Nashville Predators moving to Canada? NOPE! Sorry, Canucks (and KC!)...

Where have you been? I can remember MLB teams changing for press room meals as far back as 1993.

 

If it were up to Canadians, the NHL would contract to 10 -- the six Canadian teams, the Rangers, Boston, Detroit, Buffalo and Philadelphia.

I have not heard one single cogent argument explaining how expansion has watered down the NHL product. There are more teams now, but the pool of players is way bigger than it was 20, 30 and 40 years ago. The U.S. development system is better, the European junior systems are better, and getting Russian players into the NHL is much easier. Having more teams hasn't made the hockey bad. Expansion has, however, brought in more money and more fans to the sport that otherwise wouldn't have been exposed to it.

As to your question, I'd respond this way. If Detroit has such great fans, why couldn't they sell out playoff games? Nashville, at least, sold out their playoff games.

The answer is because, it's not as simple as good fans = sellouts, non-sellouts = bad hockey market. The truth is, the NHL has done very well in Nashville. The sport has gained a foothold in the community. Youth hockey has exploded. Kids who were 10 when hockey came to Nashville are now 19. In seven or eight years, they'll start buying season tickets. This is how you grow the sport. But you can't just put a foreign product into a non-traditional market, snap your fingers and expect it to be a smash, especially after a lockout. Again, the number of individuals who own season tickets is higher in Nashville than other NHL markets. In every successful NHL market, it's the corporations who buy up the high-dollar seats, not Joe Fan. Once they get that situation straightened out, Nashville will be fine.

To call it a failure as a hockey market, or to say they haven't made huge strides in cultivating a fan base is just flat wrong. And to say the plug should be pulled after 10 years -- a very short span of time in the big picture -- is insane.

 

<i>If it were up to Canadians, the NHL would contract to 10 -- the six Canadian teams, the Rangers, Boston, Detroit, Buffalo and Philadelphia.</i>


That adds up to 11 for me, but maybe the exchange rate comes into play.

 

<i>I have not heard one single cogent argument explaining how expansion has watered down the NHL product. There are more teams now, but the pool of players is way bigger than it was 20, 30 and 40 years ago. The U.S. development system is better, the European junior systems are better, and getting Russian players into the NHL is much easier. Having more teams hasn't made the hockey bad. Expansion has, however, brought in more money and more fans to the sport that otherwise wouldn't have been exposed to it.</i>



Expansion money is fool's gold -- you like the nice lump sum that comes from the entry fee, but you don't like cutting the shared revenue pie into more pieces thereafter.

Expansion obviously dilutes talent because each new franchise means there are now 20 more players who weren't in the NHL the previous season. The NHL became addicted to expansion fees, so that 20 was multiplied too many times. It's no coincidence that trapping and left wing locking came into play in the expansion age. If you have lousy players, you can at least teach them to get in the way and slow down the skilled teams.

Maybe the biggest problem is the NHL adds so many faceless teams that cut into the scheduling of more traditional opponents. If you're in Philly, you get less Bruins and Canadiens and more Blue Jackets and Wild.

 

Contrary to what you may believe, the available talent pool has actually shrunk in the past 20 years, I would argue.The major European hotbeds (Sweden, Finland, Czech/Slovakia) have produced top end talent on par with NA for the past 10-15 years. Russians made a huge impact on the game when communism fell, partly because the Russian economy was in shambles and they couldn't affoard to keep their star players. Now they have the money to throw around to try to keep them in place and with no Transfer agreement signed with the Russian Ice Hockey Federation, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get the top Russian stars to come over - remember the Malkin cloak and dagger adventure from last year? Had to sneak the guy out of the country, just as they had to with the Stastny's 30 years ago.
The available pool is shrinking. don't kid yourself on that one. New markets aren't exactly opening up.

10 teams? no. Most people I talk to consider the 21 we had in the 80s about right. Personally I would add acouple, maybe up to 24 or so, but the 30 we have right now is far to many.

You talk about a sell out for the playoffs, Spinner, but regardless of corporate sponsorship or involvement, when there is a game for first place in February there should be more than 14,000 in the building. That's when Leipold realised, after throwing $70 million down the drain over their existence, that the experiment would not work. First place teams should be seeing near sell outs, especially when they are the only pro-sports team in town in opperation.

 

I am not a Canadian. But I think we can safely call Lord High Gary's expansion plan a failure.

The sport placed franchises in markets that are notoriously ambivalent (Miami, Atlanta) and in non-hockey cities. Bettman, like Ziegler before him, saw dollar signs and did not think about the long term ramifications.

Had Bettman increased the sport's visability in hockey markets, you can argue that the NHL wouldn't have suffered the 1994 and 2004 lockouts.

 

You just hit the nail on the proverbial head.

The NHL got greedy with the one time expansion fees and the NHL didn't do much in the way of due diligence when they brought in teams like Tampa.

And remember that until Melnyk took over, the Sens were almost bankrupt because their expansion business plan was smoke and mirrors.

I would also suspect that potential hockey fans in the U.S. won't be attracted to a game where they can't pronounce half the players' names.

 

The problem isn't all the markets that were added. You have to look at the ownership groups as well. As you point out, JR, Ottawa was a cesspool for a long time. Tampa Bay was a joke, but under Bill Davidson it's become a strong franchise. Despite the hate for Peter Karmanos, Carolina may well join Tampa Bay as a franchise no one has to worry about. The thing with putting franchises in Atlanta and Miami is not that they are inherently bad NHL markets. They are cities that are long associated with indifferent fans. (Except maybe Miami with the Dolphins.)

Of course, if ownership is lousy in Atlanta and Miami (which it is), that ends up creating a team that has trouble catching on and the image of cities that don't care about hockey. If ownership is lousy in Chicago and Boston (which it is), that ends up creating a team that turns off fans, and ownership gets more heat because the cities had some history of caring about hockey. That's why Detroit gets a pass for its playoffs attendance, and Nashville doesn't.

The Southern Strategy is not a failure if done right. How much is the NHL encouraging, financially and otherwise, the formation of leagues, construction of rinks, and other means to get the kids of Nashville, Raleigh and Atlanta interested in playing hockey? And what strategy does the NHL have to help turn those kids (and their families) into fans of the local pro team?

 

The problem with the Boston and Chicago markets is that Jacobs and Wirtz don't do anything to draw fans in. Both believe if they put "Hockey Tonight!" on the marquee, they've done their job.

Bullshit.

In 2007, NHL franchises have to be creative to bring in the public's disposable income. The hard core fan will always show up. It's the casual fan that the league needs to focus on.

 

<i>You have to look at the ownership groups as well.</i>

At one time the NHL had Bruce McNall in prison, John Spano ready to join him and John Rigas headed there, while Howard Baldwin was in bankruptcy court with a franchise that sold out most of its games.

 

The trap and left-wing lock didn't rise to prominence because of expansion. It was the Stanley Cup-winning New Jersey Devils.

The number of marginal players in the league hasn't hurt the product. If there are more marginal players -- thus increasing the gap between the best players in the league and the worst -- you should in fact get more entertaining games. (Just look at U.S. college hockey, which has been a much more entertaining product for years.) The problem, however, is three-fold.

1) The scouting and coaching and system development has become so much more advanced, negating much of the advantage the more talented players have.

2) Players have gotten bigger, stronger and faster, but the size of the rink has stayed the same, thus "mucking up" the action.

3) Inability to continue calling games like they did the first year post-lockout.

Until those three things are addressed, you can have 10 teams or 40 teams, it won't matter. The NHL product will still be sub-standard.

 

If you're going to attempt to fist us, you should probably buy us dinner first.