[IggyWH]

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Pittsburgh, when having a winning team, is just as big of a hockey market as anywhere else other than MAYBE New York and Montreal.


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By far the funniest thing said in this thread.

Pittsburg is easily in the bottom 25% of marketable cities in hockey. In the last five years they have easily had one of the lowest overall team salaries in hockey. Basically they are cheap.

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Sorry, I'm not used to speaking to people outside of the area about sports. When I talk to someone around here, they understand what I mean so let me try to explain.

When I'm talking about as big of a hockey market, I'm talking in relative terms.

For instance (sorry for the baseball reference but I know actual numbers here), the Pirates so far this year have sold 1.8 million tickets and should top the 2 million mark. Allegheny County (where Pittsburgh is located) has a population of 1.3 million people. In contast, Boston who has a population of 8 million people, sold a total of 2.8 million tickets (number would be higher if they had a bigger park but you get the point I'm trying to make).

So just because ticket sales might be low overall, in comparison to size, the Pirates are a pretty good draw.

This then is directly related to the hockey market that I'm talking about. Add in that the Pens have THE star of the NHL (I don't care for him but there's no debating Lemieux isn't a living legend and one of if not the most liked hockey player) and that the Pens logo is the best selling in all the NHL, the Pens can hang with just about any other market (relative of course).

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Now with the Crosby pickup and it looks like the Pens will be buyers once FA market opens up, they won back my patronage because it looks like they're going to try to be competitive and not just put 18 bums on the ice just to put more money in Lemieux's pocket. They have no excuses now...

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Buyers in the Free Agent market? hahaha the jokes keep on coming.

I can picture it now the Pens new roster:

Lemieux, Cosbey, Recchi and ... and ... hmmmm .... 17 other people no one ever heard of.

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Might want to do some research before you make yourself look dumb.

Facts :

1)The team is in the process of being sold. Obviously a contender will raise the value of the team.

2)A contender will "grease" the wheels in getting a new arena. Pittsburgh has never been bad at spending money on a good team (think the Steelers had a problem getting a stadium?)

3)Pens currently have 7 million towards salaries for 05-06. Lemieux and Morozov and possible new deals for Fleury, Malkin and Crosby not included.

4)Pens have already said they plan on spending towards the top of the cap (although I suspect because of #1 it will be maxed out)

5)Ticket sales are already going crazy... crazy enough that a deal already pretty much in place to sell the Pens has been taken off the table for restructuring

6)I've heard of a number of FA's talk openly about possibly coming to Pittsburgh, namely Kovey, Lang (if he gets dropped which he expects) and Niedermayer. Kovey and Lang are pretty obvious as they never wanted to leave in the first place but were dumped because of salary. Niedermayer though who would probably request the max (around 9 million) is an obvious sign that the Pens will be buyers. I'm sure he didn't name drop the Pens to scare NJ.