NHL Anti-Thread: Bad Business Decision Aggregator

[IceCap]

16 minutes ago, WestCoastBias said:

 

Okay yeah but opinions vary, I was just asking. Carolina and Florida in addition to Arizona could be considered "unacceptable", you even said yourself they still aren't great business wise. Wasn't someone in this thread just defending Dallas having a team too? Maybe you think the Ducks are unnecessary? It was just a question, you don't have to reply if you don't want to. 

The problem is this has been talked about over and over and over, man.  If you wanna know though? 

 

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. 

 

The Sunbelt markets that have been failures and aren't "acceptable" are/were Arizona and Atlanta. Arizona has been a terrible market that hasn't drawn a dime in thirty years, and has never really cared about the team on the whole. They've defaulted on taxes, been unable to pay rent to a city that was subsiding them with taxpayer money, and have been such a shambles that every sports economics not tied to the NHL has gone "I have no idea why this team is still here." 

Atlanta was also a failure in so much as they didn't get anyone to actually care but they weren't quite in as bad a shape as Phoenix. Still they were in bad enough shape that Gary Bettman sacrificed them to Winnipeg to save the Coyotes. 

Those are the markets that aren't/weren't "acceptable" and the reason they aren't/weren't is again easy to comprehend. They never made any money. 

 

The questionable teams are Carolina and Florida. Both have SCF appearances to their names and Carolina even won one, but outside of those seasons these teams have been pretty bad until recently. Maybe recent success is the beginning of a turnaround, but maybe not. They're weak markets, just not the unquestionable disaster that Arizona is/Atlanta was. 

 

 

[ManillaToad]

Does San Jose count as sunbelt

[Digby]

14 hours ago, IceCap said:

What we have now just swap out Arizona for Quebec City. Hartford is intriguing but they need a new rink before that can ever be considered. 

 

Hartford is the fourth-largest city in its own state and shrinking ever still, that ship sailed probably before the Whalers even got out of there. Among US markets I'd think one of those Midwestern cities that doesn't have hockey might be a more worthwhile punt.

[IceCap]

3 minutes ago, Digby said:

 

Hartford is the fourth-largest city in its own state and shrinking ever still, that ship sailed probably before the Whalers even got out of there. Among US markets I'd think one of those Midwestern cities that doesn't have hockey might be a more worthwhile punt.

KC or Milwaukee are at the top of that list. Admiral brought up Cinci but I think Columbus has the whole state on lockdown, and that's probably fine. 

 

20 minutes ago, ManillaToad said:

Does San Jose count as sunbelt

Northern Cali doesn't count as the Sunbelt, no.

[Sport]

 

On 4/30/2023 at 2:44 PM, the admiral said:

Yeah, the timing worked out poorly for Cincinnati, but the place just feels like a hockey town the way St. Louis and Milwaukee do and Columbus kinda doesn't: a big white-ethnic base and a relative paucity of IPA yuppie transplants. People from there are from there. As a fan, I'm a fan.

 

But yeah, that's good financial context, and meanwhile, Columbus happened because Karmanos scoped it out after getting turned away from Auburn Hills (never forget the abandoned hangar, maybe that's the next move for the Coyotes), and then some local captain of industry had a bug up his ass about building a downtown arena or something. Too bad it didn't work out for Cincy.

 

Oooh a topic I'm uniquely suited to discuss. At the time in the mid-90's Cincinnati was already over-served relative to our population size with the Reds, Bengals, and college basketball, while Columbus was just sitting there without a major professional sports franchise (unless you want to count John Cooper's Buckeyes! FOLKS!) and in an open hole on the NHL map with a comparable population to Cincinnati. I think they also sold the BOG that Columbus could theoretically draw fans from all over the state, which happens more now, but definitely wasn't happening in the franchise's first decade when they were complete ass.

 

You're right that people that live in Cincy are from Cincy and people that live in Columbus are from Hilliard or Upper Arlington or Westerville or they're Cleveland, Akron, Dayton, Toledo natives who went to OSU and never left. Cincinnati is a city, Columbus is a collection of suburbs. Columbus is a boring person's Sim City city while Cincinnati is a drunk person's Sim City city. Cincinnati has more character, more charm, more of a centrally established culture, more history, more grit, more diversity, more tactility, less sterility, less planned, and is geographically more interesting. Columbus has better schools, more space, a better educated populace, but it's also more dull. People come to Cincinnati and they either love it or they hate it, nobody can ever seem to muster any emotion one way or the other in the same way for Columbus. And I'm allowed to say this because I'm from both places. 

 

Better hockey city? On vibes, maybe Cincinnati, but in actual practice I don't know if Cincinnati would-be the better NHL city. Columbus has quietly built a nice little hockey ecosystem there with very active adult leagues, lots of rinks, lots of youth and high school programs (a Columbus school just became the first school not from Cleveland or Toledo to win the state championship), and a good season ticket holder base. Plus there’s infrastructure for Ohio State hockey and junior hockey. There's more white-collar money in Columbus and they only have to split sports dollars with an MLS team and a college football team rather than MLB and NFL and now MLS that Cincinnati has. 

 

Of course all of that grassroots development probably would've happened in Cincinnati if there was an NHL team plopped here in the late 70's WHA merger or a 2000 expansion team, but it's hard for me to imagine it being as good as Columbus has been.

 

 

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

The questionable teams are Carolina and Florida. Both have SCF appearances to their names and Carolina even won one, but outside of those seasons these teams have been pretty bad until recently. Maybe recent success is the beginning of a turnaround, but maybe not. They're weak markets, just not the unquestionable disaster that Arizona is/Atlanta was. 

 

I agree with everything else, but Carolina was second in attendance this year. I don't think they're in the shaky ground category right now. If you want to hold bad attendance against them because they missed the playoffs from 2010-2018 then you'd have to hold Buffalo to that same standard. If Carolina has solid attendance when the team is good then they're on par with most every other American market. 

 

Sunrise is Glendale East and I heard they didn't sell out game 6 against the Bruins. Don't know how true that is, but it looked like half the crowd was Boston fans. Wouldn't shed a tear if the NHL left south Florida. 

[CS85]

15 minutes ago, Sport said:

 

 

Oooh a topic I'm uniquely suited to discuss. At the time in the mid-90's Cincinnati was already over-served relative to our population size with the Reds, Bengals, and college basketball, while Columbus was just sitting there without a major professional sports franchise (unless you want to count John Cooper's Buckeyes! FOLKS!) and in an open hole on the NHL map with a comparable population to Cincinnati. I think they also sold the BOG that Columbus could theoretically draw fans from all over the state, which happens more now, but definitely wasn't happening in the franchise's first decade when they were complete ass.

 

You're right that people that live in Cincy are from Cincy and people that live in Columbus are from Hilliard or Upper Arlington or Westerville or they're Cleveland, Akron, Dayton, Toledo natives who went to OSU and never left. Cincinnati is a city, Columbus is a collection of suburbs. Columbus is a boring person's Sim City city while Cincinnati is a drunk person's Sim City city. Cincinnati has more character, more charm, more of a centrally established culture, more history, more grit, more diversity, more tactility, less sterility, less planned, and is geographically more interesting. Columbus has better schools, more space, a better educated populace, but it's also more dull. People come to Cincinnati and they either love it or they hate it, nobody can ever seem to muster any emotion one way or the other in the same way for Columbus. And I'm allowed to say this because I'm from both places. 

 

Better hockey city? On vibes, maybe Cincinnati, but in actual practice I don't know if Cincinnati would-be the better NHL city. Columbus has quietly built a nice little hockey ecosystem there with very active adult leagues, lots of rinks, lots of youth and high school programs (a Columbus school just became the first school not from Cleveland or Toledo to win the state championship), and a good season ticket holder base. There's more white-collar money in Columbus and they only have to split sports dollars with an MLS team and a college football team rather than MLB and NFL and now MLS that Cincinnati has. 

 

Of course all of that grassroots development probably would've happened in Cincinnati if there was an NHL team plopped here in the late 70's WHA merger or a 2000 expansion team, but it's hard for me to imagine it being as good as Columbus has been.

 

 

 

I agree with everything else, but Carolina was second in attendance this year. I don't think they're in the shaky ground category right now. If you want to hold bad attendance against them because they missed the playoffs from 2010-2018 then you'd have to hold Buffalo to that same standard. If Carolina has solid attendance when the team is good then they're on par with most every other American market. 

 

Sunrise is Glendale East and I heard they didn't sell out game 6 against the Bruins. Don't know how true that is, but it looked like half the crowd was Boston fans. Wouldn't shed a tear if the NHL left south Florida. 

 

So Cincinnati is Pawnee and Columbus is Eagleton?

[Glover]

20 minutes ago, Sport said:

Oooh a topic I'm uniquely suited to discuss. At the time in the mid-90's Cincinnati was already over-served relative to our population size with the Reds, Bengals, and college basketball, while Columbus was just sitting there without a major professional sports franchise (unless you want to count John Cooper's Buckeyes! FOLKS!) and in an open hole on the NHL map with a comparable population to Cincinnati. I think they also sold the BOG that Columbus could theoretically draw fans from all over the state, which happens more now, but definitely wasn't happening in the franchise's first decade when they were complete ass.

 

You're right that people that live in Cincy are from Cincy and people that live in Columbus are from Hilliard or Upper Arlington or Westerville or they're Cleveland, Akron, Dayton, Toledo natives who went to OSU and never left. Cincinnati is a city, Columbus is a collection of suburbs. Columbus is a boring person's Sim City city while Cincinnati is a drunk person's Sim City city. Cincinnati has more character, more charm, more of a centrally established culture, more history, more grit, more diversity, more tactility, less sterility, less planned, and is geographically more interesting. Columbus has better schools, more space, a better educated populace, but it's also more dull. People come to Cincinnati and they either love it or they hate it, nobody can ever seem to muster any emotion one way or the other in the same way for Columbus. And I'm allowed to say this because I'm from both places. 

 

Better hockey city? On vibes, maybe Cincinnati, but in actual practice I don't know if Cincinnati would-be the better NHL city. Columbus has quietly built a nice little hockey ecosystem there with very active adult leagues, lots of rinks, lots of youth and high school programs (a Columbus school just became the first school not from Cleveland or Toledo to win the state championship), and a good season ticket holder base. There's more white-collar money in Columbus and they only have to split sports dollars with an MLS team and a college football team rather than MLB and NFL and now MLS that Cincinnati has. 

 

Of course all of that grassroots development probably would've happened in Cincinnati if there was an NHL team plopped here in the late 70's WHA merger or a 2000 expansion team, but it's hard for me to imagine it being as good as Columbus has been.

Coming from someone else who calls Ohio home, I think you hit the nail on the head here. Columbus is such a vanilla city, but I think it works in their favor to a certain degree because it is so much more white-collar than the rest of the state. If the NHL was going to put an expansion team in Ohio in the 90's I think it had to be a place with more white-collar money, as opposed to the at-the-time declining blue-collar cities of Cincinnati or Cleveland. 

 

All that being said, I think both Cincinnati and Cleveland would have more "passionate" fans, but as you mentioned both cities are probably at their limits in terms of sports dollars to spread around.

[who do you think]

It's too bad Grand Rapids doesn't have a suitable arena. That would otherwise be a cool small market to have around, one of those one-team sized markets that the NHL just doesn't have enough of on this side of the border. (I realize that it would probably have the same issue with the Wings and Hawks that Ottawa does with the Habs and Leafs).

 

RE Panthers, I don't understand the NHL, and MLB for that matter, so doggedly clinging to Miami/SE Florida. It is the worst sports market in the country. Six million people blah blah blah they're not watching or attending. "Well you still need a team there to serve the transplants" - it's 2023, out-of-market streaming has existed for a long time now. Transplanted Habs and Mets fans can just fire up the apps and follow their teams as if they never left the motherland. The Heat only make it work because the NBA is a star driven league and stars are lining up to congregate down there, the Dolphins because football is the least demanding sport fandom-wise and the NFL is bulletproof anyway.

[FiddySicks]

17 hours ago, WestCoastBias said:

 

I mean it's not our money 

 

I mostly just don't want to see the Kachina go, I think it'd enter into Whalers and Nordiques nostalgia territory if they moved away and rebranded. And while both are wastelands of urban sprawl, Phoenix > Houston. 

I went to ASU and part of the “taxes” I had to pay on my education went directly to propping that sad organization up, so yeah, it kind of is our money. 
 

Also LOL to the idea that Houston is more of a wasteland than Phoenix. Don’t get me wrong, they both suck and are miserable places to be in the middle of the year especially, but Phoenix is uniquely depressing. 

[Sport]

6 minutes ago, Glover said:

All that being said, I think both Cincinnati and Cleveland would have more "passionate" fans, but as you mentioned both cities are probably at their limits in terms of sports dollars to spread around.

 

Probably right out of the gate yes because both cities were more accustomed to having local pro sports teams. Columbus struggled early on with lifelong natives of the city wearing Red Wings, Blackhawks, or Penguins jerseys to the arena only to turn around and wear a Blue Jackets jersey for the next home game when they would play, like, the Sharks or something. But that behavior is going away as the team and city grow together. There seems to be fewer Penguins and Red Wings and Blackhawks fans every time they play. If the team ever gets and stays consistently good Columbus might surprise - During our brief brush with competitiveness the playoff crowds were the rowdiest sports crowds I've ever been a part of and I started to notice a mindset shift during the 2017-2020 where expectations for the team set in and the approach people took began to smell very similar to Ohio State football attitudes. Not sure I liked it, but if the team ever wins or threatens for cups I think Columbus would hold its own in the annoying fanbase department. 

 

 

40 minutes ago, CS85 said:

 

So Cincinnati is Pawnee and Columbus is Eagleton?

 

LOL yeah basically.

 

[infrared41]

1 hour ago, Sport said:

Columbus is a collection of suburbs. 

 

In the middle of a corn field. Cleveland is on the lake, Cincinnati is on the Ohio River, even Toledo is on the Maumee River and has a suburb on the lake. Columbus has no natural charm. It just sits there as a monument to...well...I'm not sure what, insurance companies and concrete, I suppose. One could argue that Columbus has the Olentangy River, but I don't know why they would.

[Sport]

9 minutes ago, infrared41 said:

 

In the middle of a corn field. Cleveland is on the lake, Cincinnati is on the Ohio River, even Toledo is on the Maumee River and has a suburb on the lake. Columbus has no natural charm. It just sits there as a monument to...well...I'm not sure what, insurance companies and concrete, I suppose. One could argue that Columbus has the Olentangy River, but I don't know why they would.

 

Right. Cleveland, Toledo, and Cincinnati sprung up for actual reasons. Columbus only exists in its current form because it happened to be in the exact middle of the state. 

[WestCoastBias]

2 hours ago, FiddySicks said:

I went to ASU and part of the “taxes” I had to pay on my education went directly to propping that sad organization up, so yeah, it kind of is our money. 
 

Also LOL to the idea that Houston is more of a wasteland than Phoenix. Don’t get me wrong, they both suck and are miserable places to be in the middle of the year especially, but Phoenix is uniquely depressing. 

 

I said both were wastelands but that I like Phoenix more.

[Unocal]

5 hours ago, Sport said:

Sunrise is Glendale East and I heard they didn't sell out game 6 against the Bruins. Don't know how true that is, but it looked like half the crowd was Boston fans. Wouldn't shed a tear if the NHL left south Florida. 

 

And yet after the 3-1 comeback, you know Bettman is going to be crowing thatthe NHL belongs in South Florida

[OnWis97]

6 hours ago, Sport said:

 

 

 

Sunrise is Glendale East and I heard they didn't sell out game 6 against the Bruins. Don't know how true that is, but it looked like half the crowd was Boston fans. Wouldn't shed a tear if the NHL left south Florida. 

Then after that Boston series, they're definitely skating on the frozen blood of non-believers. 

[B-Rich]

On 4/28/2023 at 6:30 PM, the admiral said:

I have contempt for the New South as an entire concept and way of life before we even bring hockey into it. It's built on subsidized infrastructure and hostility to organized labor. If Tennessee had to play by the same rules as northern states, Nashville would still be a one-note backwater.

 

On 4/30/2023 at 2:19 PM, JerseyJimmy said:

you put it better than I possibly could have without getting banhammered. I really don't think we should be awarding these people with sports franchises just because of how housebroken their local/state governments are.

 

Suck it,  yankee scum. 

[habsfan1]

Someone made the argument to me here that Quebec isn't a good choice for relocating the Coyotes because the east and west would be unbalanced and it would negatively affect the alignment, if a team on the eastern edge has to play in the West.

 

But if the League is planning on expanding to Atlanta, despite 2 failed attempts, conferences won't be even, unless Houston gets a team too.

 

It doesn't inspire confidence to repeat past failures. Quebec City has one little setback and the Nordiques were gone instantly. Arizona has setbacks for decades and Bettman begs voters to approve yet another new building.

[who do you think]

1 hour ago, habsfan1 said:

Someone made the argument to me here that Quebec isn't a good choice for relocating the Coyotes because the east and west would be unbalanced and it would negatively affect the alignment, if a team on the eastern edge has to play in the West.

 

And it's the single worst recurring argument against Quebec City in this whole thread (yeah, I've read the whole thing). Worse than the population argument, worse than the "ew French no one will want to play there" argument. Figure it out. Rejecting clearly interested markets that are well within your radius of normal NHL business because you're worried about too many teams being based in the Eastern Time Zone is a level of stupid that could melt grass.

[kiwi_canadian]

Had a conversation with a guy after rugby practice with a few beverages the other night and he seems to think that Quebec will never get a team because of the high taxes we pay in Canada. When you have places like Nevada who don't have a luxury tax or Florida who has a flat rate for taxes, why would they come to Canada? I see his point, but at the end of the day, if they can bring in more revenue, then I don't think it really matters. I also think the only way Quebec is going to get a team again is expansion (and only if they can add another team in the west) or relocation of a struggling Eastern Conference and Atlantic Division team (I think in this scenario, the Panthers would fit the bill the best, but even that's a long shot).

[spartacat_12]

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.