So even if the Penguins win the Stanley Cup, they still won't make any money?
So I'm no economist (although I played one for three seasons on WEBSTER), but maybe player salaries aren't the only problem with certain teams.
How exactly could the Penguins make money? If the players paid to play? If they charged $500 a ticket? If they sold their own pucks to visiting teams? If they put a toll on both blue lines?
I'm just trying to figure out finance.
I don't know. Maybe I should start with my checkbook.

Are you ready to hear the dirty little secret about Mark Messier?
You're going to be shocked.
Seriously. If you're pregnant or nursing, I'm going to have to ask you to stop reading. Also, if you're under 5'2", my lawyers are also telling me to turn you away.
OK.
Good.
Are you ready?
The dirty little secret about Mark Messier is that a lot of New Yorkers don't like him.
Now obviously I don't have the data to back this statement up, but I will tell you that if you talk hockey around New York and bring up Messier, you hear some interesting takes on him.
Some people blame him for splitting for Vancouver in 1997. And then coming back three years later. A lot of people see it as a jerk move, like his only concern was a nice fat, paycheck.
Some people blame him for his ridiculous ice time. The guy was in his late 70s and getting 20 minutes a night while the Rangers' few prospects were sitting on the bench.
Plus, every season with Messier the team had to find out if he was coming back sometime in October. He could never let them know, you know, a few months in advance. Nope. Messier was always like 'OK. The season starts tomorrow. There's nothing good on TV then. I think I'll be back for another season.'
Messier was certainly a hero. He practically single-handedly brought a Stanley Cup to New York. He was a great player. He will be missed. That ovation he got in 2004 when everyone was pretty sure he was going to retire, was genuine.
But it's the same feeling you have when the guy in the cube next door takes a new job. You're sad and you miss him and three days later you can't remember his name.
I think it's going to be like that with Messier.
You'll see lots of nice tributes and ceremonies and then he's going to sort of flutter away.
Messier was a great player, but at the end of the day, he's just not a great New York player. It's a fine distinction, but one most New Yorkers can make intuitively.
And on a semi-related note, it kind of pisses me off that Messier is getting this big send off and no one has ever done anything for Adam Graves, who never even really got to retire. He just sort of stopped playing.
Graves was a hero on the ice and a legend in the community.
I'm sure I've written about this before, but when the Garden caught a glimpse of Graves at the Mike Richter retirement ceremony, the place erupted. It erupted like 18,000 people had all found their long-lost brother at the same time.
So Messier better enjoy all the attention now. In a few months, we'll be stealing his office supplies.

Interesting.
Larry Brooks says there's a rumor the Thrashers might be low-balling Ilya Kovalchuk at the suggestion of NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman (login info.).
I really do love the idea of a sport where the commissioner chases his best players overseas, but I find that idea a little hard to believe. There are some contracts that are a lot more ill-conceived than whatever Kovalchuk wants from Atlanta. I can't believe the league would be that silly.
Although I sort of said all of that right before the lockout, so don't go by me.
* * *
Over in Philly, Peter Forsberg and Derian Hatcher will miss the start of training camp (login info.).
Hatcher and Forsberg injured? I'm not saying that's a common thing. I'm just saying I have a macro that typed this sentence for me.
Also out of Philly, Tim Panaccio coins the term 'shootist' to define a player whose specialty is the shootout after ties.
I'm telling you. You're really going to see hockey turn into baseball, with really specialized roles for players. I guarantee there will be a team with one guy whose only role is to shoot in the shootout. Teams don't need to roll four lines, so why not use the three extra spots for special teams?
It's going to happen.
* * *
ESPN re-signed Barry Melrose to be a hockey analyst across the network. That network's love of Melrose always kind of defined the reason hockey didn't totally work on ESPN. It's almost like they saw hockey as something goofy — all mullets and silly suits — rather than a serious sport. If they had treated the NHL like less of a silly sideshow, people might have even tuned in once in a while.
Obviously, hockey has a lot of problems, and it's absurd to blame Melrose for its awful ratings. But it sure didn't help having a caricature be the sport's face on a major sports network.
* * *
Finally, the Boston Herald's Stephen Harris says teams will continue to trap — even with the red line gone. He then has a really scary quote from Bruin Shawn McEachern: "Talented teams will still try to attack. But other teams that play more defensive, they just trap on the other side of the blue line, more towards the red line. So it becomes even more defensive. We'll see what happens here."
More trapping, more defense, and less stars? I think I just wrote the tagline for OLN's NHL package.