Gillis firing is business as usual
Hockey driven by the bottom line
Some of Vancouver’s ardent National Hockey League fans will doubtless be shocked by the fall of Canucks general manager Mike Gillis after presiding over the best sustained performance in the team’s storied history, coming within one game of a Stanley Cup crown. Others will celebrate what they see as a fate well deserved after the club’s failure to make the playoffs following a disastrous second- half collapse in 2014’ s post- Christmas season. After all, this is one of Canada’s premier hockey markets. Fan expectations and emotions always run high in Metro — and, indeed, across the province — when it comes to what’s undeniably British Columbia’s hockey team.
But ultimately, decisions like this are driven not by loyalties to players, coaches or general managers. They are driven by the austere and sometimes ruthless interests of business and the bottom line. In this case, the owners have an entertainment asset valued at $ 700 million. It generates more than $ 100 million in revenue, and to earn that revenue it must fill a $ 110- million arena. With an average ticket price of $ 90 and a stadium that seats 18,910 customers, every playoff game missed represents substantial foregone revenue — at just the roughest of calculations, progressing through a playoff round, even without the home- team advantage, means at least $ 5 million per series, and that’s without factoring in the premium ticket prices that playoffs command, concessions, television revenue and so on. So, guesstimating, a run to the last game of a Stanley Cup Final is worth at least $ 20 million to $ 27 million in revenue.
Thus, when teams like the Canucks or the Toronto Maple Leafs — a $ 1.1- billion asset — fail to even make the playoffs, there’s a substantial financial impact for the owners. Small surprise, then, that general managers and coaches are held to strong results- based standards of performance. It’s been said of players that coaches care little for reputations; they care about performance on game night — it’s not how many goals a player scored last season that counts, it is how many he will score in the next period. Coaches and general managers face similar expectations.
The prospect of being fired on the shortest of notice is simply a fact of life for professional sports coaches and executives. Canucks fans who wanted the general manager’s head shouldn’t be too quick to give themselves credit for the management change. Fans who think he was the best thing to happen shouldn’t attribute his fate to malevolent forces. It’s just business as usual in this most mercenary of businesses. Last December, National Football League clubs axed six coaches, some of them repeat Super Bowl winners. Since the 2010- 11 season, National Hockey League clubs have fired more than a dozen coaches. Don’t fret about their fates, though — skilled coaches are hard to come by and most of them wind up coaching former competitors.
Still, the departure of Gillis and the hiring of fan favourite Trevor Linden as the club’s president of hockey operations takes little of the bitter edge off a dismal season for Canadian puck enthusiasts. Only one team from north of the 49th parallel made the NHL playoffs this year. Vancouver, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary and Edmonton are all heading for the golf course early. That’s a lot of lost revenue for six out of seven franchises and it’s not good news for the really big money interests, either. Broadcast and media companies have spent more than $ 6 billion on teams and broadcast rights and they stand to take a big hit. The television audience in Canada for last season’s Stanley Cup Final between Boston and Chicago was less than half the one that watched the Canucks lose to the Bruins in Game 7 in 2011. So there will be unrest on that front, too.
Meanwhile, for Gillis, pro hockey being the mercenary game it is, about all that’s to be said is: Thanks for the memories, Mike, all the best in your next endeavours. And for Linden: Glad you could make it, Trevor. We love ya — but this is Hockeyville and in this town, never forget your Shakespeare, for in the NHL, “uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”