The NHL is coming closer to Quebec City

[Mister F]

Originally Posted by JonHiseler

You also wouldn't have to worry about division realignment. No chance that Detroit or Columbus could ever be coaxed back into the Western Conference.

This is only an issue with the bizarre way that North American sports leagues are run. Australian rules football, for example, has half its teams in a single city. Needless to say they're not overly concerned with having their teams spread out evenly around a map. The teams should be where the fans are.

[Djeffery]

Originally Posted by JonHiseler

You also wouldn't have to worry about division realignment. No chance that Detroit or Columbus could ever be coaxed back into the Western Conference.

Baseball and football show you don't need to divide the continent in half for your conferences. Maybe hockey should look at a similar type of alignment, and I would say using the 8x4 breakdown of the NFL, tweaked to the greater schedule needs of the NHL.

[thenoflyzone]

Originally Posted by Djeffery

Baseball and football show you don't need to divide the continent in half for your conferences. Maybe hockey should look at a similar type of alignment, and I would say using the 8x4 breakdown of the NFL, tweaked to the greater schedule needs of the NHL.

I get your point, but a football team only has 17 games/season. Travel expense isn't the same.

As for baseball, yes, they have a shit load of games, but they do 3 or 4 game series stints against a team, which limits travel as well.

Not to mention the NHL is poorer than both those leagues.

Aint gonna happen, especially not nowadays, where a company's carbon footprint needs to be lower, not higher.

Even the F1 wants to tweak its schedule for next season in order not to criss cross the globe like it does.

I mean, 2 GP's in the Middle East (so far so good), followed by Australia, then all the way back to Italy, then across the pond to the US and then back to Spain. Really? Hardly an environmentally friendly schedule so far!

[thenoflyzone]

Originally Posted by Mister F

This is only an issue with the bizarre way that North American sports leagues are run. Australian rules football, for example, has half its teams in a single city. Needless to say they're not overly concerned with having their teams spread out evenly around a map. The teams should be where the fans are.

Australia's population is 26 million. Compared to ~370 million for the US and Canada.

Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane have the bulk of teams in the AFL, because those 3 cities account for half the population of the country.

So Australia has no choice but to be heavy in the east. The NHL, by comparison, has plenty of choices, even out west.

[Mister F]

Originally Posted by thenoflyzone

Australia's population is 26 million. Compared to ~370 million for the US and Canada.

Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane have the bulk of teams in the AFL, because those 3 cities account for half the population of the country.

So Australia has no choice but to be heavy in the east. The NHL, by comparison, has plenty of choices, even out west.

Half the AFL teams are in a single city. Travel is much more of a burden on teams in Perth than Melbourne. That doesn't stop the league from having teams where the fans are rather than where it wants them to be.

North America also has most of its population in the east. Most of the teams should be in the east as well.

[Djeffery]

Originally Posted by Mister F

Half the AFL teams are in a single city. Travel is much more of a burden on teams in Perth than Melbourne. That doesn't stop the league from having teams where the fans are rather than where it wants them to be.

North America also has most of its population in the east. Most of the teams should be in the east as well.

I mean, it's not like the NHL draws a grid of 11 million people blocks and sticks a team in it. They go (mostly) where the fan support is. Just because you have one embarrassing team with shitty support doesn't mean the league is entirely out to lunch where its teams are. Logically speaking then, based on population, there should be a team in Phoenix, more so than many Canadian cities that have a team. And there are another 100 cities that should have an NFL team ahead of Green Bay.

There are 4 time zones in North America that the so-called big 4 play in and I believe 58 out of 124 teams play in the eastern time zone. 30 in Central. So 88, or 71%, in the eastern half of the continent. 22 in Pacific and 14 in Mountain. Sounds like the leagues do put the teams where the people are.

[savevp]

Originally Posted by Djeffery

They go (mostly) where the fan support is. Just because you have one embarrassing team with shitty support doesn't mean the league is entirely out to lunch where its teams are.

The NHL goes where the population is, by and large, not where the fan support is. This is why there were two abortive attempts in Atlanta, the Phoenix situation, and why the Coyotes will likely relocate to Texas. It's why massive American markets riddle the bottom half of the NHL's club valuations.

We estimated that Seattle contains about 240,000 NHL fans — fewer than that of Phoenix and Florida’s Tampa Bay, home to two franchises that have struggled to turn a profit for many years. And if Seattle is an enigmatic choice by this metric, Las Vegas would be a disaster. According to our estimates, there are only 91,000 hockey fans in the Vegas media market, which is nearly 40 percent fewer than even Nashville, Tennessee, the least-avid current NHL city, has.

-https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/half-of-the-nhls-rumored-expansion-cities-dont-make-sense/

By contrast, Australian leagues go where the fan support is. AFL has two teams in Sydney and ten teams in Greater Melbourne. NRL (rugby league) has one team in Melbourne and nine in Greater Sydney.

And for what it's worth, in recent years when the AFL has tried to follow the population by expanding to Gold Coast and Western Sydney, those clubs have seen dismal attendance, and those two clubs receive disproportionate equalisation payments from the rich Melbourne clubs. Sound familiar?

[Acajack]

It would be interesting to see, instead of a population density map, to see a map of the US and Canada in terms of NHL fan density (based on polling or some other measure). And compare that to where the teams currently are.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by savevp

The NHL goes where the population is, by and large, not where the fan support is. This is why there were two abortive attempts in Atlanta, the Phoenix situation, and why the Coyotes will likely relocate to Texas. It's why massive American markets riddle the bottom half of the NHL's club valuations.



-https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/half-of-the-nhls-rumored-expansion-cities-dont-make-sense/

By contrast, Australian leagues go where the fan support is. AFL has two teams in Sydney and ten teams in Greater Melbourne. NRL (rugby league) has one team in Melbourne and nine in Greater Sydney.

And for what it's worth, in recent years when the AFL has tried to follow the population by expanding to Gold Coast and Western Sydney, those clubs have seen dismal attendance, and those two clubs receive disproportionate equalisation payments from the rich Melbourne clubs. Sound familiar?

If the AFL were truly like the NHL, they'd have moved the Geelong Cats to somewhere like Jakarta, Indonesia, saying that it was more deserving and a logical location for a club, owing to the much larger population!

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Acajack

If the AFL were truly like the NHL, they'd have moved the Geelong Cats to somewhere like Jakarta, Indonesia, saying that it was more deserving and a logical location for a club, owing to the much larger population!

Yes, grow the game™! Sorry Perth, your club is moving to Singapore! It's for the good of Australian Football!

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by esquire

Yes, grow the game™! Sorry Perth, your club is moving to Singapore! It's for the good of Australian Football!

In fairness to Bettman and the NHL, they have grown the game with millions of new fans in (mostly) southern parts of the US.

It's how adamant and dogged they are in the pursuit of unrealistic objectives that is grating, especially when their most loyal fan base(s) in Canada are often shoved aside.

[Rico Rommheim]

I think Toronto could and should totally get a second team. NYC basically has got 3, and LA 2. A team based around Hamilton, or London, or just out in the suburbs of TO.

Plus, I think a second TO team could maybe wake up the terrible maple leafs or give Toronto hockey fans a second option, maybe a team worth following maybe?

[JustForTheHalibut]

Originally Posted by thenoflyzone

Australia's population is 26 million. Compared to ~370 million for the US and Canada.

Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane have the bulk of teams in the AFL, because those 3 cities account for half the population of the country.

So Australia has no choice but to be heavy in the east. The NHL, by comparison, has plenty of choices, even out west.

It's quite unique that Melbourne has half of all the AFL teams in Australia,

Melbourne is second largest city in Australia and has about a million more people than Montreal so it would be like the equivalent of like Toronto having half of the CFL teams in Canada.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by JustForTheHalibut

Melbourne is second largest city in Australia and has about a million more people than Montreal so it would be like the equivalent of like Toronto having half of the CFL teams in Canada.

Toronto would rather have one NFL team rather than five CFL teams.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by JustForTheHalibut

Melbourne is second largest city in Australia and has about a million more people than Montreal .

Minor quibble since we're on SSP: Montreal and Melbourne are actually pretty similarly-sized, since the Melbourne metro has just under 5 million people in more than twice the land area that Montreal's metro area counts (with 4.4 million people).

Unless you think that as soon as you exit the official StatsCan boundaries of the Montreal CMA, everything becomes barren and unpopulated!

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Rico Rommheim

I think Toronto could and should totally get a second team. NYC basically has got 3, and LA 2. A team based around Hamilton, or London, or just out in the suburbs of TO.

Plus, I think a second TO team could maybe wake up the terrible maple leafs or give Toronto hockey fans a second option, maybe a team worth following maybe?

It's kind of funny when you think about it, not having a second NHL team in Toronto is leaving a pile of money on the table because the demand would clearly be there. Imagine the value of the Coyotes in their pathetic little arena vs. playing out of a new rink in, say, Mahkham. I wonder how MLSE manages to pull that off?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by esquire

It's kind of funny when you think about it, not having a second NHL team in Toronto is leaving a pile of money on the table because the demand would clearly be there. Imagine the value of the Coyotes in their pathetic little arena vs. playing out of a new rink in, say, Mahkham. I wonder how MLSE manages to pull that off?

And MLSE actually has been and will continue to subsidize the Coyotes' losses, just like all of the NHL's more profitable teams do. Including most of the Canadian clubs.

[Acajack]

Given the historic popularity of hockey in this country, had we developed a national pro league of our own, as opposed to sharing one with the US, we'd likely would have had more than one team in both Montreal and Toronto, like you generally have more than one pro team in the largest cities in most countries of the world.

It's forgotten by many but Montreal actually had a second team in the NHL, the Maroons, in the 20s and 30s. They had quite the rivalry with the Canadiens, especially since the former were considered the English team and the latter the French team.

[Rico Rommheim]

Originally Posted by esquire

. I wonder how MLSE manages to pull that off?

With bribes, I'm sure.

[Djeffery]

Originally Posted by Rico Rommheim

With bribes, I'm sure.

More likely the NHL constitution. The Islanders paid $11M to join the league, 6 to the league, 5 to the Rangers. The Ducks paid $50M, half each to the Kings and league. What do you think it would cost to add a team in Toronto when Seattle paid $650M, all to the league? How much would MLSE demand for their territorial rights? Would the league split a $650M expansion fee with MLSE on the premise that the presence of a second Toronto team makes the whole pie worth a lot more? Would it take splitting a billion? Toronto is already widely considered by many to be a Leafs town, not a hockey town. Adding a second GTA team doesn't automatically guarantee a second team with the Leafs' financial heft. Nor does it guarantee it lights a fire under the Leafs' asses to better produce. This isn't Ballard days of penny pinching.