Is MLSE Screwing Things Up Again?
June 5th, 2008 by Steve
Ok, so according to Howard Berger (thanks for the link Sean), the Leafs low-balled Ron Wilson and offered him something in the neighbourhood of $600K a season. As Howard rightly points out, this wouldn’t put Wilson in the top 10 salaries for the NHL.
Actually lets put a more accurate point on this. During the 1999-2000 NHL season, the top 11 coaches in the NHL made over $600K a season (and that’s only of the 25 I could find). In fact, Ron Wilson was making $750K during the ‘99-’00 season. Considering that coaching salaries have likely grown at a rate above 4% every year since the ‘99-’00 season, and the AVERAGE salary that year was $615K, we can pretty easily assume that the average has gone up by almost 30% over the past 8 years. That means that the NHL Average should be hovering around $810K right now.
According to the best data I could find, the NHL average is around $830K at this point, and coaches like Guy Carbonneau (4th ranked at $1.66 million) are making well over that. The highest paid is believed to be Mike Babcock, and I’m guessing he makes around $2 million.
If you consider that the Leafs were paying Pat Quinn $1.5 million - 8 YEARS AGO, and the last time Ron Wilson was being paid $600K a year was in the ‘98-’99 season - when he was still coaching the Washington Capitals… all of this sort of boggles the mind.
MLSE basically gave Ron Wilson a giant F-U of a contract IF (I repeat… IF) they actually offered the stated $600K. Frankly it’s such a slap in the face I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t bother calling them back before taking a job elsewhere. He’s the 3rd winningest active coach in the NHL, and they want to pay him over $200K below league average? What the heck are they smoking? and where can I get some?
Whoever thought a $600K offer was suitable should be tarred and feathered like back in the olden days when Don Cherry still skated for a pro hockey team in Rochester… Richard Peddie where are you?
Now - Back to calm - One thing I think should be said is, because of all the reasons I’ve listed above, $600K a year is pretty ridiculously low. Perhaps too low for even an outfit like MLSE to delve to. It really doesn’t make a lot of sense unless there’s more to it than we’re being fed. The statement I would highlight is the following: “a base salary of $600,000″. Perhaps the base is $600,000 and the Leafs have thrown in a bunch of performance bonuses. If that were the case, and it doesn’t seem ridiculous, perhaps Ron is considering his chances of actually reaching the performance clauses. We won’t know anything until things sort themselves out, but if all of this is bogus news, it will only add to the farcical history of the Toronto sports media.
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4 Responses to “Is MLSE Screwing Things Up Again?”
By Down Goes Brown
on Jun 5, 2008
The entire story doesn’t make sense.
They interview him, they make an offer, they leak the story, and then they act like they don’t care if he takes it or not.
There must be something missing here. The incentive part seems to make sense. Still, if his relative’s are leaking info to Howard Berger then you’d have to imagine that the answer is going to be “no”.
Side note: It seems odd that Howard would have a Wilson family memember on speed dial. Does anybody know if Wilson has any relatives involved in the NHL in some capacity?
By PPP
on Jun 5, 2008
The entire article carries a huge stink of BS to me. From the ‘relative’ leak to the stated salary to the ‘revelation’ that a presser was organized and then cancelled.
By dan
on Jun 5, 2008
All this could be is to give the media some silly story to chew on while they wait for the cup final to be over before introducing him as their next coach. It’s good for NHL relations, heck they almost stole the spotlight on game 5 when the story broke… Berger was one of the only ones to bite on it, makes sense.
By Down Goes Brown
on Jun 5, 2008
By the way Steve, thanks for using the 590 link for Berger. I didn’t realize his blog was there too, now I can purge HockeyBuzz from my RSS feed once and for all.