The Puck Stops Here

Selling professional hockey where swimsuits, not parkas, are a wardrobe necessity was hard enough. Skipping a season may put the sport on thin ice in Southern California.

“The NHL is going to have a big hill to climb to get back, and they were already a fringe sport,” said King fan Jason Bunch, 35, an accounting manager who lives in Long Beach. “The damage has already been done as far as the fans are concerned. You’ve already missed one season, so what do I care if I miss another?”

After failed labor negotiations that led to the NHL season’s being canceled Wednesday, officials from both local teams said they expect holding on to business to be a struggle.

The Kings will try to hold a fan base built over nearly 40 years on the scene, with a heritage that includes Wayne Gretzky and an appearance in the Stanley Cup finals in 1993. Yet the Kings have never turned a profit since AEG bought the team in 1995, team President Tim Leiweke said.

The Ducks are in an even more precarious position. Once a cash cow with the nightly sellouts and merchandise sales that ranked among the best in sports, they have slipped to No. 2 in the region despite reaching the Stanley Cup finals in 2003. Adding to the uncertainty is whether the season’s being canceled will affect the Walt Disney Co.’s effort to sell the team.

“I hope we all wake up and realize what has happened,” Leiweke said during a conference call a short time after NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman announced that games would not be played this season. “We don’t have the largest block of fans, but we have the most passionate. But if you look around at the sponsors, the season-ticket holders, the fans, television, it’s not like there are long lines to stick behind this sport.”

That may translate into difficult times for both local teams, especially if the lockout cuts into or absorbs the 2005-06 season.

Keeping fan interest and maintaining sponsorship support -- one of the Ducks’ biggest contracts was already set to expire this season -- will be difficult without hockey games.

L.A.-area sports fans already have their choice of two professional teams in basketball and baseball, plus the draw of major college athletic powers USC and UCLA -- and enjoy a climate better suited for in-line skates than ice skates.

“No one seems to miss us,” Leiweke said. “I’m not sure there is a huge outcry for the return of the NHL. That says a lot about the difficult balance we live with having hockey in a warm-weather climate.”

The Kings have laid off 30 employees and will lay off 10 more, Leiweke said. The Ducks have already reduced their staff from more than 90 to 55, with possible “forced reductions” to come, said Al Coates, the team’s interim general manager.

“We have a lot of work and repairs to do, when and if we play hockey again,” Leiweke said. “But if we kept going down that path, the league would have been bankrupt.”

Duck repairs may be handled by a different owner.

There are believed to be four groups bidding on the team, including Henry Samueli, whose company manages the Arrowhead Pond, and a group headed by former Pittsburgh Penguin owner Howard Baldwin.

Samueli’s initial bid is believed to have been between $50 million and $60 million, and Disney executives “told them to take a hike,” an NHL source said. Samueli then is said to have upped his offer. Baldwin, a source familiar with the negotiations said, has “tweaked” his first bid of $50 million.

Disney is not expected to sell the team before a new collective bargaining agreement is secured and the NHL returns. The NHL source said that Disney executives had been insisting that a buyer guarantee the team remain in Anaheim, but that may no longer be a condition.

Whether the L.A. area can support two teams may become an issue, depending on how long the NHL is out.

The Kings were believed to have about 12,000 season-ticket holders last season and have retained 92%, a team spokesman said. The Kings asked for only a $100 deposit on tickets because, Leiweke said, “we smelled this coming for a long time and did this to add integrity to our relationship with fans.”

Coates said that before the lockout the Ducks had retained 81% of their season-ticket holders, who made larger deposits and have earned interest on their money. That number has slipped to 78%. That means the Ducks have lost about 1,800 season-ticket holders from what Coates said were more than 8,000 last season -- a severe decline for a team that is believed to have lost $28 million last season.

“The indications we get are what we are down won’t be down much more,” said Coates, whose own contract expires in June. “We have met with our staff, and the No. 1 area for us is retention [of season-ticket holders].

“It is easier to retain somebody that likes the game than it is to find someone new. For every one we lose, we need to get two back. We have programs ready at a moment’s notice -- as soon as we know we are going to play again.”

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Times staff writer Ben Bolch contributed to this report.

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No deal

A look at key points in the final proposals traded by the NHL and the players’ association:

* SALARY CAP: The NHL presented a final cap offer of $42.5 million, with an escalating luxury tax below that. The players’ association countered with a $49-million cap that would allow teams to go as much as 10% above that twice during the deal and be subject to a luxury tax.

* LINKAGE: The NHL dropped its demand to have a link between league revenue and player costs. Once that happened, the players’ association agreed to a salary cap.

* SALARY ROLLBACK: The sides agreed to the players’ association offer of a 24% rollback on all existing contracts that was proposed as part of the union’s Dec. 9 framework.

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Los Angeles Times

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Source: Associated Press

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*--* CANCELED CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES Sport Year Reason NHL 2005 Lockout MLB 1994 Strike NHL 1919 Influenza epidemic MLB 1904 Giants refuse to play Boston

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*--* LONG WORK STOPPAGES IN PRO SPORTS Sport Year Games Days NHL 2004-05 1,230 207 NBA 1998-99 464 191 MLB 1994-95 921 232 NHL 1994-95 468 103 NFL 1982 98 57 MLB 1981 712 50 Sources: NHL, Major League Baseball, ESPN

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