CCHL Bonus Cash - An Early Look

 Welcome back to the annual state of the CCHL Bonus Cash blog where I, your friendly yet stunningly good-looking commissioner, lays out how things look for bonus money.  

While we still do not have the blog money or twitter funds tabulated (that runs until April 15th), we do have all of the CCHL season bonus cash based on performance and lineups accounted for at this point in time.  

The biggest difference this year is that our bonus money for lineups being valid and accurate dropped about five million dollars and declined for the first time in four seasons.  Our record bonus payout was last season at $52.5 million as a league whereas this year we are paying $47.25 million dollars.  

We had five teams that did not qualify for even a cent of bonus money based on having nine-plus illegal lineups, while seven teams maximized the $4.75 million dollar bonus by having a perfect lineup for the season.  

In reality, the number isn't as stark as it seems, as two teams made up approximately five percent of all illegal lineups this season.  

Overall the lineups received were down 41 total lineups in total, but it did mark the fifth straight year of decline in lineups received.  The bright side is that while there has been a decline, the reality is last year we did set a record level of bonus cash for lineup validation, so there doesn't seem to be a true correlation between the lineups received and bonus money paid out.  It was also only down about two lineups per team in 2021-22 as well, so we're not really far off the pace we had last year when we set a record. 

Sudbury paced the overall bonus money thus far with eight million, while Siberia finished second with a solid $7.75 million and Fort Erie finished third with $6.75 million.  Wisborg also joined the six million club with that mark even as well.  

Full details will be posted in the coming weeks once our blog money and twitter participation has been accounted for.  Stay tuned for that and if you are interested in knowing your current total, please feel free to reach out to ask.  

State of the Loons; Changes on the Way

 After 4 years it is finally looking like the Loons' on ice product finally has a direction; however off the ice we have been facing some major issues as of late. Out of no where the Minnesota State Lottery filed a lawsuit against the Loons for copyright infringement. It appears that our current logo is strikingly close to the Minnesota lottery logo. We are not ready to point the finger of blame, but we seem to think a fellow GM with ties to Minnesota might be to blame. It is well known that this GM has a love of scratch tickets and the lottery advertised throughout that Minnesota barn. We can not prove anything yet, but I am sure someone is about to receive a influx of scratch tickets by dropping the dime on the Loons! To rectify the situation and avoid a lawsuit we have agreed to change the Loons' logo on our primary jerseys while paying a fee in order to use the old logo on our third jerseys. 

Four and a half years ago we relocated the Ottawa Barracudas to Capeside. A state of the art arena was built to serve as the home for the Loons - the Nest. Makes sense right?  - in the wild a loon's home is its nest. However, the same goes for an owl. A fellow CCHL team in the northwest also uses an arena known as the Nest. According to our CCHL commissioner he has been received a lot of negative feedback from Ticketmaster due to confusion between the two Nests. To get the commissioner off of our backs -  beginning next year the Loons' barn will be known as Loon Pond in Capeside. Our publicity team will not be happy but we are including a sneak peak at our sophisticated blue prints. As you can see we have spared no expense!

Our final bit of off ice business is relocating our minor league affiliate from Northampton, MA to Dawson Creek, British Columbia. As great as it is to have been in such close proximity to Northampton, covid has made Northampton very difficult to work with. The final straw was last month when our favorite local frozen yogurt shop closed down. Without the natural frozen yogurt topped with mini marshmallows and fresh raspberries there just is no reason to stay in NoHo any longer. We are thrilled to introduce the Dawson Creek Loonies and Charlie Conway as their coach.