Thursday, December 6, 2012

Memorandum to Mr. Gary Bettman and Mr. Donald Fehr


Memorandum

To: Mr. Gary Bettman and Mr. Donald Fehr
From:  A concerned consultant
RE: NHL Lockout
Subject:   Hockey doesn’t belong to you
Requested Action:   Immediately return the sport to the people to whom it belongs

Dear Mr. Bettman and Mr. Fehr,

You don’t know me, so let me start with brief background that explains I am more like you than I am like members of the NHLPA (respectively, seemingly your adversaries/constituents).   Briefly:  I’m 30 years old.  I was pretty much a straight-A student through high school and college and got in trouble as a kid for thinking I knew more than I did.   (Sound familiar yet?)  In the years since college, I’ve worked in most key aspects of business (consulting first, which entailed operations, sales, and marketing, among other things).  In sheer business terms, I do not think you understand the UVP (unique value proposition, for anyone else who doesn’t use consultant-speak) of the National Hockey League.    And, to be blunt, I think you do not understand this UVP because you just don’t get the game of hockey.   (Please don’t get emotional with me in objecting to this contention; I can’t guess that either of you got to this stage of your careers without being at the far end of “T” on the “T/F” Myers-Briggs scale.)

However, I actually grew up in a hockey family (albeit not a professional hockey family).   But I still grew up in a hockey family.  And since neither of you really grew up in a hockey family, I think you are missing a huge piece of the puzzle when it comes to the UVP of the NHL which, frankly, is the game itself—which is way larger than your oversized personalities and even more outsized agendas.

The UVP of hockey is the game itself, and everyone who has an investment or interest or delight in the game.   These are the folks who generate enough interest and revenue to pass the game onto their kids who in turn pass the game onto their own children (and make sure the future stars of tomorrow actually learn to play hockey).   The UVP of the NHL is the people who have made hockey, the game, what it is—and there are lots of these people.

You should get to know a few of these folks: 
  • Hockey belongs to the kid in Kladno who doesn’t have access to fancy equipment or even really a “gym” but who nonetheless develops trees like tree trunks by exercising every day for YEARS.  
  • Hockey belongs to the kid in Quebec whose single mother makes sure her son can play hockey. 
  • Hockey belongs to the kid who plays roller hockey in California and runs for miles in the summer and plays in the AHL while pursuing a career in the NHL. 
  • Hockey belongs to the kid in Nova Scotia who sells newspapers so he can afford to play hockey. 
  • Hockey belongs to the privileged son of a wealthy businessman who already has the world at his feet but works really hard to play hockey at an elite level. 
  • Hockey belongs to the kid who knows he’s never going to go pro, but plays for his club team anyway.   Hockey belong to that kid who now coaches a high school hockey team.
  • Hockey belongs to the kid who’s been paralyzed by the sport he loves. 
  • Hockey belongs to the kid who played for years in the minor leagues before he had to give up the dream—but for whom the dream lives on as he coaches a minor league team. 
  • Hockey belongs to the coach who started off as a high school coach and became a college coach and then lived the dream as a coach of a Stanley Cup champion team.
  • Hockey belongs to the kid in a Russian mining town who was so good at hockey he didn’t have to work at the factory like everyone else in his town grows up to do. 
  • Hockey belongs to the professional daughter who lives far from home and always has something she can share with her dad when they talk because of the game they both love. 
  • Hockey belongs to the patient who’s dying of cancer, who’s in tremendous pain and can’t really enjoy anything anymore, but who can—at least for the few hours a game is on—get caught up in something other than a horrible disease that’s robbed her of who she used to be. 
  • Hockey belongs to the father who never had the chance to play hockey but who’s made sure to give his son and his daughter every chance to play the game he never got the chance to play—which means he’s up at 4 AM to take his 6-year-old to practice and at the rink at 11 PM at night with his 14-year-old—and that he abandons his own hobbies to make sure his kids have a chance to pursue what he never had the chance to pursue himself. 
  • Hockey belongs to the mother who went into debt and took on a part-time job to make sure her son got the chance to chase his dreams.
  • Hockey belongs to the woman struggling with depression after the death of a loved one, but who’s able to smile when her+ favorite player does something magical on the ice that—for the first time in such a long time—makes her smile. 
  • Hockey belongs to the man who’s been desperately searching for a job for more than a year and who can’t find one and who needs to know there’s hope and he can see hope in a story of his “up-from-the-ashes” team that went from last place to first place and from terrible to a Cup contender. 
  • Hockey belongs to the adult children who miss their own parents, but who now pass on their love of the game to their own children.
  • Hockey belongs to sick kids in the hospital, whose eyes light up if they get to spend even five minutes with a player on their favorite team.  Hockey belongs to the parents of sick kids in the hospital who--years later--remember with gratitude and fondness who was there for their child when the child was sick.  
  • Hockey belongs to the woman who’s been teaching 3-year-olds how to skate at a community ice rink for the past forty years.
  • Hockey belongs to the player who’s struggling to balance getting an education with going to the next level in hockey.
  • Hockey belongs to the kid who’s riding bus after bus in snow and ice from town to town in the hopes that the practice and coaching he’s get in junior hockey will be his ticket to the highest level of hockey.
  • Hockey belongs to the coaches who spend hour after hour with thirteen-year-old kids, helping them to become better hockey players, and in so doing—and without even realizing they’re doing it—teaching those middle school kids about how to commit to something and how to work with other people as a team and how to learn what they’re good at and get better at it and learn where they need help and learn so they become better players. 
  • Hockey belongs to the girl who plays the sport and realizes she’s not limited because she’s a girl. 
  • Hockey belongs to the 75-year-old who’s now retired and who made a living in sales for 30 years and played in the NHL years before players made millions. 
  • Hockey belongs to the men who played the sport seriously for years before they had to go pro in something else—taking everything the sport taught them about hard work and sacrifice and discipline—into careers in law, medicine, dentistry, and government.   


Of course, you don’t know all of these people.    Some of them, I know because I have read their stories countless times in Sports Illustrated, autobiographies, or newspaper articles.  (FYI, the kid in Kladno was Jaromir Jagr.   You may not be aware of this, but Sidney Crosby sold newspapers as a kid.  And that coach who has been dead since 1991—who started  a high school coach before he won the Stanley Cup—in the hockey world, he was known as “Badger Bob.”)    Others, I know because those people are my brother, my parents, my friends, or my brother’s former teammates and coaches, or--to be honest--players playing for my NHL team's AHL affiliate, players on my NHL team whose stories are not as popular, and, well, of course, some are simply the stories of fellow fans of the game it's easy to find or read about online these days.    

But you should know all of them.   Not just the Sidney Crosbys and Jaromir Jagrs and Evgeni Malkins and Kris Letangs of the world (don’t get me wrong, I love to watch all of them play, and somehow they have all played for MY team).   You should know them, of course, because—in the NHL—they are part of your product.  The game itself is your product, of course, but players with the skill of Jagr and Crosby--who do things in games that develop a history that underlies all of hockey--sell your sport. 

But the other people.   These people are your CUSTOMERS--AKA the people who will watch the game on TV and buy season tickets and merchandise (some of them may even grow up to get jobs with major TV networks and want to help you out because of the game they love).   These are the people who are also part of the sport and part of the story.   Hockey is their game, too.  Some of them never made it to the NHL.  Some of them are going to make it to the apex of the industry (not convinced that will forever be the NHL the way you’re going) but not as players.   Others are going to pass along the marvelous lessons of hockey—and have great memories of hockey road trips, hockey tournaments, and—of course—of how much fun it was to be with a spouse, a friend, a parent, a child—while learning to skate or watching players like Coffey and Letang skate.  

In all your negotiations, I have yet to see anything that indicates you value and understand your UVP.  And, if you’re actually in this for the long haul, you need to know: All these people—these are the people to whom hockey belongs, and if you were truly being "guardians of the game," that is the UVP of your business, you'd make it a point to know why each of them sacrifice something to play some role in the business that is the NHL.  

If you truly understood that these are the people to whom hockey belongs, Mr. Bettman.    Mr. Fehr, if you were truly concerned about the best interests of ALL your players, you would be terribly concerned that the NHL has not banned headshots (as EVERY other level of ELITE hockey—from major junior to college to the International Ice Hockey Federation has).   Mr. Fehr, if you were truly concerned about growing the game in the United States, you’d actually find a way to work with Mr. Bettman on the very things that prevent the game from growing revenues exponentially (we’ll simply ignore science and continue to allow “legal headshots” and we will not make any changes to our rulebook—as the NFL, with revenues that dwarf the NHL’s, does regularly to encourage a better product—because, who really cares that our All-Star talent was sidelined for months last year and some Future Hall-of-Fame player's career just ends due to concussions).   Mr. Bettman, you’d tell owners to get their acts together and realize there are 3 to 5 men in the world at any given time who merit a contract that’s 10 years long (hello, the prime of a career is usually 5 years, even for All-Stars!) and to make decisions with the brains that made them their billions in the first place rather than their “I must win!” play pocketbooks.  Mr. Fehr, you’d actually deal with the root issues of what’s wrong with the “NHL” brand of hockey when trying to ensure your players make the most money they can throughout their careers. 

One last—but important—honest observation:  I don’t think you two like each much on a personal level.   I think you are both used to winning.  I think you both have stubborn personalities.   And I think these personal issues—“F” issues, if you will—are inhibiting you from making wise and rational decisions.    And I’d like to advise—from a cold-hearted, rational perspective—that no one who actually gives a damn about the game cares at all about your feelings or “contest” or “one-up-man ship” or who wins this little game the two of you have going about “I must win” and “No, I must win.”

Because you don’t understand that what you’re doing is not the game—you are destroying the game.

And, as you should have already seen, the game of hockey just doesn’t belong to you.  The game never has belonged to you, and the game never will belong to you.

So, in the best interest of the game that had enabled the NHL as a business to generate revenues in the billions, please immediately return to the game to the people it belongs to—before it’s too late for any new folks to come to enjoy the game we know and love, that’s way bigger than us, one that was here long before us and should—should, whether it’s NHL or not is up to you—exist long after we’re not here.

Sincerely,


A Concerned Consultant

No comments:

Post a Comment