spartacat_12

3 hours ago, mcj882000 said:

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.

Elliotte Friedman has mentioned this recently. I guess the PA received some concerns when the Mullett Arena situation was first announced, but they were willing to tolerate it as a stopgap measure while the team worked out the permanent rink deal. Now that Tempe has fallen through he expects the PA to express a lot more concern. 
 

I’m sure the players would generally be opposed to any franchise relocations, but in this case it’s the uncertainty surrounding the team that would be a concern for them. 

16 minutes ago, IceCap said:

Coyotes apologists- the team deserves another chance. Tempe is closer to their fanbase anyway! Once they get that arena done they're set! 

 

Tempe arena vote fails 

 

Coyotes apologists- They deserve one more chance in Mesa, which is even further away than Glendale! 

Most rational people who were Arizona hockey defenders seem to be in agreement that the Tempe vote was the last ditch effort to keep the team in the market. Even the league has changed their tone about the situation and is no longer including the obligatory “we remain committed to the market” spiel. 
 

The only people who seem to be saying they deserve another chance are actual Coyote fans in AZ, which is understandable, albeit a little delusional. 

2 hours ago, PlayGloria said:

 

I always LOVED the Aeros green sweater

 

Those aren’t bad, but not a chance a Houston NHL team would go with green as the primary colour. 

So wait, are the “host city-specific” logos really just recoloured versions of the garbage neutral one?

10 hours ago, Sykotyk said:

I absolutely despise this idea that people can't figure out it's a World Cup without a World Cup Trophy in the logo the same as the NFL did to the Super Bowl.

At least the NFL has gone to the effort of designing an illustrated version of their trophy. They didn’t just do a google image search of the Vince Lombardi Trophy. 

4 hours ago, Gary said:

https://arizonasports.com/story/3523771/arizona-coyotes-expect-play-mullett-arena-2023-24/?fbclid=IwAR0_KZ3IbvlxKtr8UOMpWZanpU-qRpLm-kDa0eokuD0lz-2oYOWjLZw5CEA&mibextid=Zxz2cZ
 

The circus will play on for another season

It would have been very ambitious to move the team to a new market this off-season. The Thrashers to Winnipeg announcement happened in May, but it sounds like most of the details had been worked out well before that. 

2 hours ago, IceCap said:

So my proposal is to go back to what the league did for the 2020-2021 season...with a twist. Bring back the four geographic divisions but instead of keeping them isolated have them scheduled against each other. You can toss Quebec City into the North/Canada Division, and group the Red Wings and Blue Jackets with teams in their general region.

The North bubble division was built out of necessity. No one wants a 3 hour time change to travel for a divisional game. 

I know Coyotes is a fairly generic name that would work in a lot of places, but if they are playing somewhere else next season I hope they find a way to rebrand. If it’s rushed maybe we get stuck with a Tennessee Oilers situation for a year or two. 
 

If it’s KC or Quebec I think it’s safe to say they’d bring back the Scouts/Nords name. Not sure about Houston. The Aeros name & double blue scheme is too close to the Jets brand. 

5 hours ago, MiK said:

ESPN (so take it with a large grain of salt) is throwing around Salt Lake City as a potential option for relocation, only going as far to say "Jazz owner Ryan Smith has met with Bettman within the past year."

 

Now that's an interesting location. Anyone know if hockey has any type of following in the Beehive State?

I was listening to today’s 32 Thoughts, and they talked about SLC. It sounds like Smith is more interested in the clean slate of an expansion team, but it is a possibility for the Yotes. They’d need to do some work on the arena to accommodate the ice though. 
 

The other cities that got brought up were Houston, KC, Sacramento, and QC. 

1 hour ago, GDAWG said:

Calling this right now:

 

- Gary Bettman will say that while the NHL is disappointed in the results of the vote, they are still committed to the Coyotes staying in Arizona.  

Not this time. They pushed all the chips they had left into the middle on this vote. 
 

Even the media members who have always been bullish on Arizona seem to have lost all optimism tonight. 

5 hours ago, habsfan1 said:

McDavid is in year 8 and still not even a Cup Final. MacKinnon won a Cup before McDavid.

McDavid did win a playoff series in his 2nd season. Chicago still feels a long way away from even making the playoffs. 

Even with Bedard, Chicago is still in the very early stages of their rebuild and has a lot of work to do. Crosby came to Pittsburgh with Malkin & Fleury already in the system. The Oilers already had Draisaitl when McDavid got drafted.
 

Bedard is pretty much joining a blank slate. The Hawks do have a lot of picks + $40M in cap space, so we’ll see if they get aggressive to try and speed up the rebuild. 

On 5/1/2023 at 12:35 AM, JTernup said:

I don’t have much to add here but the Senators have to have the worst logo history in big 4 sports for my money. Those lifeless white faces, design flaws, and uncanny valley aspects leave nothing to admire. I’m sure their fans like the Roman Senator look but I’d be tempted to shift towards a Canadian capital logo like the Weagle or Nationals  capital dome cap logo.

I think the worst logo talk is a bit hyperbolic, but I agree that they’d be better off leaning into local imagery/nods to the old franchise. Returning to a mostly unchanged 2D logo was the safe rebranding option, and it’s miles better than the previous set, although that was a pretty low bar to clear. 
 

It’s funny because the other day I was thinking it’d be interesting to try and come up with a Weagle style logo involving a beaver & the Peace Tower. 
 

On 5/2/2023 at 7:03 PM, WSU151 said:

Has anyone done a Peace Tower inside the O? Would it work? 

I wish I could remember the name of the designer, but there was a concept series a while ago that imagined the Sens branding if the original franchise never folded. This version of the logo was my favourite. 
 

On 5/2/2023 at 8:58 PM, IceCap said:

Both the LA Kings and Anaheim Ducks are in a pretty good spot. The Vegas Golden Knights are a bunch of schmucks but they seem to have a good fanbase so they're solid. The Dallas Stars have been pretty well run and are supported well. They're good. Nashville had a scare where no one went to games and they almost moved to Hamilton, but a new ownership group committed to Nashville that knew how to both market the team and build a consistent contender set them up as a success. And Tampa Bay's been perhaps the most successful with three Cups, two in the last four years, and a team that seems like it's been contending for over a decade with a dedicated fanbase. 

If you want to know what Sunbelt teams are "acceptable" then there you go. And the thing that makes them "acceptable" is pretty easy to grasp- they sell ticket and make money. 

So you acknowledge that it’s possible for Sun Belt franchises to turn things around, but somehow think it’s impossible for Arizona to do it? You said it yourself, there was a time when Nashville couldn’t draw fans and was on the verge of relocation. You also left out the fact that Tampa was a disaster before Vinik bought the team and resuscitated the organization.  
 

If this arena vote doesn’t go their way in the next couple of weeks they’ll have to begin seriously looking at relocation, but I’d prefer to see them get a proper rink in Tempe. 
 

For all the complaining people do about tax payer money going towards pro sports stadiums, no one seems to mention that the Tempe citizens are getting a much better deal than the residents of Calgary got for their new building. 

20 hours ago, dont care said:

I don’t see it, especially with Vegas’ home being gold now

Both feature a gold-helmeted warrior as a logo, sparkly gold stripes with a laurel pattern, and red trim.

The Sens' current look is fine.

On 4/21/2023 at 11:12 AM, who do you think said:

Has it been observed/discussed around here that in the NBA (the league that the NHL has pissed all over itself trying to become for the last 30 years), the last three team relocations have all been to much smaller markets? Vancouver > Memphis, Charlotte > New Orleans, Seattle > OKC.

I don't know if these examples really make the point you're hoping to make. Charlotte got their team back 2 years after the first Hornets moved, Seattle getting the Sonics back is inevitable now that they have a proper arena, and David Stern openly stated that Vancouver was a great market & that the league botched it.

Plus the Grizzlies, Pelicans, and Thunder are 3 of the bottom 4 teams in the league when it comes to franchise value, so I wouldn't call any of the relocations a massive success for the league.

On 4/21/2023 at 7:43 PM, DTConcepts said:

If you ask me, this jersey is what the Senators' brand should be based on. Albeit with a different logo.

Too similar to the Golden Knights.

3 hours ago, BBTV said:

I read this as "I'd head in to use the restroom and leave a bomb".

12 minutes ago, BBTV said:

Being in LV might help them attract free agents.  Not necessarily because of the "action", but there's a growing number of players from the LV area that may want to sign with a cash-infused hometown team.

I'd say going from a market with a 13% state tax to one with 0 state taxes would be the main appeal for free agents.

On 4/17/2023 at 10:31 AM, officeglenn said:

Couple of graphics from the mothership:

 

 

 

Also worth noting that it's a very dark navy blue, not black.

This looks alright in a vacuum (although I'd ditch the navy pants), but it feels like they overdid it on the tributes. The casual fan doesn't have any interest in reading a paragraph long explanation for every element of the uniform. The focus should be on making a nice looking uniform & incorporating a couple local/historical references.

On 4/18/2023 at 12:29 AM, the admiral said:

How does the "BUT YOU SAID hockey is for everyone!" crowd reconcile their obvious enthusiasm for Atlanta expansion with the fact that it would be part of yet another racist, classist, and all-around exclusionary real estate scheme? Because it really does seem to be the same people. 

Where are you seeing anyone expressing enthusiasm for another team in Atlanta? Aside from the odd Georgia resident who is still carrying a torch for the Thrashers, every reaction I've seen has been "they think it can work a third time?!", or "they expect people to drive to the suburbs?"

It's one think to dunk on the low hanging fruit surrounding the Coyotes, it's another to just make up opinions that don't exist & claim that a large sect of hockey fans actually believe them.

3 hours ago, IceCap said:

Minnesota is the poster child for this. They had their inaugural set which was modern but pretty restrained. And then they introduced the fauxback red. Which was a cool nod to Minnesota's hockey history prior to the Wild. 

 

But then they decided to make the red the primary, refused to change the whites to match, and now they openly flaunt "nothing matches." Which is just dumb. 

While the initial Edge era for the Wild was a mess, I wouldn't really say "nothing matches" for them now. Sure, their home & away jerseys aren't perfect inverses of each other, but they match just as much as Montreal or Chicago do. They use the same logo & font on both jerseys, and the striping on the sleeves is close.

It's a lot better than when they had a red home jersey with a roundel logo & block font, and a mostly green road jersey with the jagged custom numbers & the logo on it's own.

BOS over FLA

TB over TOR

NYR over NJ

CAR over NYI

COL over SEA

DAL over MIN

VGK over WPG

EDM over LA

BOS over TB

NYR over CAR

DAL over COL

EDM over VGK

NYR over BOS

DAL over EDM

NYR over DAL

On 4/12/2023 at 5:30 PM, TrevorBotting said:

Did a quick search and didn't see any results, but whats the general consensus on teams keeping names as they move cities? I feel this fits as an Unpopular Opinion but I am 100% for it. 

 

Give me the Colorado Nordiques, the Minnesota Senators and the Oklahoma City SuperSonics. 

 

And I realize its gets muddled with some instances, or how far to go back (do you want the New Jersey Rockies or the New Jersey Scouts in the NHL?), but I do like the premise. 

 

(if this is the wrong section for this, please let me know). 

I think teams should always try and do a rebrand when they relocate. Obviously back in the '50s the logistics around moving a franchise had the branding as an afterthought, but when it comes to modern sports marketing you have a much better chance at establishing yourself with a new brand. It also helped that the Dodger, Giants, Lakers all had pretty generic logos/uniforms that didn't explicitly try to reflect their nicknames.

Look at Las Vegas. The Raiders kept their name (which makes sense as they're a bit of a nomadic franchise), and because of that they don't really feel like Vegas's team. Compare that to the Golden Knights, who designed an entire brand around being "Vegas's team".

The other thing to consider is if a market ends up getting a new team. Seattle is likely getting back their NBA team in the next decade, and it would be really awkward of the OKC Sonics were in the league. We'd likely just end up with another Hornets/Pelicans situation.

Playoff golfing jokes aside, hopefully this means that they're ditching the red helmets on the road for the post-season.

These should be the basis for Minnesota's primary uniforms:

9 hours ago, M4One said:

They look nice.  I do wish they kept orange as the primary since there's now 3 black teams in a 9 team league.  

I miss the era when there were 7 different coloured helmets used in the league.