mcj882000

1 hour ago, tigerslionspistonshabs said:

I'm only being half serious, but what about Tucson? It's got a metro pop of about a million. No suitable arena mind you, yet. 

More suitable than Mullett is 

EDIT: In all seriousness, last season the Roadrunners were 28th in AHL attendance, averaging just 3,625 fans per game. Their best-drawing season was 2018-19, when they drew 4,294 fans per game and finished 23rd. And that's all considering that the Roadrunners are basically the only pro game in town; the city doesn't even have a D-League team, and hasn't had a MiLB team since 2013. Perhaps an NHL team could actually fill the 8,900-seat Tucson Arena, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

I guess one important question is, has there been any indication that the Jazz are looking to build a new arena? Because I figure no new building will happen without their input, and though I hate repeating myself it really cannot be overstated how suboptimal the soon-to-be-again Delta Center is for NHL hockey.
Four words: "Barclays Center, but worse": 

Like, if we're gonna move the Coyotes here full-time? Just put them back in downtown Phoenix at Talking Stick/Footprint/whatever it's called now instead, because that'd still be better than this; at least the Suns' arena has hockey-ready seating in a endzone!

4 hours ago, Chromatic said:

I don’t know what you’re talking about. Mr. Red is a photorealistic representation of the moustachioed,  engorged-baseball-headed abominations prowling the streets of Cincinnati.

I thought that was Jon Moxley?

4 minutes ago, Unocal said:

 

Hard to believe that even with all that he won coach of the year last season

Given that was the only good year of his three two-and-a-half season tenure, it really starts to feel like that team accomplished what it did in spite of him. 

EDIT: also this wasn't even the first time in the last 10 years that the Flames soured on an abusive "hard-nosed" coach a mere single season after he won the Jack Adams Award

4 hours ago, Unocal said:

 

A guy who quit on Calgary- how marketable

Speaking as the resident Flames fan here - meh. Proud of him regardless; in fact with how this past season went, in hindsight I wonder how much him (and Johnny) wanting out was just on account of Sutter being a past-his-prime hard that nobody actually liked playing under.

Perhaps this is better suited to here than the season or playoff threads?

Vancouver: Let the 2011 core slowly rot, had an A+ goalie depth chart with a future HoFer and two future starters, kept none of them (but lucked out(?) when none of them panned out post-Vancouver), have basically been drifting aimlessly ever since save a fluke playoff run in 2020;
Calgary: The '89 Cup was this team's peak, almost every move they've made since then has been the wrong one, save a Finals run in 2004 that turned out to mostly be a fluke (and which management refuses to let go of); it turns out "just try to sneak into the playoffs every year and hope for the best" isn't a viable long-term strategy!
Edmonton: A decade of malaise culminating in a team that never has more than two good players and can't get past the second round of the playoffs;
Winnipeg: The word is that their season ticket base is slowly dwindling, possibly because the market is oversaturated with an NHL, AHL and WHL team all in a city with fewer than 800k people; 
Toronto: 2 decades of being unable to even get past the first round, and now their most successful GM in 20 years leaves amidst a he-said/he-said on whether ownership was meddling in his affairs or not; 
Ottawa: [points feverishly to a photo of Eugene Melnyk] 
Montreal: Went all-in on 2021, lost, and have yet to make it back from that; arguably still haven't recovered from trading a HoF goalie in 1996 & siding with a coach they'd fire a year later; 
Quebec City: "Pfft, we can't put a team there! They already failed once! It's too small! Too French! Not enough corporate support! Nobody wants to move to the Western Conference, and we suddenly can't force them! There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! It can't work here I swear to God!"

I've explored this here before, but Canadian nationalists hockey nuts like to accuse Gary Bettman of rigging the playoffs & relocating teams to personally spite the Canadian teams for, uh, Reasons, and that's why no Canadian team has won a Cup in 30 years; but I think the reality is that the Canadian teams are all dysfunctional garbage fires who can never manage to scrape together more than a fluke playoff run and who still make millions upon millions of dollars despite themselves.

6 minutes ago, MiK said:

No further argument needed.

You're not wrong, the only problem is that the grey jersey is just nicer.

58 minutes ago, VampyrRabbit said:

Even if he does have that, those only slightly improve the odds, Bettman is almost certainly going to do all he can so the Coyotes can have another chance to make things work in the Sun Valley over taking the NHL back to Hartford.

Oh, I'm... painfully aware. Phoenix gets to swing and miss a hundred times, everyone else whiffs once and they're out. 

23 minutes ago, BrySmalls said:

Move the Yotes to Hartford?

Do they have a plan to replace, and not just renovate, the building that the Whalers deemed too old in 1997? If not then zero chance, and I say that as a would-be Whalers fan.

2 hours ago, Webhamster said:

Show me one non-francophone marquee player from the 80's or 90's who actually wanted to play in QC.  I'll wait.

Ron Hextall. Sent to the Nordiques as part of the Lindros trade, actually considered not reporting to the team because he was afraid of the culture clash, but ultimately sucked it up and moved his family there. After the 92-93 season he'd adjusted to the area so well that when the Nordiques traded him to the Islanders as expansion draft insurance, he was reportedly very disappointed to have to leave.

EDIT: also the Stastny brothers, who all defected from communist Czechoslovakia to play in Quebec City.

EDIT #2: not exactly "marquee" but I feel it's noteworthy nonetheless; from the 2021 memoir of ex-Nordique Bernie Saunders, Shut Out: The Game That Did Not Love Me Black:

Quote

It should also be made clear that I felt nothing but love from the fans of Quebec City. The city so deserves another NHL franchise. Quebec is a hockey mecca, and the fans were supportive of me, as most home crowds were. Quebec City is a sophisticated hockey town, and there was a backlash after my demotion [to the AHL]. The fans had disapproved of my unjust reassignment at training camp, and the entire city was abuzz with excitement when I finally arrived. But even that put extra pressure on me. I did not do enough in those six games to maintain the fans' support. 
 

I remember one particular play where I was racing through the neutral zone with the puck. The Sher-Wood hockey stick representative had brought me a new bundle of sticks that day and I put them into play immediately. As I attacked the offensive zone, I attempted to pass to the other winger in a fairly routine play, but the rocker on my new stick blade was a little off and the pass was errant. You could hear a thundering groan from the packed le Colisée fans as they wanted so badly for me to do well. 
 

The fact that they were so receptive is not surprising. I was not the first Black player to skate in le Colisée. In fact, if ever a Black Hockey Hall of Fame were built, it should be erected in Quebec City, a virtual underground railway for Black hockey players. This walled fortress of a city on the banks of the St. Lawrence River welcomed many of the founding brothers: Herb Carnegie, Quebec Aces; Willie O'Ree, Quebec Aces; Stan Maxwell, Quebec Aces; Bernie Saunders, Quebec Nordiques; Val James, Quebec Remparts; Tony McKegney, Quebec Nordiques; Reggie Savage, Quebec Nordiques. Claude Vilgrain grew up there. Anson Carter was drafted by Quebec, and I apologize if there is anyone I missed. 
 

Heck, even Jackie Robinson passed through la belle province.

6 hours ago, TBGKon said:

Im a little surprised this didnt show up in this thread.

 

 

I think it's worth noting that people dug up this job opening for the team's social media manager position: 

I think this guy knows he's got one foot out the door, and as such no longer has any  left to give. Can't say I blame him honestly.

1 hour ago, Bmac said:

Are folks in Houston really that crazy about hockey, or do they just want a new team because honestly, what city doesn't want a new team?

Tempe, apparently  

Like in all seriousness, we all know the NHL's taken some pretty impressive pies to the face over the last century - years back some of y'all were even planning a book detailing them all - but I don't think anything will ever top "city gets to choose between having an NHL team or having a landfill; city chooses the landfill." Just grade-A stuff from these carny clowns.

49 minutes ago, SCMODS said:

Bettman wanted to turn the NHL into the NBA. That's where he cut his teeth.

And the Brilliant Business Genius attempted this by doing the exact opposite strategy the NBA did.

Then maybe the PA should start voicing their displeasure about the situation; make it a labor fight or whatever. I mean a side-effect (or depending on you ask, the intent) of this whole mess is that the players' escrow is being held down, right? So it's affecting them too.

23 minutes ago, gosioux76 said:

That may be true, but it's still a small part of a franchise's overall valuation, and the valuation of the league in its entirety.

 

Consider Winnipeg: Forbes ranks it as the league's 27th most valuable franchise at $650M, but the biggest share of that — 40% — is based on revenue it collects from league-wide revenue sharing. Stadium-generated revenue, including gate receipts, totals less than 20% of the franchise's value.

 

Another piece of the pie is market size. Nearly half of franchise value for the Rangers, the most-valuable franchise, is derived from its market size compared with just 30% for Winnipeg. So if you're the NHL Board of Governors, and things like valuations matter to you, market size is likely a driving factor behind where they choose to expand or relocate a franchise. 

 

To be fair, any market — whether it be QC or otherwise — would be an improvement over the Coyotes, which Forbes ranked dead last in valuation and drives more than half of its meager value from revenue sharing. Its market size didn't help boost its value at all, though I'd guess that probably has something to do with its previous suburban location.  

To put it in a simpler way, I think Quebec City is a diehard market, while Arizona, Houston, Atlanta, Salt Lake City, etc. etc. are all casual markets. And furthermore, to go off on a bit of a tangent, I think the NHL's refusal to put a team in Quebec City, bending in the wind to find any excuse they can to not put a team there, is symptomatic of a wider problem: that the NHL is perceived as taking its diehard fans for granted; making changes that the whales won't like and expanding in an attempt to Grow The Game™ towards a wider, casual audience, presuming that the whales will just suck it up and keep coming back for more.

I'm always reminded of NASCAR's own attempts to evolve beyond their diehard regional base; but whereas NASCAR's attempt has been been mostly if not a total failure, the NHL's strikes me as more of a combination-success and failure. It's failed in that markets like Arizona & Atlanta have failed, Florida & Carolina have been mixed-to-middling (call me when they still draw big crowds during losing seasons; same with Vegas for that matter), Houston is risky and SLC is a total non-starter; but it's succeeded in that unlike with NASCAR the diehards haven't really gone away either - most of the northern (not just Canadian, for the record) markets still draw really well; thus enabling the NHL to do wacky market experiments in the south. I guess I just wonder how long that'll last.

10 minutes ago, Sodboy13 said:

The Québec City metro area has an estimated population of 840,000-850,000, putting it on par with metropolitan statistical areas like North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, and Columbia, SC. The Hartford MSA is a shade over 1.2 million, by the way.

 

The Canadian Dollar is worth 74 American cents, which oddly, was also the going rate in May of 1995.

 

The American TV partners probably would not be thrilled trading out Market 10 (even given the current l-o-l state of interest in the NHL there) for a foreign country and language, and those deals are worth a whole lot more real money than they used to be.

Yeah yeah yeah, heard this all before, everyone said this when Atlanta moved to Winnipeg, to an arena far smaller than Centre Videotron is too, and it went fine. 

11 minutes ago, Sodboy13 said:

Short of a bulletproof billionaire coming in for QC like one did for Winnipeg, it all seems like a really tough ask, no matter how much the city loves its hockey and misses its team.

They have one, don't they? The guy who owns Quebecor?

1 hour ago, IceCap said:

One of the more annoying arguments against Quebec City is that it's in the East and moving the Coyotes to the East would require either the Blue Jackets or Red Wings to move back to the West and
G-d forbid the Red Wings play in the West again. So hard done by in that conference, I swear.

 

This is annoying for two reasons. The first is the one I touched on above, that the Red Wings are somehow a special, delicate franchise that will wilt if they have to play in the West. Which is ridiculous.

The second reason it's annoying is because it assumes the current alignment system is in any way good or worthy to keep around. For 's sake, they put Tampa and Florida in a division with Toronto, Buffalo, Boston, Montreal, and Ottawa. This isn't some holy thing here. It's dumb.

 
Also it kinda makes the league itself, as in the leadership & executive branch, look weak too, doesn't it? If any attempts to make a stronger, more stable league are stymied by one or two teams who refuse to play ball? I mean we always take great pains to point out, accurately or not, that Bettman's just the owners' , but maybe they shouldn't make it look so obvious in public?

2 hours ago, kimball said:

 

That's the setup from the Olympics, not that the hockey setup is any better, but I think it'd work temporarily better than Phoenix or Brooklyn.

Sorry to be pedantic but acktually it's from the World Figure Skating Championships a year earlier  

In all seriousness yeah, it's from 20 years ago, but it's not actually any better now. At the very least this more modern photo shows that the NHL rink does not, in fact, have to run under the sideline bleachers the way the international-sized ice seemed to, thankfully, but it's still not good as a long-term solution. And since I don't think the Jazz are looking for a new arena (yet), a long-term solution is what it would have to be.

At said 2002 Olympics though, they didn't even do the hockey gold medal games here, they ran those at the E Center way out in West Valley City; and lest anyone think another suburban arena is the solution to the Coyotes problems: the E Center only seats 12,000 fans. 

49 minutes ago, Gary said:

They did last year, but can also house a hockey rink as well. The Arizona Rattlers play at Footprint and is the same diameter of a hockey rink 

With the same exact problem the Coyotes had when they played there in the late-90s/early-00s:


From almost the same vantage point, no less.

Alright, so having done some research on this, I've come to the conclusion that Delta Center in SLC is completely inadequate for NHL hockey. You all mentioned how it has the problem of stacked seats on one endzone because the rink is too long for the normal arena space, ala Barclays Center and Talking Stick Arena? 



Well, it turns out Delta Center has that problem on both endzones. (And possibly along the sidelines, depending on how wide this non-NHL rink is!) Listed capacity for hockey, according to Wikipedia: 14,000.

Well, also that the instant success made their players, front office (look at the way they unload players like MAF) and general fanbase a bunch of entitled brats, but sure, let's go with your strawman version of things.  

The "Bettman hates Canada!" stuff always cracks me up; if that was the case he wouldn't be NHL commish at all, he wouldn't have joined the league with the biggest Canadian presence in the first place.

2 hours ago, ManillaToad said:

 

Dunno but Canadians will definitely whine about it on the internet

try and stop us 

And as for Houston, like yeah, they're probably a better market than Phoenix at this point, but that's a pathetically-low bar in my opinion. Its metro area is huge but as a city proper it's only slightly bigger than Phoenix; their last pro hockey team folded a half-century ago, a year after Gordie Howe & his sons left them to go play in Hartford; and their last hockey team period got chased out to Iowa by the Rockets' previous hockey-hating owner a decade ago. At least Phoenix had a long history of minor league hockey to lean on, with various incarnations of the Roadrunners existing on-and-off at various levels from the late-60s right up until the Coyotes settled there; and obviously Quebec City has to be mentioned, since the Remparts are always one of the top-drawing junior teams, occasionally out-drawing some NHL teams even; but Houston hasn't had any hockey team to care about in 10 years! So it has to be asked: does anyone there still care now?

On 4/30/2023 at 12:37 PM, Dilbert said:

Cincinnati had its chance to get into the NHL with the Stingers in the WHA merger, but the NHL only wanted the Canadian clubs and Hartford.

I'm way late to this so I apologize, but just to add to what's already been said, the NHL actually didn't want the Canadian teams, at least not at first. the WHA/NHL merger almost didn't happen because the Leafs, Canadiens and Canucks tried to block it; the Canucks due to travel issues (which were satisfied by the promise of a perfectly balanced, "everyone plays everyone 4 times" schedule) but all of them because they didn't want to split Hockey Night In Canada revenue 6-ways instead of 3. (Let me stop and point out how ironic it is that the Canucks joined this, considering that the Leafs & Habs pulling the same exact stunt in 1967 is why Vancouver had to wait until 1970 for an NHL team.) It took a boycott of Molson (who owned the Canadiens and were the Canucks' official beer at the time) that started in Edmonton, Winnipeg & Quebec City but rapidly went national before those two teams caved; the Leafs never did, since Harold Ballard hated the WHA on principle for killing his beloved reserve clause, but by that point they were the lone holdout and the merger went through anyways.