Improbable Stanley Cup playoff run allows Montreal Canadiens' centennial to resonate

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: the most important part of the business of sport is the business of winning. It's certainly the most persuasive part.

Winning is the best marketing. It's all about substance and cliches such as walking the walk and talking the talk. If business success in sport is one part product and one part marketing, the product is by far the bigger part.

That's why those who make the Montreal Canadiens the best-marketed franchise in Canada and arguably the best in the National Hockey League can thank their player roster for validating the 100th anniversary festivities in which the oldest hockey club in the world has invested so much of their resources and our attention.

This year's unexpected playoff run -- to the fifth game of the National Hockey League's eastern conference finals -- has given substance to the centennial celebrations that have become the club's staple industry the past 18 months; if not the past five years.

No amount of clever marketing can replace the inspirational impact of winning on the ice.

In this case, the Montreal Canadiens have done everything imaginable to mark the 100-year milestone with a sense of thoughtfulness, history and class: by retiring a series of sweater numbers in the five years leading to the 2008-'09 centennial; using last year to showcase and market a cross-section of the club's retro jerseys dating back to their first game in 1909; producing a 100th anniversary DVD; and culminating everything with the actual anniversary game in November of 2009, which was an unprecedented presentation of pomp and circumstance in Canadian -- if not North American -- sport.

Yet the 2008-'09 centennial season missed one important piece: a winning season...a bridge to that long and storied history... a sense of connection to the lineage represented best by Maurice Richard, Jean Beliveau and Guy Lafleur...and of course the illustrious tradition of 24 Stanley Cups.

After finishing first in the eastern conference and reaching the second round of the 2008 Stanley Cup playoffs (before losing to the same Philadelphia Flyers), the Habs faltered badly during the Centennial season, finishing eighth and enduring the embarassment of a four-game sweep at the hands of their arch rivals, the Boston Bruins, in the first round. The very glory years that were being celebrated in 2008-'09 seemed so long ago.

These past two months in 2010, however, the players and the team ignited what the entire Centennial was designed to provide; pride of association, memories of yesteryear and what it felt like to be in the hunt for the trophy Canadian sports fans cherish most.

It's been 17 years since the Canadiens last reached the Stanley Cup finals and won. It could be another 17 years or more before they do so again. But Montreal's run in what Stanley Cup-winning head coach Mike Babcock calls a "marathon of hope" was a final touch this year to the 100th anniversary celebrations that was better than anyone in their front office could have scripted.

It has not only given the organization and its fans a sense of hope and optimism but a restored sense of identity for a team that, for the first time in its great history, has gone this long between championships.

www.TheSportMarket.biz
The Sport Market on TEAM 1040 and teamradio.ca
Saturdays 9 a.m. to 12 noon PT
Facebook.com/TheSportMarket and Twitter.com/TheSportMarket

Quebec Flyers, BC Blackhawks and Canada Sharks each have their merits, but only Montreal Canadiens register economic impact in Canada

The San Jose Sharks have more Canadians on their roster than any of the four teams remaining in the National Hockey League's 2010 Stanley Cup playoffs.


The Chicago Blackhawks have the biggest bevy of British Columbians while the Philadelphia Flyers boast the most Quebeckers.

Yet despite having fewer Canadians than the Canada Sharks and fewer Quebecois than the Quebec Flyers, only the Montreal Canadiens have a macro economic impact on their city, their province and, by extension, their country.

Nine unanswered goals in a 2-0 series lead might suggest the Flyers will limit the number of home games left in Montreal, but the Canadiens will drive box office revenues of more than $5.5 million per game night at the Bell Centre after earning $25 million in ticket receipts from their seven-game series miracles over the Washington Capitals and Pittsburgh Penguins.

Add a half-million dollars in concession and merchandise sales per game and you have a winfall not only for the Habs, but for their official suppliers, licensees and the federal and provincial tax agencies.

Each televised game fills restaurants, pubs and brasseries in Montreal; each home game moreso. The beer flows and wings fly at sports bars throughout Quebec and across Canada, expanding the economic impact beyond the confines of the second largest city in the country.

The buzz is also economically palpable for CBC and RDS, who are generally doubling their audience numbers on the strength of having a Canadian team in the conference finals. When a combined average audience of more than six million Canadians watch Hockey Night in Canada and RDS -- almost one of every five Canadians -- it's good for those broadcast companies. Radio rights holders glean similar upside.

More eyeballs and ears following a Canadian team in the final four also means -- at least theoretically -- more returns on investment for domestic advertising sponsors such as Scotiabank, Tim Hortons and Golf Town.

So whatever your take is on what makes a local franchise take on national team status or whether the Montreal Canadiens have any right to your spring allegiance, make no mistake that they are the only team left registering an impact on the Canadian economy.

The Sharks, Flyers and the Blackhawks have varying degrees of fan equity in Canada, but love them or hate them, only the success of the Canadiens on and off the ice makes a tangible, financial difference for Canadians, Canadian broadcasters and other Canadian companies.

www.TheSportMarket.biz
The Sport Market on TEAM 1040 and teamradio.ca
Saturdays 9 a.m. to 12 noon PT
Facebook.com/TheSportMarket and Twitter.com/TheSportMarket

Halak puts an exclamation mark on one of the best opening rounds in Stanley Cup history

The opening round of the National Hockey League's 2010 Stanley Cup championships produced a series of notable storylines, including:

• entertaining hockey, combining both a potent offensive display of 5.9 goals per game (the highest since 1996) and some superb goaltending, most notably that of Jaroslav Halak, who stood on his head to lead the Montreal Canadiens past Alexander Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals; 
• tight hockey, with a total of 49 games in the first round (the most since 1995) and 12 of them overtime results (the most since 2001). There wasn't a single four-game sweep, only one five-game series, five six-gamers and two that went the distance to seventh games;
• unpredictable hockey, with road teams winning 27 of the 49 games and four series going to the lower-seeded teams.

Yet with all due respect to the resurgent Detroit Red Wings, the resilient Boston Bruins and the surprising Philadelphia Flyers, the single biggest storyline of the conference quarter-finals is Halak and the Habs. The Slovak Olympian goaltender is one of the major reasons why this first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs has to go down as one of the best in modern history.

This is the first time an eighth-seed has knocked off a top-seed after falling behind three games to one. But it's more than No. 8 ousting No. 1 within a conference, it's actually No. 16 in the playoffs eliminating No. 1 overall.

That's why Halak has already earned himself a special place in the 100-year history of the Canadiens (and in the hearts of their fans). He stole the last three games for Montreal and his performance in game six at the Bell Centre was one for the ages, invoking comparisons with rookie Ken Dryden and the 1971 Stanley Cup champions and rookie Patrick Roy and the 1986 champion Canadiens.

Dryden and Roy made history because they won three and four series, respectively. Halak is only one-quarter of the way to the peak of Mount Stanley. What he has done, however, is what Dryden did 39 years ago: beat the top-ranked team in the Stanley Cup tournament. And even with Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins on the horizon, it's a start that's intriguing for Canadiens boosters and, even moreso, for Halak's agent, Allan Walsh.

www.TheSportMarket.biz
The Sport Market on TEAM 1040 and teamradio.ca
Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 12 noon PT
Facebook.com/TheSportMarket and Twitter.com/TheSportMarket

A sidelined Ovechkin hurts U.S. audiences but not necessarily overall North American numbers

There will be much hand-wringing over the Washington Capitals' stunning exit in the first-round of the National Hockey League's 2010 Stanley Cup tournament. Most of it will be in the Caps' front office, but a close second will be the disappointment shared by U.S. television rights holders Versus and NBC, both of which were loving their first-round playoff ratings and must have been salivating at the prospects of an eastern conference showdown between Alex Ovechkin and the Caps and Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins.

That Ovechkin-Crosby is no longer in the cards will also cause some long faces at the NHL's corporate offices in New York. And that's understandable from those who bank on star marketing to build a larger footprint in the U.S.

Yet if it is job one of the commissioner's office to create aggregate value through optimal revenue generation and profits -- for itself and its member franchises -- there is no need for any heads to hang.

This is a tale of two countries. What in this case is bad for hockey in the U.S. is good for the game in Canada and not necessarily bad for the NHL.

The bottom line is that another series for the Montreal Canadiens will be good for the NHL and its partners; most notably its Canadian broadcast and corporate partners. At the micro level, it will sell more tickets and pump up higher box office totals (especially with at least two games at the 21,273-seat Bell Centre, the second-biggest building in the league with the highest-priced tickets of any of the remaining eight playoff clubs).

It will engage more fans and drive larger overall television audiences, largely because CBC and RDS will drive numbers north of 3.5 M and even 4 M per game in Canada alone. Those ratings will help make more money for the NHL's single-largest broadcast rights buyer; the CBC.

It's true that fewer Americans will be watching the conference semifinals and finals than if Ovechkin and the Caps were on the marquee. The net outcome with the Habs in and the Caps out is positive for the core business of the NHL, however, because so many more people will be watching in Canada.

The NHL might not see it that way, because it is rarely prone to recognizing that on a per capita basis, 10 to 20 times more Canadians watch NHL hockey than do their American counterparts. What it should see is that when your business partners make money, it's good for your business. And in this case, no one pays the NHL more money for rights than the CBC and its Hockey Night in Canada franchise.

www.TheSportMarket.biz
The Sport Market on TEAM 1040 and teamradio.ca
Saturdays 9 a.m. to 12 noon PT
Facebook.com/TheSportMarket and Twitter.com/TheSportMarket

History Will Be Made promotional campaign is a winner for the NHL (and Young & Rubicam)

In this era of social media, you know you're onto something when people can't help but want to share digital files...story links...audio files...video files. You name it; if people want to share it, you've struck a chord.

That's the case with the National Hockey League's promotional campaign for the 2010 Stanley Cup championships; the History Will Be Made broadcast and in-arena video series.

Commissioned by the NHL's marketing department and developed by the global advertising agency Young & Rubicam, History Will Be Made is a winner.

When the series was unveiled last month, the NHL announced it would include six iconic moments in Stanley Cup playoff history.

“These are the moments from our game that have gone down in history as some of the most iconic in sports,” NHL Executive Vice-President of Marketing Brian Jennings said March 19th. "It’s that image of a flying Bobby Orr frozen in mid-air, when Bourque's 22-year journey finally ends with a championship, when Messier went from being a captain to 'The Captain.' The Stanley Cup Playoffs are where history is made, and this year will be no different.”

At the time, the NHL had plans for three other 30-second videos: one featuring former Montreal Canadiens goaltender Patrick Roy in his Calder Trophy-winning rookie campaign in 1986; one starring Stevie Yzerman scoring his double-overtime winner in the 1996 western conference final against St. Louis; and another putting the spotlight on Mario Lemieux in 1991.

This week, however, the NHL rolled out a seventh 30-second spot in the History Will Be Made campaign running across the league's national and local broadcast partners, NHL Network, NHL.com, in-arena, franchise web sites and various affiliated digital and social media websites. It featured 1984 vintage Wayne Gretzky, scoring a Stanley Cup final game winner for the Edmonton Oilers against the New York Islanders.

Gretzky actually had a cameo role in a Blues' uniform in one of the original six spots; watching helplessly as Yzerman raced away over the blueline before slapping his memorable winner. But no such vintage series is complete without Gretzky alongside Lemieux and Messier. Oversight or not, the NHL deserves credit for getting it right...better late than never.

More important, the NHL deserves credit for the campaign, period. It deserves kudos for the simplicity of the creative. Simple concept. Standard musical theme. A consistent three-part close, with 1. The specific storyline; 2. The campaign title; and 3. The NHL 2010 Stanley Cup logo.

It's what makes it work so well. It's what has allowed franchises such as the Vancouver Canucks to customize History Will Be Made videos starring Henrik and Daniel Sedin (two official versions so far, entitled "What if they hadn't called this "home"?).

Most importantly, it's what has created a buzz among the digital set, spawning more than 300 parodies in a little over three weeks. That means the campaign has captured the imagination of the young, interactive web set. And that's good news for the NHL and for Young & Rubicam.

The original six network-wide History Will Be Made videos, along with the seventh national spot featuring Gretzky, are listed below.

1970 - Boston Bruins: What if Bobby didn’t fly?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUnS5gq0BZ4&feature=channel

1984 - Edmonton Oilers: What if there was no Greatness? *
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMVgbHa0Fd0

1986 - Montreal Canadiens: What if Roy played like a rookie?
http://video.nhl.com/videocenter/console?id=65895

1991 - Pittsburgh Penguins: What if Mario wasn’t so super?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxoxGXyolVM&NR=1

1994 - New York Rangers: What if Messier didn’t lift an entire city?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ljv6f00E2nc&NR=1

1996 - Detroit Red Wings: What if Stevie Y didn’t inspire Hockeytown?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qc7fBl7vO0&NR=1

2001 - Colorado Avalanche: What if Bourque didn’t believe in one more year?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntccXmKmAxE&feature=related


www.TheSportMarket.biz
The Sport Market on TEAM 1040 and teamradio.ca
Saturdays 9 a.m. to 12 noon PT
Facebook.com/TheSportMarket and Twitter.com/TheSportMarket

Early ouster by NHL Devils shows again that late-season hired guns rarely pay off

Lou Lamoriello is a smart hockey man whose career track record of Stanley Cup championships in 1995, 2000 and 2003 speaks for itself.

Yet on the night Lamoriello's New Jersey Devils suffered a disappointing 4-1 eastern conference quarter-final loss at the hands of the underdog Philadelphia Flyers, it has to be said his penchant for late-season shake-ups has failed to pay off once again.

This time, landing prized unrestricted free agent Ilya Kovalchuk from the Atlanta Thrashers did not give the Devils the extra bump Lamoriello was looking for in the NHL's 2010 Stanley Cup tournament, where New Jersey was among the favourites going in.

It's true the Devils' CEO, president and general manager has been more predisposed to coaching changes than big trade deadline deals. Three years ago, Lamoriello fired his head coach Claude Julien with just three games left in the 2006-'07 regular season, despite having the Devils in second place in the eastern conference. Lamoriello was hoping to repeat the magic of 2000, when he dismissed Robbie Ftorek with eight games left, took over behind the bench and led New Jersey to its second Stanley Cup.

The difference between late-season coaching changes and late-season player rentals, however, is the cost. Firings cost what's remaining on the employment contract (and some goodwill). Incoming player rentals, on the other hand, don't come without tangible player assets and/or draft picks going the other way.

In this case, Lamoriello pulled the trigger just before the NHL's 2010 trade deadline, acquiring Kovalchuk in exchange for Johnny Oduya, Niclas Bergfors, prospect Patrice Cormier and -- here's the biggie -- New Jersey's 2010 first-round draft pick. That is potentially a very big price to pay for 20 games in the Meadowlands.

It's not that Kovalchuk failed to produce offence for the second-seeded Devils against the seventh-seeded Flyers; he did, with six points in five games. The question is did he make the Devils a better team than they already were? After years of being conditioned to do so in Atlanta, did Kovalchuk try to do too much himself? Most important, what did he do to the chemistry of New Jersey in a heavily-structured, team-oriented culture?

Those are the smaller questions now. The bigger question for the balance of the post-season will be where Kovalchuk plays next season. Will Lamoriello and the Devils have anything to show for the high first-rounder they gave up to get the Russian star? Or will he choose to sign with the Los Angeles Kings or another more offensive-oriented, free-wheeling team?

The big sport business question is, however, whether such late-season deals make sense in the salary cap era of the NHL, where building through the draft and player development seems to be the right formula.

Sure, you get the odd year like 2008 where a hired gun like Marian Hossa will get the Pittsburgh Penguins to the Stanley Cup final (and then leave) or a Brad Richards will drive the Dallas Stars to the western conference finals (and stay for the longer term).

The odds are that Kovalchuk will be like most late-season player rentals in the NHL (or any sport for that matter). Just ask his trading partner on the Kovalchuk deal, Atlanta GM Don Waddell, who in 2007 sent four draft picks to St. Louis to get Keith Tkachuk (for a few weeks) and Braydon Coburn to Philadelphia for Alexei Zhitnik. Or Calgary Flames' general manager Daryl Sutter, who sent two players and his first round draft pick last year to get Olli Jokinen.

Late-season shake-ups of coaches and players are high risk. The Kovalchuk case is yet another example of one that is also low reward.

www.TheSportMarket.biz
The Sport Market on TEAM 1040 and teamradio.ca
Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 12 noon PT
Facebook.com/TheSportMarket and Twitter.com/TheSportMarket