?

From an Erie Times article on feb 25... Possible No. 1 NHL draft pick Matthew Schaefer recovering from injury. When will he return?

 

[NOA]

I'm betting he's done done for the year for several reasons. First he isn't moving his shoulder much as seen in his appearance in the stands in the last game. Just as importantly, business wise it makes no sense to come back. He is widely regarded as the #1 over all pick, so why would he come back and possibly play sub prime hockey and lose that ranking to someone on fire like Misa. Further, I think he may have played his last game in Erie as now that the NCAA is open for the players, he can go there, probably get paid and get the same big minutes for Michigan or some other top school. I bet Misa will take the same route as well. NCAA changes everything now. We will see I guess.

I don’t really understand the theory on NCAA..
sure, it will have some impact on some players in certain situations but if you are presuming NIL is the factor here, I just disagree because college hockey kids don’t draw like CBB/ CFB. Maybe someone like Schaefer is the exception but unless or until revenue sharing opens up or colleges can flat out pay players, I don’t really fear the risk of losing a player like Schaefer. If anything, he’s just unlikely to come back after being the 1st overall pick, unfortunately. If he’s unhappy with Erie, he can just demand a trade to LDN or anywhere else in the league.

Feels like Drysdale 2.0 - the best 2 prospects to come through here since 2017 were pretty much wasted on rebuilds and we lost them a bit earlier than expected to even see playoff results let alone the huge return assets they could get for the caliber of players they are.

 

[Savard18]

It’s called being cheap.. or poor, however you want to look at it
To have a good production team or video costs a bit more money and the team has never been able and/or willing to spend money on things like that which is obvious when they can’t even spend money on other more relevant things like coaches / players. So, imo it just speaks to their budget. If they had a great video production but the same on ice product, I would be concerned about where they are spending their resources.

The camera quality is decent now it’s just like the settings need to be fine-tune adjusted or something. It could be a bandwidth issue too though.

 

[donjohnson]

I'm betting he's done done for the year for several reasons. First he isn't moving his shoulder much as seen in his appearance in the stands in the last game. Just as importantly, business wise it makes no sense to come back. He is widely regarded as the #1 over all pick, so why would he come back and possibly play sub prime hockey and lose that ranking to someone on fire like Misa. Further, I think he may have played his last game in Erie as now that the NCAA is open for the players, he can go there, probably get paid and get the same big minutes for Michigan or some other top school. I bet Misa will take the same route as well. NCAA changes everything now. We will see I guess.

As of now, the Canadian-born players can't get NIL money like the US-born players...if Zach Edey can't get paid as the 2-time player of the year, these hockey guys aren't getting it.

Also, the NHL team is going to dictate where the player goes, not the other way around. I think it's infinitely more likely that players like Schaefer and Misa sign their ELC, get their ~300K signing bonus and either make the NHL or return the OHL. I highly doubt that a top-5 pick is going to not sign their entry level deal and report to the NCAA and go to school full time...that just doesn't make sense.

 

[Guy In Burlington]

It’s called being cheap.. or poor, however you want to look at it
To have a good production team or video costs a bit more money and the team has never been able and/or willing to spend money on things like that which is obvious when they can’t even spend money on other more relevant things like coaches / players. So, imo it just speaks to their budget. If they had a great video production but the same on ice product, I would be concerned about where they are spending their resources.

The broadcasts are strangely bad for a team that Jim Waters, a broadcasting/media giant, once owned.

Choppiness aside, they need to get guys in the booth who can educate/inform. They don’t need Ed Olczyk or Ray Ferraro, but they need a guy who played hockey and who has broken down video in the past. Trevor giving us surface-level comments about how good every player on the ice is, while using three times as many words as necessary, makes me turn the sound off.

We all hate London and we absolutely should, but their broadcasters are good. As are Kitchener’s.

 

[DubCee21]

Unless the laws change with respect to working while on a student visa, the chance of him going NCAA is zero. International student cannot receive NIL money. He can make so much more than NIL could offer next year anyway with signing bonuses and endorsements as a 1st overall pick.

 

[Mata]

The camera quality is decent now it’s just like the settings need to be fine-tune adjusted or something. It could be a bandwidth issue too though.

It is most certainly a bandwidth issue. Even with "cheap" cameras, the picture should not be choppy or coming in grainy if the bandwidth is adequate. In fact, cheaper video equipment would actually be better suited for lower bandwidth and higher quality cameras and such would produce the outcomes we often hear in complaints.

I don't know what it would take to stream that out to that large of an audience, but guessing you'd want as much upload bandwidth as possible to the main ISP. Perhaps the infrastructure just can't handle it.