Prospects, and the future of the NHL

Excellent blend of fact and bombaste. Sure, 'twas pure fun to read.

Metro LA is now a traditional market. They've had three SC parades in the area, local fans know the game, and the lads are skating. Tampa is not far behind. Believe it or not, both Phoenix and Nashville have solid fan bases. (AZ's problem is the arena and not the fan base.) That can kill a team; just ask North Stars and Whalers fans.

The idea is to give hockey a national footprint so they can get in on the real money - a U.S. TV deal; one that would dwarf the recent deal in Canada.

I think Miami has gotten complaisant given their sweet deal with Sunrise. They show no interest - or at least aptitude - in promoting hockey. I am not a fan of how hockey is promoted in Texas; I suspect they say BFD to my quibble and that I can kiss their ass. They're probably right; hockey is growing there even if it hardly resembles the ol' pond.

The bottom line is that any talk of contraction is inane. It'll never happen, and if it did it would harm the game. Relocation is always a tactic, but the owners are going to approve a move only under duress.

Well, that's what I think anyway.

 

I think the people are in the love w/ the romanticism of the Whalers. the brass bonanza, the unis, the dark crappy rink, ahhhhhh. the Whalers, the Broonz younger weaker brother always there to take the beating. the fan base was much smaller than people seem to want to presently believe it was.
theres lots of Whaler gear (hats and shirts) out there, on the east coast anyway. most of it worn by kids that were too young to have ever seen the Whalers.

 

I've been to too many Whale games to count; every single game that the Buffalo Sabres played there for several years. The Buffalo fan contingent was always large. I can only imagine it was worse for Whale fans when Boston or the NYR were in Hartford.

It's not so much that Hartford is a great hockey town; it is. However, many fans are actually supporters of other teams.

I have never watched a hockey game in the state of North Carolina. From every account that I have the Canes' fans are too thin skinned. (Memo: NC is a great place to live - there's no reason to have a hard-on about other teams' fans attending games there.)

However, in the end, the move from Hartford to Raleigh has probably been good for hockey.

 

Considering the franchises in Boston and NY had no reason to see a HTD franchise survive or thrive, I completely agree that its been good for hockey. NJ, NYI, NYR, and BOS don't have to fight for media money splits and HTD doesn't have to sell its soul year after year trying to get the CBA adjusted to allow them to survive.

This.
I've wasted quite a bit of time looking at this and I believe there's a good case to be made for them NOT to try to promote the brand or the product. That arena management contract is a gem and all they have to do is avoid tax bucks on that by claiming them against the arena money against the team. In the meantime, franchise valuations skyrocket and owners get to lean on the county for more breaks as the work on adjacent developments by hiding behind Panthers' losses. It's a shame, the deal for the owners is too good, there's no incentive to push hockey and the BOG has decided, in my opinion, that its not worth pushing them to sell the product.

Yes, were exactly 683 legitimate Whaler fans at their peak, most are related to Pierre.

Even now the AHL franchise, playing in the 16K+ seat XL center, draws only 4,400 fans per game paid. That's good for 21st, in the AHL, behind the likes of Norfolk, VA, and Iowa, and Charlotte. Having been to numerous Milwaukee games, where the paid attendance is 5800, I can only imagine what the actual number of cheeks-in-the-seats is on say, a Wednesday.


Anyway, my anti "traditional" market posts were because I caught Mark Chipman (Chairman True North, the Jets) talking about how Canada is 40% of NHL revenue last year. Even if such a number is true for 15' (high 30s is reasonable given how the splits were negotiated) it's not a sustainable number of the total Canadian contributions, it will be significantly lower next year by % of total revenue, and its not indicative of the why the league has grown so successfully over the last decade.

Lennie (Canada) loves pumping Canada's hockey tires and it fuels a dead topic about where the league should focus and/or avoid growth. I have no problem with patting Canada's hockeyfans on the back, just don't bullshit them or anybody else about what that means for the league moving forward.

There aren't many new fans in Canada, the models focus on extracting cash from my understanding, not growing or developing markets. The tv contracts are played out for more than a decade. The local media deals are mostly done too with even Ottawa getting one now, things are saturated in almost all of Canada.

 

ummm... HTD?

 

There aren't many new fans in canada, the hockey market is now competing with basketball and soccer, but in the dead of winter, hockey rules. I don't think anyone in canada really cares about growing the sport, there's nothing in it for them. A healthy stable team in dallas or florida has no effect on wether winnipeg will survive or not.

 

hockey has done well on the left coast and would be better off with teams in seattle and portland. i still don't like snidely bettman's wish list of las vegas. remove the glitter and mirrors and vegas doesn't have a sustainable economy. i still remember some of the players from the whalers like russ courtnall and sylvain turgeon. what a mess that was with holmgren and peeair, burke and a mess of ownership problems. not that north carolina is living the dream in a hockey world. might as well put a team in japan.

 

Too cold.
Cuba = moar better

 

i think that's high definition PTSD.

 

agree. Carolina to Portland/Seattle would be ideal.

 

I'm locked and loaded to go on for hours about Carolina.
Karmanos is having a real tough time letting go. He's kind of doing "the Rafalski" or the "the Sopel" in terms of retirement. He says he wants to retire but he really doesn't want to. He's doing everything to retire and then he lets the voices undermine his efforts to walk away. The end result is a mess of a franchise at all levels and an uncertain future for the franchise where everything around the Hurricanes should be sound and stable.

 

Canes are for sucks.

 

karmanos has to be a scumbag. i can't think of any other remotely plausible explanation for him giving Kwaim Kilpatrick a cushy high-paying job when they let him out of jail (before they rightly threw his ass back in).

there had to be underhanded dealings between compuware and kilpatrick.

 

What's Kwame up to these days?

 

cell block B, i think.

 

he is running the el reno fantasy football draft, where it seems he was granted the first draft pick. he also has a few femboys that he sells for his retirement fund.

 

More in the confusing saga of AZ

http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/...yotes-audit-losses-may-have-been-greater.html

 

I have no idea if they're cleaning things up so they can stay or if some parties are making things nastier so that they can move or if it's just some weird local gov fight vs ghosts of past decision makers.

 

so Douglas isn't afraid to hit kids. maybe Sweeney was on to something.
nah, i can't lie to myself like that. i'll just go have a nice long cry in my Zac Rinaldo pillow case.

 

Wow, nice pillow case.

If that pick is in the top 75, it will beat John Scott for a 5th or the 2nd time Mike Brown was traded for a 4th.