mcj882000

From the mothership, sort of; this is pure speculation on my part but it seems like Eddie Livingstone may still be haunting the NHL and that's why the Leafs' HC jersey looks the way it does?

On 2/20/2022 at 10:50 PM, Morgan33 said:

You people can go cry some more because someone posted a Sports Design opinion on a thread about Sports Design...  You can get your panties in a twist because someone pointed out how many times a striping template has been recycled ad nauseam by Adidas.

Here's the league in 1991 where very single team has a traditional look.  You know how many use Detroit's template?  One: Detroit.  So get ed!

I know you're in Message Board Jail for a month now, so you may never wind up reading this - heck, for all I know you may never even come back, I know it wouldn't be the first time someone got temporarily suspended and just never returned - but if you do, I've told you this before and I'll tell you again: you seriously need to stop taking simple disagreements here as a personal insult or attack. It'd be one thing if this was an argument about political policy, where it would genuinely be a matter of life and death for thousands of people, but for God's sake man, we are arguing about clothes. It's not exactly something worth getting this worked up over.

1 hour ago, DEAD! said:

I mean, the Coyotes are moving to an arena that is smaller than many CHL arenas. It even makes the Chargers temporary home look dignified. 

Their farm team in Tucson plays in a bigger building, by about 4,000 seats. That's gotta be awkward for call-ups, to say the least...

On 1/22/2022 at 11:21 AM, Ridleylash said:

Also, Canadian relocation/expansion right now has to be pretty iffy on their minds anyways, given how the existing Canadian teams are faring with having attendance in the building. Not even being able to have fans in the building or only a very limited amount would not be the kind of environment the league wants a brand new franchise to have starting off.

I have to admit, it really bugs me that this is even a thing. "Your country's still taking COVID semi-seriously? Well that's bad for business, so we can't put a new team there right now!" Not to get too into it here, but it really showcases these people's real priorities. 

13 minutes ago, habsfan1 said:

I think the classic Flames jerseys are a nice throwback. But if the fad dies down, there's the risk of getting stale. It's a product of the 80s, after all. The Oilers got rid of their dynasty uniforms.

And that was a mistake, because they shouldn't have.

On 1/24/2022 at 7:55 PM, habsfan1 said:

 

I agree that the Flames edge jersey with cookie cutter side panels and awful flag patches was a horrendous jersey. Amazing that they lasted longer than the 2nd run of the beloved Oilers dynasty uniforms.

 

However, this alternate that they unveiled a few years back is beautiful, super fitting for Calgary, and imo much superior to the 80s throwbacks. The western style cut of the shoulder yokes was a very creative element. The roundel was a solid alternate logo. They just needed to replace the script with the full black Flaming C, get a matching road white, and call it a night.

 

 

The Flames throwbacks should be saved for throwback nights.

See, I used to like this jersey, but then I realized that there's not enough gold in it to set it apart from the other red & black teams in the league. And honestly as much as I like the 2003-2007 set, that's kind of why I'm opposed to the Flames bringing back black at all, especially the way they used it. We just saw 3 teams finally distance themselves from the "red jersey, black pants & helmet" look: Calgary ditching black altogether, Ottawa reversing polarity so to speak and Phoenix going with a different colour scheme altogether; and  we still have 2 teams left over that use the look - with another being an edge-case. Do we really want one of those teams who went with something a bit more unique and original to, basically, just go back to looking like the Blackhawks? I know I don't, especially when it's the team I cheer for.

They were owned by a guy that some people thought didn't actually exist at one point! (What is it with Japanese hockey people and legitimate questions about whether or not they actually exist? Why is this a trend(?))

1 hour ago, Ridleylash said:

The difference in perception between a market like Phoenix and a market like Tampa as far as the NHL goes is that one's had the benefit of getting solid management for over a decade, and the other's spent most of it's life hot potatoed between management groups that could charitably be called incompetent.

Maybe recently, but have you seen the Lightning's ownership history? They were in some pretty rough waters themselves in the 90s.

So, one thing that's gnawed at me over the years of this debate on who deserves a pro hockey team is how some people, both hockey insiders and random outsiders-looking-in like us, seem to focus largely, sometimes even exclusively, on "market size" to find what cities "deserve" a team and which ones don't. And I'm not gonna say I don't get it, on paper it makes sense; "more people living here = higher likelihood that enough people here like the sport enough to come see a game regularly"; but over the years I've come to the opinion that the logistics of hockey as a sport, to say nothing of its regional nature, really complicate that metric more than some would like to admit. 

Take the seemingly-endless case of the Coyotes, the entire reason this thread exists. Here we're talking about whether a team in the 11th largest city and 16th largest metropolitan area on the continent should move to either the 6th largest city & metro area, or the 87th largest city & a metro area so small it doesn't even rank on Wikipedia's top-50 list. And yeah, on paper that choice looks utterly stupid; a no-brainer. Of course you'd move it to the 6th-largest city! What kind of question is that? But to be honest we really don't know how much Houston even cares about hockey. Their last team at the top pro level folded 44 years ago, and even then it only lasted 6 seasons. (The debate about the future of the Coyotes has lasted longer, almost twice as long, as the WHA Aeros did!) They haven't even had a farm-level team in almost a decade now. The city's Wikipedia list of semi-pro/minor league teams lists one hockey team, and it's a roller hockey team not even notable enough to have its own article. Is there really enough interest here anymore? Or have the past 9 years of being without a hockey team at all sapped the city's interest in the sport? Maybe, maybe not; we don't really know for sure either way.  You might even say, it's inconclusive.

Quebec City, meanwhile, lost their last pro team 27 years ago; a franchise that lasted 23 years and even survived the folding of their original league. The Nordiques always drew relatively good crowds despite their small, old arena (46 years old the year they left; the Colisée opened a month before Terry Sawchuk debuted in the NHL for comparison), their small, culturally-isolated market, and sometimes even a miserable on-ice product; and crucially, even despite rising salaries and a weakening Canadian dollar during the pre-salary cap era and especially during their last few years of existence - and I'm going to put big emphasis on this because I feel it gets left out a lot when talking about why they failed - they NEVER LOST MONEY while playing in Quebec City. But their owner was denied public funding for a new arena by the provincial government (because as has been stated here many times, funding a sportsball arena while simultaneously having to close almost a dozen hospitals due to budget cuts would have been terrible optics; an ironic fact given the province's current situation), and was afraid of the mere likelihood of losing money down the road - a twisted form of FOMO, if you will - and so he sold the team to Denver.

But here's the thing: since then, Ville de Québec has been home to several junior and semi-pro teams; most notably the revived QMJHL Remparts, who've been around since 1997, but also the short-lived Citadelles of the AHL and Rafales of the IHL, who lasted a combined 5 seasons in the NHL's main farm leagues in the late-90s and early-00s. The Remparts in particular draw very good crowds for their level of play, consistently leading the QMJHL - and sometimes even the entire CHL - in attendance year after year; and as you may recall, they even got a massive new arena built for them (half on the public dime, alas/even). In fact, the season Centre Vidéotron opened, 2015-16, the Remparts set several QMJHL attendance records and even outdrew 3 NHL teams, the Coyotes among them, in attendance-per-game. Even this season, with COVID ravaging attendance sport-wide and forcing teams to adopt vaccine mandates and capacity limits, they're still leading the Q! Suffice to say, this small, culturally-isolated market provably still cares about hockey; and now they even have the fancy, modern building to back it up.

The long story short is that, ultimately, market size is only part of what makes a strong market, especially in a sport like hockey. Having millions upon millions of people living in your metro area looks good on paper and sounds good to the casual ear, but if that massive city features few-to-no citizens that actually like the sport being sold to them, then that large size doesn't really matter, does it? In fact, I think I know a good way to illustrate this: Does anyone here know what the largest city & metropolitan area in North America is? The one city on this continent that's even bigger than New York City, and would presumably, on paper at least, look to be a better market for ice hockey than even the mighty Big Apple? Anyone? I literally linked to it earlier; the answer, by mere hundreds of thousands of people in both metrics, is 

Wow, I just can't believe Tempe (probably) doesn't want anything to do with the Coyotes either /s

The impression I get isn't that the NHL doesn't want a Quebec City team at the expense of an American market; it's more that they don't want a Quebec City team, period. 

In any event, the Flames have 11 years left on their Saddledome lease, so even if they were considering it, they ain't moving anywhere anytime soon.

NHL All-Star Hockey on the Sega Saturn: for some reason, every team in this game wears navy blue pants. Now, obviously the level of "inaccurate" varies from team-to-team. Teams like the Hartford Whalers, who already wear navy blue...

...it's not so bad. They basically look normal!
For teams like San Jose...

...and Calgary...

...it's kinda bad, but it's still close enough to the black pants they wore IRL that unless you look closely, you might not even notice. 

For teams like the Detroit Red Wings, though...

...It just looks awful. Dunno what happened where this was basically the devs' only option, but I can't really imagine any other reason it'd be like this.

37 minutes ago, the admiral said:

 

Along with wandering the desert and being picky about food, obsessing over basketball is another way that Mormons try to pretend that they're Jews. Does Utah have a hockey culture even remotely commensurate with its basketball culture? I have never gotten the sense that they do. 

To be fair, I'm not sure if people expected SLC to have a basketball culture either prior to 1979. If what I've read in the past was right the Jazz weren't even expected to stay there, hence why they kept their extremely regional name; but then they did.

7 minutes ago, Kooky01 said:

Surprised nobody has brought up Hartford or Milwaukee as a possible spot for the Yotes. Both cities are capable of holding an NHL team. 

Speaking as the resident Whalers diehard who desperately wants them to return: Hartford ain't getting a team as long as the city's primary arena is still the one that the Whalers fled in the first place.

I could see a second Toronto team working if they were to market themselves as, say, "the team Torontonians can actually afford to watch!" But regrettably I just don't see that happening in today's "make ALL of the money" economic climate.

I guess I'm on Team Move The Coyotes, have been since the 2009 bankruptcy, but the ultimate kicker is I don't think it's impossible to make hockey work in Phoenix, just as I still don't think it's impossible to make it work in Atlanta. A decently-sized arena that people can actually get to easily, and a product that people will actually want to watch sustained over a few years; that shouldn't be that hard to put together, really. You just need people who care; and unfortunately for the Coyotes, the only person who seems to care, who seems to truly believe that Phoenix can work as a hockey market... is one of, if not the least competent businessman in the entire sport. 

4 hours ago, Sodboy13 said:

https://www.dailyfaceoff.com/bettman-on-arizona-coyotes-issues-nothing-to-see-here/

Quote

“There’s no issue with the Arizona Coyotes,” Bettman said. “It’s clear that the City of Glendale has either an agenda or an edge in the way they’re dealing with the Coyotes. I think there was miscommunication. All of the outstanding obligations have been brought current.”

Yeah, no kidding there's an agenda Gary, the agenda is "where's the  money you owe us, you deadbeats?"

How embarrassing would it have been for the league if the Coyotes had to up and relocate mid-season, like this was the WHA in the 70s or something?

We've seen bad jerseys before but Smashville is unique in that it looks technically incompetent instead of just being a mere bad idea; like a ton of mistakes were made in the process of printing the jersey. The wordmark in particular looks less like a deliberate design choice and more like the person making it screwed the entire thing up and couldn't fix it in time.

It actually looks worse the more I see it; this morning I thought it was merely "bad" but now I'm with a lot of y'all, it's a genuine W.o.a.T. candidate.

2 hours ago, dont care said:

Houston doesn’t have 25 years of evidence showing that the population won’t support a hockey team.

No, they just had one pro team for 6 seasons almost a half-century ago, that folded basically the moment Gordie Howe wasn't playing for them anymore.

2 hours ago, spartacat_12 said:

Houston's the 4th largest metropolitan city in the US, but you know what the 5th largest is? Phoenix - the market that they're (allegedly) trying to buy the team from!

God I love that new Penguins' alt. The lack of a golden triangle in the logo on the shoulders is still a bit weird looking, though. 8/10; now I know what the Penguins' jersey set's gonna be when they draft me in NHL 22: 

19 hours ago, spartacat_12 said:

 

And you'll eventually have to accept that despite a quarter-century of people bitching about it, the NHL doesn't care about small-ish Canadian markets. The league is well aware of how passionate Canadians are about the game, which is precisely why they aren't interested in putting more teams here.

That's the problem. 

18 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

I just keep calling it the USB Arena.

You and Jiggs McDonald during the opening ceremony last night.

It's an interesting idea but I don't see it happening. What, are the Coyotes gonna start and end each season there on a long road trip, both to let the Dbacks get settled in to start their season and just in case they make the playoffs? And what if the Yotes themselves somehow end their tank rebuild early and make the playoffs themselves, let alone go on a big run? It worked for the Lightning because the Devil Rays didn't exist yet, but I just don't see this working out at all.