Even though GB's stated publicly that leaving QC and Winnipeg was a mistake and that the NHL would look to both markets for future expansion or relocation?
We've gone over and over this in this thread, but it seems clear to everyone that the goal of southern US expansion: the large national lucrative tv and marketing contracts, isn't going to happen. And that's despite a great deal of on-ice success in places like Dallas, Tampa Bay and Carolina. (Or Phoenix this year). They don't like hockey. I don't like NASCAR. It's ok.
Team owners in troubled markets are faced with two options:
1. draft the best player in a generation (like Washington, or Pittsburgh and Chicago to a lesser extent) to develop some local interest and keep the team afloat. This doesn't happen very often and isn't guaranteed to work (see Kovalchuk in Atlanta for exhibit A).
2. sell/move the team to better suited markets in the US or here. (Though, if there actually were viable underserved US hockey markets, you'd think you'd see potential owners lining up to move the Coyotes somewhere with more a little cache than Winnipeg).
I think we'll see four teams move up here in the next five to ten years.
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your pal, Tom Mango
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