spartacat_12

32 Thoughts put out an interview with Smith today. It included some interesting comments about the potential brand: He was asked how much overlap he expects the NHL brand to have with the Jazz. He doesn’t necessarily want a Pittsburgh situation with identical colours, but mentions that he’d like there to be a bit of symmetry between the two He talks about the popularity of purple, mountain imagery, and mentions blue skies, so it sounds like they’re leaning to a cooler colour scheme He says the nickname bracket will be 6 or 8 options. The names Blizzard, Yetis, Venom, Outlaws, Black Diamonds, and Golden Eagles are all mentioned, with Smith saying it’s more than a 50% chance it ends up being one of those names. He has a favourite, but wants the fans to decide

Well when you pull a pendulum in one direction for so long, you can't be surprised when it swings far in the other direction. Letting an anonymous social media administrator dictate how you feel about a professional sports franchise seems like a miserable existence.

It's almost as if a lot of "traditional" hockey ideals are antiquated and have often held back the growth of the sport outside of the Northeast, Midwest, and Canada.

College teams don't carry the same importance in hockey as they do in basketball. If you did a poll of NHL fans asking them if they know what the University of Denver teams are called I think most of them would draw a blank.

I think you're underestimating how easy it is for people to access illegal gambling websites on their phones. I have plenty of friends who were doing a ton of sports betting on the black market before it was legalized. Data estimates that in the US alone $2.6 billion is gambled on offshore websites every year, with none of that money going back into the American economy and no obligation for consumer protection. With pretty much any vice, history has shown us that prohibition is not an effective solution. The most important thing is educating people (especially young people) and giving them the opportunity to make informed decisions. Every legal betting app gives players the option to lock themselves out of their account for a set period of time, but they can definitely improve how much they promote this tool.

Because people hate how many blue & red teams there are, especially in baseball. Any time one of them is getting ready for a redesign people expect them to throw away their established colour scheme just for the sake of having something new. I mean when gambling was illegal people would be less likely to know about helplines or treatment options that are available to them, so it seems like common sense to be seeing record levels of calls. The toothpaste is out of the tube, so the best thing to do is take this influx of tax revenue and invest in robust youth education programs, while continuing to evaluate how you regulate the industry.

Thank god it's plural at least.

Is is any worse than a subway plastered with ads for alcohol, or fast food, or pop reeking of cigarette smoke? All these things are legal and do plenty of damage to society. There's some irony in people going to watch a baseball game with their kids at COORS FIELD and clutching their pearls over all the gambling ads.

That had crossed my mind, but no one has forced the Thunder to keep that terrible logo for this long. Colorado & Carolina both came up with their logos quickly after a relocation, and those turned out fine. It's still better than essentially wearing this for your entire first season.

The Thrashers relocation got announced almost a month later than this one, and the Jets still managed to have their logo & jerseys ready in the summer. I understand wanting to get the brand right, but being a generic NHL team for a year feels like a terrible way to make a good first impression on a new market, especially when they're already going to be playing in an arena that wasn't designed for hockey.

I mean that was the case with the Barry Sanders-era jerseys too.

I wonder if that could just be a placeholder in case they can't finalize a brand in time for next season. Considering how badly the last Jazz rebrand went, I'd assume Smith wants to make sure he gets this right. It's been said multiple times that Coyotes isn't an option. Preserving the brand for Arizona is one of the ways they got them to agree to sell the team without suing. But maybe in 20 years if Phoenix still doesn't have a team they can pull a Carolina and do some Yotes throwback nights.

Cambridge definitely doesn't make sense, but I think if they ever do put a 2nd team in Toronto it would be best to put them in one of the suburbs (Vaughan, Markham, Mississauga), rather than have them share Scotiabank Arena with the Leafs. It would make sense to have an Islanders-type situation for the 905ers who would rather drive than figure out getting downtown, especially when you consider how many people no longer commute for work.

Chicago is definitely going to veto anything involving Hawks. Before Kansas City went with Scouts they had considered Mohawks as the name, but the Blackhawks put a stop to that.

Who knows how accurate this scene was, but Howerton as Balsillie was a great piece of casting. He fumbled all his attempts to land an NHL team, but essentially provided the template for what not to do in order to become an NHL owner. It sounds like Ryan Smith did the exact opposite, which is part of why the league is interested in doing business with him. He never explicitly stated he wanted to own the Coyotes, he just said, "I would like to own a team, I have enough money to do so, and I have a building that is ready to host games right away." He probably would've preferred an expansion team that would be playing their inaugural season in a brand new arena, but given the Yotes salary cap situation & stockpile of draft picks/prospects he's inheriting a pretty solid starting point. There's talk that he's going to be very aggressive this summer to bring in some big pieces too.