Here’s what I’m seeing on my end. My tickets have gone up five years in a row–they’ve nearly doubled from where I signed on six years ago. That’s unsustainable. Trees don’t grow all the way to the sky, and fans in the cheap seats can only afford so much by way of ticket hikes. Even in my small circle, I know a couple of Caps fans who’ve given up their 400-level tickets because they cost too much. As for me, my tickets aren’t at hardship levels yet, but they’re getting pretty damn close.

Meanwhile, earlier this summer, Monumental had to go to the DC Council to ask for permission to put some new electronic billboards up on Verizon Center. I don’t think, a priori, that they’d be going the “bad neighbor” route–to hear some tell it–if there weren’t some legitimate financial NEED for them to be doing that. Some of the comments I heard at the hearing and have seen in the press have been brutal. To needlessly volunteer for that kind of thrashing is counter-intuitive. That kind of bad press and negative community sentiment can lead to lost business, so would it make any sense to risk losing money if you’re already in the black? The Capitals aren’t making money. They’re losing it. A lot of it. And that’s WITH ticket prices going through the roof.

Last I heard, 18 out of 30 NHL teams were losing money. That’s 60% of the league. And that’s not some League hack saying that, that was no less than Forbes Magazine. I quote:

“The NHL’s problem is the widespread disparity in profits for its 30 teams. We estimated that 18 teams lost money during the 2010-11 season in our annual look at the business of hockey. Several other teams barely eked out a profit, but the league’s most flush teams made a killing. The Toronto Maple Leafs, New York Rangers and Montreal Canadiens had an operating profit (in the sense of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) of $171 million combined. The other 27 NHL teams lost a collective $44 million. If you add the Vancouver Canucks and Edmonton Oilers to the fat cats ledger, profits hit $212 million with the remaining 25 teams posting a loss of $86 million.”

Article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2012/09/18/nhl-lockout-is-all-about-the-benjamins-and-who-doesnt-have-them/

The problem is that too many teams are losing too much money. And some of the teams that Forbes says are doing well financially, are stinking it up on the ice (Toronto, Edmonton, I’m looking at you guys.)

While I was poking around on Forbes, I took a look at the page they’ve got devoted to the Caps. It’s a bit dated, but take a look:

http://www.forbes.com/teams/washington-capitals/

Look at that -7.5 Million under Operating Income, and then consider this: That was a 7.5 million dollar loss, BEFORE taxes.

While you’re on Forbes, take a look at some of the other teams in the league, and note how many minus signs there are under Operating Income. The Ducks, who won the whole enchilada a couple of years ago, are losing more money than the Capitals. The Thrashers bolt to Winnipeg, fans fall in love with the team…and the owners promptly lose five million bucks and change. The Blue Jackets are putting 8-figure red numbers on the bottom line. And then, there are the Coyotes, who are a fiscal basket case.

How in the HECK are that many operating losses sustainable? If too many teams keep losing money like this, sooner or later, the word “contraction” WILL start making the rounds. And by contraction, I DON’T mean a word with an apostrophe.

So, let me put this back to you. You own some struggling NHL team, and you’re losing millions of dollars a year. You know you can only raise ticket prices so high (ESPECIALLY in an economy like this, but that’s another discussion) before you start losing business. And there are a lot of expenses that are out of your control. What do you do?

The level of competition at the NHL level is very, very good, and very close together. There aren’t that many teams you can look at, coming into this season, and say they have absolutely no shot at the playoffs, and that their entire regular season is going to be a waste of time, right up front. I certainly don’t think that about the Capitals: they should make the playoffs, and may contend for the division title and a top 3 slot (though you can tell they mean business down in Raleigh).

But ANY team can win in the playoffs. Just ask the LA Kings.

So, the question then is, can the Capitals make the playoffs? And if so, then what?

Once you make it into the postseason, you need absolutely every card in your hand to advance: players, coaches, off-ice personnel, and sooner or later…wait for it…spiritual support. It’s all going to matter at some point. Once you hit the playoffs, sooner than later, you’re going to run into a team with a similar level of talent, coaching, and support. And that’s the point where the intangibles make the difference. If everything you can SEE is at level pegging, then the advantage would have to go to who has the advantage in the unseen, even if you just categorize that as “intangibles” and leave the higher elements out of it.

So if you want to be prosaic about it, then try it like this: let us at LEAST be a net positive for our team in the intangibles column. Or, at least, less of a negative.

I don’t care if you believe this stuff or not, but at LEAST try to be grateful for the team we’ve got, if for NO other reason than that it might make your season more enjoyable.

If I look down at a hamburger patty and use positive thinking to try and make myself believe it’s a New York Strip, it won’t magically turn into one.

We can throw all of our ‘good vibes’ at an inferior team this season and they will still miss the playoffs unless management starts actually trying to put a team together that will win.

Be realistic, I would love to see The Capitals win the Cup, but it doesn’t look like management is trying very hard so far during this off-season to make that a possibility.

I’m blind, I’m deaf, I wanna be a ref. Terry Gregson, call your office.

The math is correct, however.

Before anyone asks, I am not capsfan387 over on the Post. Whoever that was, thank you very much for the link love, and if you’re ever in Verizon Center for a Caps game, come on up to Section 417 and say hi. I’m pretty hard to miss.

As for the comment that this was too much analysis when the picture could be much clearer on Tuesday: Well, yeah…but in theory, the Caps could be in the playoffs by close of NHL business Tuesday night. I’m out of the loop a bit, but I’m not sure if that point has either been made or properly explained, so I opted to step in.

Playoff math is something I enjoy knowing how to do. (As an aside: somewhere out there, my high school algebra teacher is going, “See? You really WERE going to need this!”) And I actually have fun plotting the scenarios, crunching the numbers, and throwing out the occasional tantalizing “What if?” or two. This was more fun for me to write than you think, and if you enjoyed reading it, then we both came out ahead.

I ALSO went in depth with the scenarios, in part, because I know this season has been a bit discouraging at times. When we lost to Buffalo the other night, all of a sudden, we had no control over our playoff fate. Oh no, oh no, panicpanicpanic. I could almost smell the resignation of Caps Nation at the end of the Buffalo game…or, who knows, maybe that was just a Sabres fan who forgot to apply his Mitchum that night, I don’t know.

Now, however, not only are we back in the driver’s seat, we’re pretty darn close to the finish line–a prospect that was very much in question until Saturday night’s fortuitous turns.

How close to the finish line are we? That was the point of all the “4 points means this, 3 points means that,” and so on.

The Caps aren’t in the playoffs yet, and I’m not going to jinx it by saying it’s a slam dunk from here. I WILL say, however, that the playoffs are now firmly within the Caps’ reach.