I'll just post the WORST rated owner in the NHL
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They’re not always talked about as much as star players, head coaches and general managers. And, in many cases, they’re not in the limelight.
But one thing I’ve seen repeatedly covering the NHL the past 20 years is the value of a good owner to an organization — and the disruption that can come from having a bad one.
Owners set the tone for their franchises. They, ultimately, pick who is in charge of their most important hockey decisions, as well as the organization’s key business decisions. They help build arenas. They build fan bases. And they can also help build communities through charitable endeavors and redevelopment projects.
Several months ago, we put out a call to our NHL readers to evaluate their owners. Nearly 4,000 of you — including representatives from all 32 NHL fan bases — filled out our detailed owner survey, and the results are fascinating.
We’ve compiled your answers in four key ownership categories — willingness to spend, organizational stability, treatment of the fan base and franchise vision — into a “Fan Score” and combined that with our own ranking that factors in objective things such as team performance in the regular season and playoffs (over the past decade) as well as ownership’s general reputation and influence, according to our reporting.
The end result is our first-ever NHL ownership rankings. Keep in mind that this ranking is an amalgam of 50 percent fan perception of their teams’ owners and 50 percent of our own accounting for owner performance, and in some cases, those factors don’t align with one another. (In some markets, fans don’t love their owner even though the franchise is successful on the ice, for example.)
It’s a sad state of affairs in Buffalo right now. This season is the franchise’s 14th consecutive out of the playoffs, the NHL’s longest drought in history and one that doesn’t appear to be ending any time soon.
The Sabres were voted dead last in every category in our survey by a large margin and 61 percent of fans said their confidence in ownership was lower than a year ago. Buffalo fans filled our survey en masse, with more entries than every franchise except Minnesota, and the hundreds of responses were filled with vitriol. Many were pleas for the owner to sell the team.
Things are about as bad as they can get in Buffalo.
Fan perspective: “He seems averse to hiring GMs and coaches with actual NHL experience and makes abrupt hiring and firing decisions. The franchise still appears to have a haphazard plan for putting together a winning roster. Part of this is that there is no team president or other executive with NHL experience to guide these decisions.”
“His entire ownership tenure has been a disaster. He used to have competition as the worst owner in the league in Eugene Melnyk and Alex Meruelo, now he is the last one of those remaining.”
“Hockey Heaven he said. Instead, Terry Pegula’s ownership has put Buffalo in Hockey Hell.”
NHL owner rankings: Grading every team, from Tampa Bay to Buffalo
Introducing The Athletic's first NHL owner rankings, based 50 percent on a fan survey and 50 percent on expert accounting.
www.nytimes.com
They’re not always talked about as much as star players, head coaches and general managers. And, in many cases, they’re not in the limelight.
But one thing I’ve seen repeatedly covering the NHL the past 20 years is the value of a good owner to an organization — and the disruption that can come from having a bad one.
Owners set the tone for their franchises. They, ultimately, pick who is in charge of their most important hockey decisions, as well as the organization’s key business decisions. They help build arenas. They build fan bases. And they can also help build communities through charitable endeavors and redevelopment projects.
Several months ago, we put out a call to our NHL readers to evaluate their owners. Nearly 4,000 of you — including representatives from all 32 NHL fan bases — filled out our detailed owner survey, and the results are fascinating.
We’ve compiled your answers in four key ownership categories — willingness to spend, organizational stability, treatment of the fan base and franchise vision — into a “Fan Score” and combined that with our own ranking that factors in objective things such as team performance in the regular season and playoffs (over the past decade) as well as ownership’s general reputation and influence, according to our reporting.
The end result is our first-ever NHL ownership rankings. Keep in mind that this ranking is an amalgam of 50 percent fan perception of their teams’ owners and 50 percent of our own accounting for owner performance, and in some cases, those factors don’t align with one another. (In some markets, fans don’t love their owner even though the franchise is successful on the ice, for example.)
It’s a sad state of affairs in Buffalo right now. This season is the franchise’s 14th consecutive out of the playoffs, the NHL’s longest drought in history and one that doesn’t appear to be ending any time soon.
The Sabres were voted dead last in every category in our survey by a large margin and 61 percent of fans said their confidence in ownership was lower than a year ago. Buffalo fans filled our survey en masse, with more entries than every franchise except Minnesota, and the hundreds of responses were filled with vitriol. Many were pleas for the owner to sell the team.
Things are about as bad as they can get in Buffalo.
Fan perspective: “He seems averse to hiring GMs and coaches with actual NHL experience and makes abrupt hiring and firing decisions. The franchise still appears to have a haphazard plan for putting together a winning roster. Part of this is that there is no team president or other executive with NHL experience to guide these decisions.”
“His entire ownership tenure has been a disaster. He used to have competition as the worst owner in the league in Eugene Melnyk and Alex Meruelo, now he is the last one of those remaining.”
“Hockey Heaven he said. Instead, Terry Pegula’s ownership has put Buffalo in Hockey Hell.”