Damien Cox: "I have nothing against Ted Leonsis"

Since I already waded into the muck of the Ted Leonsis-vs.-The-Ovechkin-Project feud, might as well keep things going. The co-author of the just-released book about Ovechkin, Toronto Star hockey columnist Damien Cox, was on TSN's "Off The Record" Wednesday, and the topic of his electronic back-and-forth with Leonsis was raised.

"From what I can tell, he's most upset that he wasn't quoted more in the book," Cox said. "There's nothing in the book really that is critical of him, but I think the Ovechkins did not want this book to be written. They wanted it stopped. They're handled by IMG, and IMG was asked to make sure this book didn't happen, so that tells you something about the story. And I think Ted Leonsis is protecting his prized property.



"I have nothing against Ted Leonsis. I think he's a good NHL owner. I just think he thinks that he's the be-all and end-all on new media, and I think he's wrong."

(All publicity is good publicity, all publicity is good publicity.)

Cox was then asked whether he had requested an interview with Ovechkin.



"Oh yes," he replied. "IMG basically, after months of negotiation, would not let it happen, and a lot of it was because they wanted money. They wanted money for interviews."

Ovechkin's camp would argue that the issue was far more complicated than this. IMG declined to comment on any aspect of the book, including the money-for-interviews claim.

Anyhow, there's one other somewhat bizarre aspect to this whole back-and-forth that I previously neglected to mention: Cox's claim in a column that Leonsis "was a hawk during the last labour struggle and now drinks deeply and gratefully from the revenue-sharing trough." Cox later repeated this on Twitter:

Funny still how Ted never mentions his team requires $10-14 million in NHL revenue sharing every year just to stay afloat.

Well, Leonsis did respond to this claim at length during his recent appearance on Japers Rink Radio.

"Yes, we do get revenue sharing in Washington, for two reasons," he said. "We have very low ticket pricing. Compared to many other teams, our ticket pricing is in the lower third of the league, so our revenues are not as high or commensurate with, let's say,Toronto. Secondly, we built and own our building, and we have a mortgage.We didn't take money from the city. And the combination of those two fit within the rules of the NHL CBA and we do get revenue sharing, but we get less and less revenue sharing as we grow our revenues. We're one of the fastest growing teams in the entire NHL.

"So the whole logic behind that tweet war, I think that it showed the true colors of where the writer's head is. I didn't understand why that was being portrayed as such a negative. Yes, we're sold out. Yes, we have very high levels of fan satisfaction, and our fans are getting a good deal because our ticket prices are still quite low even though we spent to the cap max and our team performs pretty well. So I guess the other side of the coin would be, is it better to be providing great value to fans and getting revenue sharing than not making the playoffs and overcharging your fans?

"I mean, I didn't understand the logic of the anger built into the tweet, and it was just a series of streams of consciousness that to me showed kind of the thinking that went into the writing of the book."

(All publicity is good publicity, all publicity is good publicity.)