NHL business

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theman
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Re: NHL business

Post by theman »

Tciso wrote: Mon Aug 23, 2021 8:28 am Does the NHL really need any more teams? 32 is plenty, as we already have a watered down league.
Agree. Relocating some teams (Phoenix) I can understand but why add more?
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Re: NHL business

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theman wrote: Mon Aug 23, 2021 8:33 am
Tciso wrote: Mon Aug 23, 2021 8:28 am Does the NHL really need any more teams? 32 is plenty, as we already have a watered down league.
Agree. Relocating some teams (Phoenix) I can understand but why add more?
600+ million reasons :wink:
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Re: NHL business

Post by theman »

rats19 wrote: Mon Aug 23, 2021 8:37 am
theman wrote: Mon Aug 23, 2021 8:33 am
Tciso wrote: Mon Aug 23, 2021 8:28 am Does the NHL really need any more teams? 32 is plenty, as we already have a watered down league.
Agree. Relocating some teams (Phoenix) I can understand but why add more?
600+ million reasons :wink:
The NHL has just added 2 teams in the past, what, 3 years? Does it really need to add more. I am already a very casual fan, only follow the Canucks and just look at the standings for how other teams do. Tcisco is right, the league is already very watered down.
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Re: NHL business

Post by ESQ »

UWSaint wrote: Mon Aug 23, 2021 7:27 am
Sure some Dallas fans could be in Houston, but Dallas is the closest team and I suppose there is a unique Texan identity.

But these cities are separated by 240 miles! Put in perspective, that's a bit further than the distance between Washington DC and New York. They don't share media, they don't share commuter towns, etc.
My point was that there are probably no hockey fans period in Houston. I brought up Dallas because that's how you calculate the price of a relocation fee - it will enormous for southern Ontario because it's full of Leaves and Sabres fans (well, Buffalo claims 1/4 of their ticket buyers are from Ontario...). In Houston, I don't think the relocation price will be high because I presume there are very few hockey fans being potentially poached. I'm only talking about relocation, not expansion.

But are there US cities that look more like Columbus and Nashville a generation ago? I think Omaha could be one to watch out for down the line, but is currently just a bit too small. Growing hockey culture, fairly affluent, starved for a first tier pro franchise to be considered a first class city. Kansas City is growing (something short of booming, but definitely growing), and has the right metro population (for a city without an NBA team). Its about the same distance from St. Louis as Houston is to Dallas. I do think, however, that it is a city where the NBA would do better -- no Missouri-based NBA team.

So without a perfect NBA-free city, Houston makes a ton of sense now that the lowest hanging fruit (Seattle) is off the board. There is an NBA team there, but its a much larger market -- 7 million people to Seattle metros 4 million people. And do you know what market should be looked at next in my view? Atlanta. I know it failed twice. I know the last time it failed was only a decade ago. But the metro area has added about 720,000 people since then, with the city itself growing by about 25%. The trick about Atlanta is kind of the trick about Pheonix (and might be a trick about Houston which I know less about). It is a traffic nightmare and the wealth is not heavily clustered.
Omaha is super interesting, as a natural hockey environment and being the only show in town (other than extremely-popular college football). It would be like an American version of Quebec City or Edmonton in terms of population though - if you're going to move to such a small city, better to do it in Quebec and be guaranteed profitable, IMO.

I went to Atlanta for the first time about 3-4 years ago. It is growing at a crazy speed, and is growing through internal migration from other US states. But it is also packed for sports options - there's like 3 major (I think all NCAA div-1?) football stadiums all within downtown, plus the NFL, plus one of the top baseball teams for attendance.

As bad as the Thrashers were, basketball is also struggling to draw in Atlanta.

One thing I learned from my brief visit to the South is football culture is insane. There are several high school teams in Georgia that draw bigger crowds than the Thrashers ever did , and there's 15 college football programs, drawing from a few thousand up to 100,000. Then there's the NFL. So throughout the fall/winter, you're basically hooped to draw fans on Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays because you're competing against football.

I get the goal of "growing the game", but I would not expect to see the NHL go back to Atlanta where they've failed twice to make any inroads and where the much bigger basketball franchise is also struggling to compete against football and baseball.
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Re: NHL business

Post by UWSaint »

theman wrote: Mon Aug 23, 2021 8:48 am
rats19 wrote: Mon Aug 23, 2021 8:37 am
theman wrote: Mon Aug 23, 2021 8:33 am
Tciso wrote: Mon Aug 23, 2021 8:28 am Does the NHL really need any more teams? 32 is plenty, as we already have a watered down league.
Agree. Relocating some teams (Phoenix) I can understand but why add more?
600+ million reasons :wink:
The NHL has just added 2 teams in the past, what, 3 years? Does it really need to add more. I am already a very casual fan, only follow the Canucks and just look at the standings for how other teams do. Tcisco is right, the league is already very watered down.
32 is a good number for a league.

But watered down?

No way.

Somewhere in the wayback machine there is a post of mine that walks through this.

I'll just go with the short version here.

Last year, 3 out of every 7 players were Canadians.

In 1980, after the league gobbled up parts of the WHL there were 21 teams. Slightly more than 4 out of 5 players were Canadians.

Let me put those numbers in a different perspective -- there were more Canadians playing in the NHL in 1980 than there are today. Unless you are willing to argue that Canadian hockey has gotten worse (and I don't mean relative to other nations), the quality of the typical NHL player has improved. How has this happened? Simple -- huge in flux of European players and vast improvement in USA hockey -- in (small) part because NHL expanded to a national presence (in larger part because (1) USNTDP, (2) a real junior league, and (3) AAA midget hockey). 40 years ago, no one behind the iron curtain played in the NHL and there only a few Swedes and Finns. Just less than 30 years ago, the Czechs and Russians came in huge numbers and it became typical for Finns and Swedes to see the NHL as their goals. In the past 20 years, non-traditional hockey powers have really improved their programs (Switzerland, Germany, to a lesser degree Norway and Denmark), and this has more than made up for the slight retreat in former eastern bloc players who view the KHL as a viable alternative to the NHL -- especially for the replacement level players.

To be sure, 1980 might have been a particularly watered down league. But you can look at this question during the early 90s and late 90s expansion and you will get the same conclusion. NHL Expansion lags the growth of the game in terms of pool of available players, and the overall quality of those players seems to have improved from the perspective of the eye test when looking at speed and skill (though its always hard to know what 1980 would look like with better equipment and less smoking).
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Re: NHL business

Post by UWSaint »

ESQ wrote: Mon Aug 23, 2021 12:21 pm
Omaha is super interesting, as a natural hockey environment and being the only show in town (other than extremely-popular college football). It would be like an American version of Quebec City or Edmonton in terms of population though - if you're going to move to such a small city, better to do it in Quebec and be guaranteed profitable, IMO.

I went to Atlanta for the first time about 3-4 years ago. It is growing at a crazy speed, and is growing through internal migration from other US states. But it is also packed for sports options - there's like 3 major (I think all NCAA div-1?) football stadiums all within downtown, plus the NFL, plus one of the top baseball teams for attendance.

As bad as the Thrashers were, basketball is also struggling to draw in Atlanta.

One thing I learned from my brief visit to the South is football culture is insane. There are several high school teams in Georgia that draw bigger crowds than the Thrashers ever did , and there's 15 college football programs, drawing from a few thousand up to 100,000. Then there's the NFL. So throughout the fall/winter, you're basically hooped to draw fans on Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays because you're competing against football.

I get the goal of "growing the game", but I would not expect to see the NHL go back to Atlanta where they've failed twice to make any inroads and where the much bigger basketball franchise is also struggling to compete against football and baseball.
Good points, all of them.
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Re: NHL business

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ESQ wrote: Mon Aug 23, 2021 12:21 pm
Omaha is super interesting, as a natural hockey environment and being the only show in town (other than extremely-popular college football). It would be like an American version of Quebec City or Edmonton in terms of population though - if you're going to move to such a small city, better to do it in Quebec and be guaranteed profitable, IMO.
As much as I would love to see an NHL team in Omaha, it is not a hockey market in any way. Unless Warren Buffet buys all the seats, they would lose money from the start.

College football is king, and UNO has a decent hockey program that sells out their small arena, but there's a LOT of empty seats (mostly alumni season tickets supporting the program would be my guess). There's a USHL franchise, and one in Lincoln - they barely sell enough seats in their arenas.
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Re: NHL business

Post by ESQ »

Cornuck wrote: Mon Aug 23, 2021 2:22 pm
ESQ wrote: Mon Aug 23, 2021 12:21 pm
Omaha is super interesting, as a natural hockey environment and being the only show in town (other than extremely-popular college football). It would be like an American version of Quebec City or Edmonton in terms of population though - if you're going to move to such a small city, better to do it in Quebec and be guaranteed profitable, IMO.
As much as I would love to see an NHL team in Omaha, it is not a hockey market in any way. Unless Warren Buffet buys all the seats, they would lose money from the start.

College football is king, and UNO has a decent hockey program that sells out their small arena, but there's a LOT of empty seats (mostly alumni season tickets supporting the program would be my guess). There's a USHL franchise, and one in Lincoln - they barely sell enough seats in their arenas.
Ah my mistake - I assumed Nebraska was far enough north to be part of the US Hockey Hinterland, but I'd forgotten how much they love their big dumpy Cornhuskers there.
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Re: NHL business

Post by Cornuck »

ESQ wrote: Mon Aug 23, 2021 2:48 pm
Cornuck wrote: Mon Aug 23, 2021 2:22 pm
ESQ wrote: Mon Aug 23, 2021 12:21 pm
Omaha is super interesting, as a natural hockey environment and being the only show in town (other than extremely-popular college football). It would be like an American version of Quebec City or Edmonton in terms of population though - if you're going to move to such a small city, better to do it in Quebec and be guaranteed profitable, IMO.
As much as I would love to see an NHL team in Omaha, it is not a hockey market in any way. Unless Warren Buffet buys all the seats, they would lose money from the start.

College football is king, and UNO has a decent hockey program that sells out their small arena, but there's a LOT of empty seats (mostly alumni season tickets supporting the program would be my guess). There's a USHL franchise, and one in Lincoln - they barely sell enough seats in their arenas.
Ah my mistake - I assumed Nebraska was far enough north to be part of the US Hockey Hinterland, but I'd forgotten how much they love their big dumpy Cornhuskers there.
nope - all about NU here. As a side note, I was at a funeral last week and the woman's ashes were in a red urn with the Nebraska "N" on it. the cemetery abutted a corn field behind it. I wish I had my camera....

The USHL teams here (there's 3 somewhat close) all have a good solid following, but not a huge one.
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Re: NHL business

Post by donlever »

Cornuck wrote: Mon Aug 23, 2021 2:58 pm nope - all about NU here. As a side note, I was at a funeral last week and the woman's ashes were in a red urn with the Nebraska "N" on it. the cemetery abutted a corn field behind it. I wish I had my camera....
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Johnny Rodgers, Irving Fryer, Mike Rozier, Turner Gill still walk on Hallowed Ground to this day....

....would be my guess anyway.

Jerry Tagge was a Husker, he has old time sports connections to this City.
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Re: NHL business

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Re: NHL business

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Houston is a hockey market
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Re: NHL business

Post by Mickey107 »

https://www.sportsnet.ca/juniors/articl ... e-conduct/
The OHL has suspended London Knights defenceman and Montreal Canadiens first-round pick Logan Mailloux for violating the league's expectation of "appropriate conduct."

The penalty results from Mailloux's charge and subsequent fine for distributing a sexual photo without consent while on loan last November to SK Lejon in Sweden's third division.

The league says Mailloux can apply for reinstatement starting on January 1, 2022.

"A decision regarding reinstatement will be based in part on his conduct since his return to Canada and the appropriate treatment, counselling, mentoring and or education he receives from the date of this decision," the OHL said in a statement.
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Re: NHL business

Post by 2Fingers »

What was Montreal thinking?
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Re: NHL business

Post by Hockey Widow »

They were thinking that they got a steal as everyone was staying away from the kid due to his situation. Obviously they did not appreciate the seriousness of what he did nor the fall out of their choice. Now he is a kid still. What he did is offensive and he paid a price. But he is still just a kid and from what I've read it is a one off situation. I think a time out is appropriate, if he gets counselling and support services to overcome this. If it turns out he is more of a prick with serious mental health/emotional issues then you re-asses then.

But Montreal just acted like they were smarter than everyone else, they ignored him asking not to be drafted. The NHL should have a provision that allows, or forces, a kid to be withdrawn from a draft when shit like this happens.
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