NHL Anti-Thread: Bad Business Decision Aggregator

[throwuascenario]

5 hours ago, The_Admiral said:

 

I have been very critical of Salt Lake City's viability and will continue to be, but it's not a worse market than Phoenix at this moment. Phoenix does not have an NHL-sized arena that's willing to host a team and there is no willingness among taxpayers or governments to build another one. That alone makes it worse. They couldn't have continued on in a 4,000-seater; they never should have been allowed to in the first place. Just like the Thrashers, as soon as they got evicted from Glendale, that should have been it. It's a unique circumstance that supersedes raw population, income level, the fact that hockey and Mormonism are both drains on time and money and it doesn't seem anyone can do both at once, whatever. There's no place to play in Phoenix, which makes it the worst major market.

 

I agree with you that Quebec City has Salt Lake City beat on arena suitability, fan interest, and much more, but the league is unwilling to make that move. I'm not sold on Kansas City or Omaha, personally, but let's not act like this is a downgrade. It's the slightest of upgrades.

 

Kansas City and Omaha are literally just Salt Lake City but without a team to compete with in the same season. And the not having a place to play in Phoenix problem could've easily been fixed by a new owner that the Suns were willing to work with or by actually building a new arena. To be clear, I still don't think this solution would've been good, but better than Utah.

 

5 hours ago, BBTV said:

 

It's not "passing over" if there's nobody in place with the money, arena, and desire to take the team from Phoenix.  SLC had all three.  Therefore it was the best option - and really, the only option.

 

 

If the NHL had bought the team and took 1-2 seasons to find the right buyer, they could've. Instead, they chose to rush it.

 

4 hours ago, The_Admiral said:

Yeah, the numbers on greater Salt Lake City get kind of murky, but if you count the entire population corridor, it's about the same population as greater Pittsburgh. (I think the SLC television market, thanks to repeaters, is just the entire state of Utah plus some bordering counties.) The problem is that the geography of that population doesn't always lend itself to regularly descending upon a centralized location. It's the same problem South Florida has, being 90 miles long and 5 miles wide.

 

And Pittsburgh doesn't have two teams competing in the same season either. And I haven't heard anyone advocate for an NBA team there.

 

4 hours ago, spartacat_12 said:

 

When you include the surrounding area, SLC is the 22nd largest in the country. Bigger than Pittsburgh, Columbus, Raleigh-Durham, Vegas, Nashville, and Buffalo. It's growing quickly, and is also a winter sports hub. 

 

The league has failed in places like Phoenix & Atlanta already, so why would Houston be an automatic success? QC, Omaha, KC, etc. don't have any billionaires in their corner fighting to get a team, which is obviously a pre-requisite.

 

 

You've literally explained the reasons why they had to rush it. Mullett Arena was barely a sustainable option when they actually had a plan in place for a proper Tempe arena, and the writing was on the wall once that vote failed. If you opened up some sort of expansion process that would take at least a year or two of bidding, meaning they'd still be suiting up in a college rink while that got sorted out.

 

It was also a complex situation that needed to be handled in a way that prevented Meruelo from having any grounds to sue the league. Letting prospective owners bid on a team that the current owner hasn't put up for sale is an easy way to end up in court.

 

 

If Smith had unilaterally decided on a team name right away (like with the Hurricanes & Jets) I'm sure they could've had something ready to go, but he was shell shocked from the Jazz rebrand and decided to give fans the chance. People got over the PWHL teams not having names/logos pretty quick, I'm sure the same will happen with Utah.

 

Metro population is counting the surrounding areas and it's smaller than all of those. Plus, none of those cities have / could support two winter teams either. Denver is the smallest that does and is the bar for whether it can possibly work.

 

Houston wouldn't be an automatic success, but at least it wouldn't be an automatic failure like SLC. KC and Omaha didn't have a chance to get a group together because the team was never on the market. If it was, they likely could have.

 

What I'm saying is that they could've used the two seasons they already played there. It was beyond obvious at that point that Arizona was not going to work out. The league should've bought the team and ran it for 1-2 seasons while they took their time to find the right buyer in the right city.

 

One person coming up with a name is so much better than the group think that gave us Commanders and Kraken. All of the finalists that they've come out with are beyond terrible.

[The_Admiral]

9 minutes ago, throwuascenario said:

If the NHL had bought the team and took 1-2 seasons to find the right buyer, they could've. Instead, they chose to rush it.

 

They tried that 15 years ago! They took four seasons and still couldn't! Nothing about the failure of this organization was rushed!

[McCall]

1 hour ago, throwuascenario said:

And Pittsburgh doesn't have two teams competing in the same season either. And I haven't heard anyone advocate for an NBA team there.

Steelers-Penguins in the fall, Penguins-Pirates in the spring and even Pirates-Steelers in September.

 

You're verging on Unocal levels of unintelligible ranting. Might want to reel it in before you go over the edge. Just a friendly word of advice.

[BBTV]

1 hour ago, throwuascenario said:

If the NHL had bought the team and took 1-2 seasons to find the right buyer, they could've. Instead, they chose to rush it.

 

If you think they rushed this, you haven't been following.  They've been trying to figure out a solution to the Phoenix problem for more than a decade and other than that brief period of time when Quebecor was pushing hard for a return to QC, nobody has stepped up in even the least little bit.

 

It could be argued that they should have moved to Vegas or Seattle while under league ownership, but even while operating at a loss, it was still more valuable to collect the expansion fees and let the Coyotes wither away.

 

There was no other option, and it was not rushed.

[The_Admiral]

Oh and Kansas City doesn't really want an anchor tenant for its arena unless it's on terms that are highly favorable to the city, which effectively prevents the parasitic "NHL team as loss leader for capturing revenue from everything else" business model, without which markets from Chicago and Boston to Buffalo and Winnipeg could not survive. Atlanta cracked the code when they were like "why don't we just do all that but not have the team."

 

2 hours ago, BBTV said:

It could be argued that they should have moved to Vegas or Seattle while under league ownership, but even while operating at a loss, it was still more valuable to collect the expansion fees and let the Coyotes wither away.

The moving trucks were ready for KeyArena if the Coyotes didn't get that last tranche of taxpayer money in 2013. KeyArena, however, wasn't ready for the Coyotes, and trying to make an NHL arena out of it pre-renovations would have been wackier than whatever the Delta Center is gonna be like this fall.

[Sport]

 

Pre-reno Key Arena's hockey setup made Barclay's and America West's hockey setups look elegant.

 

Not sure what they would've done if the Coyotes had moved there. Play a season in Kent where the Tbirds play or in the Silvertips building in Everett? Both were larger capacity than the Mullett. Not having a tenant allowed them the multiple years it took to turn Key Arena into a modern facility (they weren't allowed to demo the roof because it's on the historical registry). 

[OnWis97]

That looks like a still from Youngblood. Carl Racki is about to beat up some poor sucker that just got called up from Medicine Hat.

[gosioux76]

16 hours ago, throwuascenario said:

Houston wouldn't be an automatic success, but at least it wouldn't be an automatic failure like SLC. KC and Omaha didn't have a chance to get a group together because the team was never on the market. If it was, they likely could have.

 

What I'm saying is that they could've used the two seasons they already played there. It was beyond obvious at that point that Arizona was not going to work out. The league should've bought the team and ran it for 1-2 seasons while they took their time to find the right buyer in the right city.

 

 

I might be wrong here, but I've never really had the sense that the league was actively looking for owners in other cities that would move the team. If they were, they'd have cut ties with Phoenix years ago. So this was never a situation where the NHL was shopping for market so much as it was the league facilitating a private sale to a willing buyer with a deal they couldn't pass up. 

 

Like with any deal in any industry, a transaction often comes down to the owner and who it is you want to do business with. I wouldn't be surprised if Ryan Smith was the kind of young, creative and ambitious owner that the league wants in its ownership club. 

 

More than that, I don't think market size really matters as much as it used to, nor does seasonality, especially when you're looking at a growing market that isn't oversaturated with sports brands.  I've always believed that the NHL should embrace the NBA strategy of the 70s and 80s by expanding into smaller growth markets that would embrace the product rather than get lost in all of the competitive noise.  Winnipeg is the perfect NHL city in this respect, as is Quebec City. With only the NBA (I'm excluding MLS for the sake of this argument), the NHL enters a market with a lot of capacity to embrace a second team and grow.

 

A market like that is more likely to generate an enthusiastic fan base even if the team underperforms. 

 

Winnipeg's last few years show that support can still fade in a small market, but it still generated consistently strong crowds in its first 10 years with underperforming teams. 

 

Compare that to the Florida Panthers. Five years ago, they were second-to-last in average NHL attendance, averaging just over 13,000 a game.  This season, with a Stanley Cup-winning team, they ranked No. 9, but had the highest year-over-year increase of any team in the NHL at more than 11%. They averaged 18,600 a game.  

 

They needed a winning team to fight through the noise of a crowded market.  That never happened in Atlanta. The only seasons in which the Thrashers surpassed 16,000 fans a game was its inaugural year and the only year it made the playoffs, 2006-07.

 

It would be the same thing in Houston. But I don't think you'd need a winning team to generate fan support in a smaller market without as much competition. 

[spartacat_12]

16 hours ago, throwuascenario said:

Houston wouldn't be an automatic success, but at least it wouldn't be an automatic failure like SLC. KC and Omaha didn't have a chance to get a group together because the team was never on the market. If it was, they likely could have.

 

So you looked into your crystal ball and can see the franchise automatically failing in SLC? Care to share any winning lottery numbers with the board since you can see the future?

 

At the All Star Game this year Bettman mentioned that they've heard from places like Houston, Atlanta, KC, and Cincinnati about expansion. If any of them were serious I'm sure they would have been considered for the Coyotes relocation, but obviously Smith's group was in a much better position.

 

Quote

What I'm saying is that they could've used the two seasons they already played there. It was beyond obvious at that point that Arizona was not going to work out. The league should've bought the team and ran it for 1-2 seasons while they took their time to find the right buyer in the right city.

 

It didn't become obvious until the Yotes lost the vote in Tempe for the new arena. Prior to that the league was never going to unilaterally relocate a team that was in the process of securing a new, privately-funded arena (the other owners would never want to set that precedent). 

 

The league's biggest mistake was not immediately exploring relocation last summer after the Tempe rink died. But realistically I don't think that would've changed much, other than the Utah group having a longer runway to get their branding ready.

[The_Admiral]

39 minutes ago, gosioux76 said:

I might be wrong here, but I've never really had the sense that the league was actively looking for owners in other cities that would move the team. If they were, they'd have cut ties with Phoenix years ago. So this was never a situation where the NHL was shopping for market so much as it was the league facilitating a private sale to a willing buyer with a deal they couldn't pass up.

You're correct, they were not. Every sale they explored was predicated on keeping the team in Glendale: Jerry Reinsdorf, Ice Edge guys, Matthew Hulsizer, Greg Jamison (remember that one?), Ice Edge guys again plus George Gosbee. TNSE and Quebecor both inquired, but used TNSE to deal with the Thrashers and stopped returning Quebecor's calls altogether. Same goes for the ownership groups after the league sold the team. The only time the league actively explored a relocation was when they were going to move the team to Seattle in 2013 and then look for a new owner there.

[The_Admiral]

44 minutes ago, gosioux76 said:

Winnipeg's last few years show that support can still fade in a small market, but it still generated consistently strong crowds in its first 10 years with underperforming teams. 

Well, a lot of that has to do with Canada undergoing a drop in standard of living so catastrophic that the government is giving up and saying "better just suicide your way out of this one, and we'll even do it for you." 

[Dilbert]

3 hours ago, Sport said:

 

Pre-reno Key Arena's hockey setup made Barclay's and America West's hockey setups look elegant.

 

Not sure what they would've done if the Coyotes had moved there. Play a season in Kent where the Tbirds play or in the Silvertips building in Everett? Both were larger capacity than the Mullett. Not having a tenant allowed them the multiple years it took to turn Key Arena into a modern facility (they weren't allowed to demo the roof because it's on the historical registry). 

They probably would have gone to the Tacoma Dome

[Sport]

I've asked this a few times online in a few places and nobody answers. What did capfriendly do that someone else couldn't just replicate? What proprietary thing did the Capitals buy? Aren't all NHL contracts publicly available information that another person could also compile and organize into a team-by-team salary info resource? 

[Sodboy13]

That's it. It's over. It's all over.

 

 

[SFGiants58]

If the franchise certificate survives, it needs to be housed at Ed and Lorraine Warren’s museum.

[McCall]

Skate on, dear friend. In that giant parking lot in the sky.

[OnWis97]

...where the blood of the nonbelievers never thaws...

[GDAWG]

Howler (the Coyotes Mascot) will be at the Mascot Farm forever now.  

[kolob]

3 hours ago, Sodboy13 said:

That's it. It's over. It's all over.

 

 

 

The Jets 1.0 records should be given to Jets 2.0 and either kill off the franchise records with the Coyotes or send them along with the team to Utah. 

 

However, just kill it.

[The_Admiral]

I think we'll hear about some deal with the Jets before the summer is over, the Hornets having set that precedent for better or worse. The 1996-2024 team will probably just float in statistical purgatory until they find a hedge fund guy for the Arizona Sphinx (it's in a desert, you see).