The "heavy legs" comment above reminded me of another segment by Jankow. The Stars just submitted availability dates for the AAC for next year, working with the Mavs and the arena itself, for concerts, etc. That seems early, but these things do take time.
They went on to say that they still have the worst travel schedule in the league and that every year they get a chance to review the draft of the schedule. They feel they really get an unfair share of back to backs with them having dead legs and the other team being well rested. They are allowed to challenge the schedule somewhat and the NHL tries to accommodate them. They say they save their challenges for division teams, and don't mind playing Eastern Conference teams under poor circumstances as much. It would seem the league does have a lot of competing needs when drawing up those schedules.
Lastly, Nill went on and on about the value of the decentralized draft, including maybe every city getting a draft party for its fans. Of course, at the end the real (I believe) reason comes out in the end......taking 30+ employees to the draft city can be a major expense. Just like households have to re-engineer their budgets every so often, so do NHL franchises and going to the draft sounds like $100K or more down the tubes, LOL.
I am also amazed that a new franchise would cost a billion. All the franchise fees go to existing teams, or over $30 Mil each, which probably feels like one year of TV rights or so. I haven't seen and NHL team financial sheet for a while, but I doubt many really make money, at least based on old ones. If the sale price of a typical biz is either one year revenues or 3-7 years profits, a Billion doesn't sound right to me in normal biz terms.
