philduba.com

I tend to agree with the position of the Rangers (I can't believe I just said I support the Rangers in something) that the team knows best in marketing and disseminating its digital media to its customers and fan base. The ability to gain revenue from local affiliates is something the league cannot provide as its revenue is divided across all 30 teams so the impact on the same space on a site would be greater (for the most part) with the local versus the nationals advertiser. I do not believe wholesale control of the site is needed by the NHL to put together a more uniform appearance on the web. Templates (less stringent than the ones now) could be provided to the individual teams as the basis of their site, however, the content could be controlled for the most part by the individual team. The NHL could also provide resources for building/maintaining a team's site as not all teams have the same technological resources as others and may indeed want the NHL to run their sites. I think the overall theme here is one that is played out in the business world sometimes as well, that the big corporate office dictates how its business units or divisions are going to execute some task or process that is the complete opposite of what that business has been doing and doing successfully.