IceCap

3 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

While I will agree with almost all of your points, including the point that Apollos was a great name, I have to quibble with the notion that the name Guardians had a particular fit for New York.  The name doesn't really fit in one city more than any other. 

The name was meant to recall the gargoyle architecture of NYC. A flimsy connection, but one made clearer with a strong logo package. But they used the name and an almost identical logo package for the Orlando version. 

3 hours ago, McCall said:

Honestly, in a way, the Apollos existing in the AAF may have hurt them. It precluded them from being in XFL2020, which was their initial intent instead of Tampa Bay. The AAF, as it turned out, was poorly operated and subsequently cancelled.

I don't think it matters honestly. While some team names (mostly) in the same cities carried over it's not like these are continuations of those teams. The XFL 3.0 started from scratch more or less and the three years off was basically a reset for fans too. I don't think the XFL 2.0 being in Orlando instead of Tampa helps the XFL 3.0's Guardians any. 

15 hours ago, officeglenn said:

 

Fanatics makes MLB player jerseys and just slaps a Nike logo on them. 

 

https://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/35909210/fanatics-replacing-adidas-nhl-official-uniform-partner

 

 

The thing is Fanatics basically bought and inherited Majestic, including their factories. 

I know they're going to be using the Quebec factory for NHL on-ice stuff but they're still going to have to use their own fabrics and, eventually, templates. And unlike with baseball they didn't by a hockey apparel company to acquire that stuff. They're going to have to learn by doing which means mistakes will be made. 

The Orlando Apollos drew really well. Source: me, having gone to a few Apollos home games.

The problems with the Guardians are...

The team sucks. The Apollos were the class of the AAF and that got people who were on the fence excited. The Guardians meanwhile are near the bottom of the league. Probably the most significant point. If everything else stays the same but the Guardians start winning the attendance will improve. 

The stadium. UCF's stadium was perfect for spring football. The Apollos averaged around 20,000 per game and mostly filled it up. Camping World Stadium, meanwhile, is much larger. Meaning that even if they can get up to Apollos levels it'll still be a less intimate experience. 

I get that UCF maybe doesn't want to deal with spring football after the AAF disaster but hopefully they come around if the XFL proves itself to be financially stable over the next few years. 

Charlie Brown's had the football pulled away one too many times. Orlando has traditionally been one of the better markets for alternative football leagues. The Orlando Renegades had a strong enough showing fan-wise that they would have stuck around if the original USFL had survived. The Orlando Thunder did well for themselves in the WLAF. The Rage were one of the better attended XFL 1.0. The Florida Tuskers did about as well as any team could in the UFL. And the Apollos had a pretty good fanbase in the AAF. But look at that. Look at all of that failure. It could be that Orlando is simply sick of investing in teams and leagues that won't be there within a year. It's possible that they're waiting for the XFL 3.0 to prove it has some staying power. 

Branding. Probably not a huge thing and it's easy to overcome if other stuff is fixed but "Orlando Apollos" was a great name. Apollo, Greek god of the sun. Florida. Sunshine state. Apollo is associated with archery. Lots of dynamic imagery. It was a great identity that felt like it fit. 

"Guardians" is a name the XFL 2.0 picked for NYC and it fits there, and the XFL 3.0 recycled for Orlando to maximize on its already-owned IP. 

Again, not a huge thing, but people aren't stupid. And spring football fans are already a niche crowd who are likely to be more aware of this stuff than not, and the Guardians branding may make it seem like it's not "really" Orlando's team. 

21 hours ago, tBBP said:

Sidebar: we're five weeks into the 2023 season, and so far, with no signs of slowing down...think it miiiiight be a good time to change the thread title

Done! 

"Sorry Anaheim. You have to stick with ugly garbage because Fanatics is trying to get their intern's hand free from the industrial stitcher." 

2 hours ago, Digby said:

and if you do somehow get to order your favorite team’s jersey or jacket or whatever, you’ll also get a bedazzled Yankees tank top in your order*
 

*literally this happened to me

It's all about how you rock it

1 hour ago, wildwing64 said:

At least it's not Nike?

 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This feels like the outcome of a monkey's paw wish 

"I wish the NHL jersey contract doesn't go to Nike..."

18 minutes ago, spartacat_12 said:

You know it's bad when even the casual fans who react to every new jersey with the fire emoji are pissed.

 

ESPN has posted a follow up article with a bit more info.

 

 

I guess this means a team like the Ducks are stuck in their current look for at least a few more years, unless they've already started the rebrand process in time for next season.

It's not a good look when your new jersey supplier has to go "ok guys please don't give us anything hard to do we still don't really know how to do this." 

This is the jersey equivalent of putting the league on OLN 

38 minutes ago, Ridleylash said:

Well, already not off to a great start here, me. Can't wait to see how bad Fanatics :censored:s up the merch now that they have full control.

On 3/18/2023 at 1:22 AM, Chromatic said:

My thoughts on the white vs coloured at home thing was that coloured made sense because if you were at home, in your building, you should be wearing your colours.

The reason I think there's no easy solution here is because I think there are a few exceptions to this. 

The Maple Leafs' "main" sweater historically was the white sweater through their most successful periods, and their first ever sweater as the Maple Leafs was white. You could argue that the Leafs' main "look" is the white sweater look. Winnipeg also has a great claim on the white at home look, along with Arizona if they wanted to reference their Jets history. The Red Wings too. Their white sweater gives the team "red wings" which ties nicely in with their name. 

So it's not so clear cut. 

8 hours ago, spartacat_12 said:

I know most of the "Bettman is going to gift Bedard to the Coyotes" narrative is tongue-in-cheek, but it's pretty sad that there are people who actually believe it. If the league had the ability to rig the lottery, McDavid would be playing in Toronto & Matthews would already be in Arizona.

Counterpoint- the NHL is incompetent (hello this thread) and if they tried to rig it they'd find a way to screw it up. 

On 3/13/2023 at 11:38 AM, Krudler said:

Not sure if this opinion is unpopular. But I wish the NHL would let teams designate a home and road set between their two primaries. To me, there are some teams where the white set is superior (Rangers, Sabres) and then there is a team like Winnipeg with the white out tradition, where white is the sweater I want to wear in front of my home fans. I know the league would probably never go this model. Just something I think would be cool to see.

The ideal would be a primary/clash setup instead of a home/road setup. Where the clash sweater is only worn by the road team if both team's primaries are the same colour.

That would be a headache logistically though, and the NHL probably wants to sell as many sweaters as possible. Telling fans one of the two primary sweaters of their team is just the "clash" version may make it less appealing.

Plus, back to logistics. Hockey isn't like basketball or soccer where uniforms are just a set of clothing. You have helmets and maybe even pants shells and gloves to consider. One reason the league went to dark at home is because the vast majority of alternates were coloured sweaters. Teams wanted to showcase their alternates in front of home crowds so under the old white at home setup teams would have to plan for road trips where one opponent may want to wear a coloured alternate at home. Forcing teams to pack and transport both sets of uniforms for a road trip. Given the above-mentioned nature of hockey uniforms this was less then ideal. By going to a "darks at home and whites on the road" setup they avoided all of these issues. Now teams just have to pack white uniforms for road trips.

57 minutes ago, gosioux76 said:

 

This is a fantastic point. Couldn't agree more. The NHL very clearly works well as a niche sport in markets, like Winnipeg, that will fill every seat.

 

It's just an unfortunate circumstance that the league has yet to see it for what it is.

Gary Bettman's tenure as NHL Commissioner coincided with the league attempting to expand its marketability outside of Canada and the northern US. Expanding down south, relocating down south, changing the Division and Conference names, it was all meant to... grow the game.

None of this is hard to understand. As much as @spartacat_12 likes to describe the people who disagree with him as suffering from a Canadian inferiority complex (I wonder how he squares that with Americans who disagrees with him?)

Honestly? I get where he's coming from... to a point.

My problems with it are twofold- one, attempting to explore new markets shouldn't have come at the cost of existing ones. The Jets 1.0 didn't have to die for the league to put a team in Arizona, for example. Giving some of the league's most loyal fans the middle finger to chase potential fans (most of whom never materialized) isn't a good look.

And secondly, it's not the 90s or 2000s anymore. I was nine when the Jets left for Phoenix. I'm thirty-five now. We can- and should- be able to call failed experiments failures.

Like I said, hockey is niche. It would have been shocking if it worked in every warm weather city they tried it in. In fact they probably did better for themselves then expected with the markets that did work. But others didn't, and I can't see advocating for Arizona over Quebec City in 2023 (or Atlanta over QC) as anything but doubling down on a point they've been proven wrong on.

Anyway sorry if my earlier post at you came off like a personal attack. It wasn't meant as one. More just exhaustion over retreading the same points again and again.

3 minutes ago, heavybass said:

An animated game on Disney between the Capitols and the Rangers.... totally going to have the Capitols win it because it's Disney.

What now?

Also why would Disney favour the Capitols?

3 minutes ago, spartacat_12 said:

I've never disputed the fact that the franchise became more valuable when they moved to Winnipeg, but my point is that they are only marginally more valuable now, and unless they become the sport's next dynasty, they've pretty much hit their ceiling in Winnipeg. 

And my point is that given Atlanta's population and economic advantages over Winnipeg that the value even increased at all is an indictment on Atlanta. It's the same thing with the tv deals you felt the need to poke at. The US is so far ahead of Canada in terms of potential viewers and potential dollars that anything short of a huge money advantage for the US proves that there's more to this than going to Wikipedia and comparing metro area population stats.

Basically Canada punches above its weight when it comes to supporting hockey. Which makes places like Quebec City and Winnipeg more valuable hockey markets than places like Atlanta and Phoenix/Glendale/Tempe, where it's been failure after failure attempting to reach that hypothetical high ceiling.

Again, you're advocating for the league to keep a team in Arizona, a market that has been nothing but red ink since 1996, while Quebec City just sits there. That's leaving money on the table man, and no amount of whatif's will change that.

5 minutes ago, spartacat_12 said:

I don't know if it's contrarianism if I'm parroting the same talking points that the league has brought up in regards to where they put franchises.

There is a certain segment of people who chafe under the particulars of where they grew up. New England fans who hate Boston sports, for example. Or Canadians who like to buck the trends of what most Canadian hockey fans- and media- want to see.

5 minutes ago, spartacat_12 said:

At the end of the day, Canadian franchises (other than Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver) are high floor, low ceiling opportunities for the league, while the large southern markets are low floor, high ceiling situations. Atlanta was the 29th most valuable franchise in the league before they left, and are 27th now after a decade in Manitoba. Meanwhile, Tampa Bay was 28th in franchise value at that same time, got a new owner who invested in the team/market, and is now the 14th most valuable team in the league now.

You keep doing this, and I keep pointing out that Winnipeg's value as a market is reflected in the ThrasherJets' comparison against themselves. They've always been more valuable in Winnipeg then they were in Atlanta.

5 minutes ago, spartacat_12 said:

while the large southern markets are low floor, high ceiling situations

That's a term used to describe potential. Atlanta failed twice and Arizona's been failing since 1996. We can stop crying about these markets' potential because we know that potential didn't pan out.

Just now, gosioux76 said:

This is a question, and not me attempting to poke holes in your point: Is it possible that Winnipeg's franchise value was higher than Atlanta's because of the  considerable wealth of its new owner? 

I'd say it's a combination of financially stable ownership and actual fans in the building. The NHL, more than the NFL, NBA, or MLB, is fuelled by ticket sales. Winnipeg is only 12% of Atlanta, but of that smaller number far more were willing to buy tickets to see a middling NHL team live.

Atlanta is a much larger market, in terms of population and economics. There's no way Winnipeg should be outpacing them objectively speaking, but it's not a matter of objectivity. Winnipeg is just a better hockey market than Atlanta. The NHL is regional and niche by nature. You can make it work in non-traditional cities, but you need management that knows what they're doing and a bit of luck to pull it off. You can't just look at metro area population numbers on a spreed sheet and say X > Y because with hockey sometimes Y has more built in advantages unique to the sport.

4 minutes ago, gosioux76 said:

Your responses always seem to want to make this personal, which I really don't understand.

No man, it's not personal. I'm just tired of having the same arguments and retreading the same ground over and over and over and over again.

The idea that a sunbelt metropolis can be big money had value in the early and mid-90s when these markets were untapped, but it was a risk. Sometimes it worked. Other times, it didn't.

And I just find it exhausting to deal with the same "low floor/high ceiling" arguments used to justify markets that have objectively failed. Sure, if things worked out differently maybe Arizona and Atlanta could have been success stories too, but they didn't.

It's time to stop pretending that this talk about "potential" applies to these places specifically.

5 minutes ago, IceCap said:

Well there are a few things to unpack here. First is that it wasn't so much a miracle as much as it was a Canadian billionaire with ties to the Canadian financial world basically saying "I can buy your ass ten times over Gary, mess with my move to Winnipeg and I'll shut you out of every financial institution in English Canada, aka the NHL's most consistently valuable market."

And before someone gets uppity about me calling Canada the NHL's most valuable market...

The current NHL tv deal in Canada with Rogers is worth $5.232 billion.

The current NHL tv deal in the United States, a country that dwarfs Canada in terms of population and economic strength, is worth $1 billion.

1 hour ago, gosioux76 said:

Personally, I'd love to see additional Canadian expansion, particularly to Quebec City. Long overdue. And like with Winnipeg, I think the game would be well-served by returning to the markets it abandoned in the '90s. (Saskatoon is less than half the size of Winnipeg, in terms of population, so while it works as a metaphorical example, it falls short in about every other metric that matters.)

You missed the joke.

Of course Saskatoon isn't viable, but Atlanta's previous NHL teams left for Calgary and Winnipeg. So if we're doing Atlanta again then... well... what other Canadian Prairie towns are left?

 

1 hour ago, gosioux76 said:

The fact that Winnipeg got the Jets back is a miracle, and one that I would be surprised to ever see repeated. 

Well there are a few things to unpack here. First is that it wasn't so much a miracle as much as it was a Canadian billionaire with ties to the Canadian financial world basically saying "I can buy your ass ten times over Gary, mess with my move to Winnipeg and I'll shut you out of every financial institution in English Canada, aka the NHL's most consistently valuable market."

Secondly, if you want to count that as a miracle go right ahead, but it was one the NHL should be glad for. Despite @spartacat_12's bad faith selective argument that as good as Winnipeg's return has gone they're only the league's 27th most valuable team, we need to look at the numbers that really matter. The Jets' value against the Thrashers.

Now @the admiral is right. The Clippers being sold for way above market value inflated EVERYONE, so I won't be using the value of the Jets today against the Thrashers' last season. But I will look at the last Thrashers season vs the first Jets 2.0 season.

The Atlanta Thrashers were worth $135 million in 2010.

The Winnipeg Jets were worth $164 million in 2011.

Just one year removed, the only change being that they moved to a smaller city with a smaller economic base, and their value went up by $29 million.

Maybe that's not a lot when talking about the money involved in pro sports, even by early 2010s $ values, but Winnipeg's entire metro area has 12% of the population Atlanta does. That the franchise's value even rose at all after the move tells you how much more valuable Winnipeg as than Atlanta when it comes to being a hockey market.

Of course I'm repeating myself. I already covered this here. Over a year ago. I understand this is an ongoing topic that goes back a ways (a true testament to this league's own self destructive nature) but spartacat just ignoring facts that are inconvenient to his narrative and then hiding behind the thread's length to pretend they were never presented in the first place is lame.

But anyway there you go. And it's why this...

1 hour ago, gosioux76 said:

But you know that there's almost certainly someone, somewhere in the league offices who believes that the upside of Atlanta is so strong that even making it a moderate success would reap more benefits for the league than a return to Quebec City. It really isn't even about "sunbelt vs. canada." It's about finding a way to crack the 8th largest metropolitan area and the home to some of the nation's biggest consumer-facing corporate brands and potential sponsors.

... is a load of

I don't mean to come off as harsh, I'm just tired of rehashing the same stuff to people who think they're being clever.

"iF AtLaNtA cAn WoRk..."

Yeah. I get it. If Atlanta or Phoenix Glendale Tempe(?) or Miami or whatever suburban hell the Hurricanes play in can work then the potential value outstrips places like Quebec City and Winnipeg and bla bla bla. You haven't cracked the code the rest of us are too dumb to get. We've been having this conversation for literal decades at this point. And the "low floor/high ceiling" stuff starts to ring hollow when you apply it to a market like Arizona that's been a money pit for twenty-seven years or Atlanta that's lost two teams by this point.

The NHL has found success with that formula by the way. Dallas worked. Tampa worked. Nashville worked, as annoying as their fans are. But not every experiment will have a 100% success rate and the NHL is very much leaving money on the table chasing after failed markets like Atlanta and Arizona while Quebec City is right there.

3 hours ago, spartacat_12 said:

Having said that, the league isn't obligated to leave money on the table to nurture the inferiority complex a lot of Canadians.

Neither are we obliged to pretend your rebellion against the common (and justified) narration in Canada is anything but contrarianism. 

22 hours ago, spartacat_12 said:

The league's return to Winnipeg has gone about as well as anyone could have hoped, and yet they're still ranked 27th in the league when it comes to franchise value.

And yet they're far and away more valuable then they ever were in Atlanta. What does that say, given Atlanta's economic and population advantages over Winnipeg?

2 hours ago, gosioux76 said:

The reason that Atlanta could one day get a third shot at the NHL is because it would seem to satisfy both objectives. 

Well that didn't happen the first two times. 

The Sunbelt Avengers Contrarian Brigade likes to say Saskatoon would never work, but I donno. They keep wanting to try Atlanta again, and I think Saskatoon's next up on the "Canadian Prairie Cities" list  

I remember back in the day a few old timers here consistently said Winnipeg, Quebec City, and Hartford shouldn't get teams again because those cities failed to hold onto their teams. 

But here we are after two failed Atlanta runs and the league wants to go back before Quebec City? 

Maybe the people who advocate for this idiocy should just come out and admit their own biases/issues and stop pretending there's anything high minded about their stances. 

23 hours ago, McCall said:

I think between the Vipers and Guardians identity relocations, they felt Guardians worked better in Orlando than Vegas, coupled with the desert setting and alliteration of "Vegas Vipers", and went that way.

Nothing about "Guardians" really says "Orlando" or "Florida" though 

On 2/22/2023 at 12:45 AM, the admiral said:

I like that they resemble the '86 Mets. I feel like being really into the '86 Mets was sort of a Gen-X precursor to writing "How Petey Pablo Changed The Way We Talk About Gerald Wallace" posts.

Maybe it's just because of Seinfeld, but Israel looking like the '86 Mets feels right.

1 hour ago, infernoqueso said:

You missed the most forgettable alternate that preceded the black storm gradient.

That's another one where if they just put a proper logo on it, it would have been fine. Even if it is a huge ripoff of the Kings' home look. 

1 hour ago, WestCoastBias said:

 

Yeah, but it's not because there's too many sports venues that can hold events like that guy was saying

Well over-saturation is a thing

15 hours ago, WestCoastBias said:

 

Well the Phoenix metro is the 10th largest in country with almost 5 million people, they can handle another arena. And I doubt ASU is hosting a lot of other events at their venues besides their own athletics anyway. Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum is 60 years old. Phoenix Rising's stadium is a bunch of temporary bleachers. Cardinals and D-Backs stadiums hold a totally different scale of an event, same with the race track. The only competition would be the Suns arena and their old arena in Glendale. The Glendale arena will be third on the pecking order since its on the outskirts of town and if I'm holding an event I'd rather do it in the brand new arena closer to Tempe and Scottsdale then the older one in downtown. 

All of this is ignoring the fact that it's been twenty-seven years and this team has been nothing but a financial black hole.

I get that they wanted to recycle as much as they could from XFL 2.0, but why not just keep the Vipers identity in Florida? Tampa Bay Vipers -> Orlando Vipers seems simple enough.