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

Sigh.

Phoenix in its worst season still greatly outdraws Winnipeg in its best seasons. Winnipeg is not an NHL city. Period.

Carolina's home attendance dropped by 1,000 per game this season... and it was still 3,000 per game better than Hartford ever did. Hartford is not an NHL city, despite the cool jersey and cool theme song.

I'd love to see a team in Quebec. I think it would do well. There are probably 15 teams that should be moved before Tampa -- their attendance is damn good, and the fact that you think their Cup win was a fluke suggests you never saw them play.

Brilliant - defending Stanley Cup champs and they sold out the season at home. By all means, send them to the hockey hotbed of Houston.

I'll assume this one isn't serious - though it may not be the worst one listed.

 

I agree with everything PC says except for his comments about Winnipeg.

We've been back and forth on this before so we'll agree to disagree.

 

If it helps, I always thought the portrait of the queen was pretty cool.

 

Well, it made Don Cherry happy.

It always reminded me of my public school days. A portrait of the Queen in every classroom

And until I was in high school, they played God Save the Queen over the PA system to start the school day.

 

You've brought this up several times. Does any one know what the capacity was of the old Winnipeg arena? I honestly don't know, but it may have more to do with their low attendance numbers than the city its self. But again, they would run into a similar situation with their new building only holding 15,000, meaning at their best they could average just slightly better than the Coyotes are now. Whoever approved the seating for their new building should be kicked squarely in the junk, because I think that more than anything will keep them from ever getting a new NHL team.

 

The Winnipeg Arena was upgraded in '79 to a capacity of about 15,000.

To my knowledge there were no corporate boxes.

The original barn was built in 1955 so even with the upgrades it didn't have enough revenue streams to keep the team going

 

Capacity was 15,500; best average attendance for a season was 13,500.

And I believe JR is correct, no boxes.

I would think building the new place at 15,000 made sense. It wasn't as expensive and is plenty big for concerts and Manitoba Moose games. Is it really worth spending another $100 million to make it big enough for an NHL team they aren't going to get?

 

Be aware that the attendance figures announced for most NHL Sun Belt cities are highly padded, as the league knows it looks horrible to have half-empty arenas in half-decade-old expansion cities.

 

True enough.

But by any reasonable standard, Tampa and Anaheim are succeeding. Tampa ranks 8th in attendance. Anaheim averaged 102% of the building's capacity this year.

I have no doubt Carolina and Phoenix are cooking the books, but they're still far better than Hartford and Winnipeg.

(And, for the record, the Coyotes are not leaving Phoenix for a long, long time. They've got a 30 year lease. They can leave tomorrow, if they want... if ownership pays a $750 million fee to break the lease.)

 

Oh sure. You know as well as I do that leases mean nothing to any of these grafters.

 

They mean something to the courts. You can't just blow off $750 million. Judges tend to frown upon that.

 

You think Nashville can kick out a sad drinking country song for the spurned folks in Canada?