Ted's Take

The Washington Capitals are now one of the fastest growing revenue teams in the NHL. We are driving a lot of revenue growth to the league and the NHL Players’ Association. The players receive a disproportionate piece of any and all revenues as per the CBA. Any revenue growth we generate for the league is good news for the players. And the league. Simple equation: We generate more revenues; the salary cap increases; the players get more dollars.

Our hyper growth can be directly attributed to our team success and our drafting and developing and retaining in a long term deal - Alex Ovechkin. In fact, you can trace our real success to literally the day we announced that Alex Ovechkin had signed his 13 year deal. Do some research and trace the success of the team. See what I mean? Since that signing, Alex has gone on to win the League MVP twice and then Player of Year trophy three times as selected by his peers. He has led the league in scoring and in goals twice. We have one of the best records in the NHL over the last three years as well. All since we announced his new contract. We sell out every game. We have a waiting list for season tickets. We have one of the largest full season ticket holder bases in the entire NHL. The long term deal was a great hockey decision and a great business decision.

More importantly, as we own the NBA team too and have seen what happened this off season with star players leaving their franchises in their prime, signing Alex to a long term deal was of great comfort and benefit to the most important constituency we have - our fans.

And we play in a building that we own now. No tax payer dollars went into constructing our building. We generate revenues for our community. We pay taxes. The revitalization of downtown DC can be attributed to the Verizon Center and Mr. Pollin’s courageous decision. There is a reason why the Capitals were named DC Chamber of Commerce’s “Company of the Year.” Everyone is benefitting from our revenue growth. We have a long term mortgage on our building. Other than player payroll our mortgage is our biggest line item expense. It is important for us to do as much as possible to “securitize” our future success. Hence long term deals to Alex Ovechkin and to Backstrom too.

The 13 year deal signed by Alex Ovechkin was a simple deal. His salary is straight-lined across the life of his contract. There was never an issue with the structure of the contract with the NHL. It was all done in the light of day - honest and transparent. By the rules. The writer of this article knows that. He is just mad because he didn’t have access to Alex Ovechkin when he wrote his book. We don’t agree with his point of view in his book and we won’t have anything to do with him and his book now. He is on his own.

Alex’s contract was NOT a long term front-loaded contract structured to achieve artificial low contract value for the purpose of achieving certain advantages under the salary cap. Nor was Backstrom’s deal. That is why they were approved and why we played by the rules. Alex will still be young enough when his deal ends to sign another contract too! As will Backstrom. The writer knows that. Why he lumps the deal in with these other deals is just mean-spirited and inspired by other factors known only to him.

The writer can say anything he wants about me. He doesn’t scare me. He just can’t distort facts. We won’t let him and he is being called out on this one right here and now.