Around the League 46: Sharks Finally Yank A Win Out Of Their Cloaca

[chaz4hockey]

Gibson tonight in Philly so we probably see Dostal.....Anaheim GM probably didn't want to give us a good look at Gibson.

 

[HisIceness]

It would seem Cutter Gauthier isn't a popular man amongst the Philadelphia populace

 

[Blueline Bomber]

Working the MTL game tonight. Hudson actually looks like the real deal. I just assumed it was another overhyped prospect because Canadian team, but he's extremely slippery for a defenseman.

 

[hblueridgegal]

That’s what the commercials say anyway

Nicely done!

 

[hblueridgegal]

High scoring AND close games is the ideal for the NHL, and harder to accomplish than it sounds. Generally, higher scoring usually results from a bigger spread between the contenders and the cellar dwellers (who get beaten up on, which leads to higher scoring) and in turn means a lot of garbage time stats from meaningless goals. The 1940s and 1980s involved a lot of 8-4 type games.

I’m not sure there has been a period in the league where scoring went way up but the results stayed tight. This is golden-era stuff.

All true but their misfire appears to be choosing the best teams to showcase. Their reliance on Chicago has really tanked the broadcast numbers. Looks like they went in a bit too much on Bedard at this juncture.

 

[tarheelhockey]

All true but their misfire appears to be choosing the best teams to showcase. Their reliance on Chicago has really tanked the broadcast numbers. Looks like they went in a bit too much on Bedard at this juncture.

Chicago being bad is a disaster for the league from a national ratings standpoint. They’re the only central time zone team that really genuinely has clout in the mainstream, so they’re the backbone of national broadcast schedules. I’m sure the league is trying to platform Bedard to become a household name leading a Cup contender a few years from now — but they damned sure better hope that actually happens, otherwise they’ll have tanked a bunch of broadcasts like the WC for nothing.

It’s really a problem tracing back decades from the way they fed expansion teams to the wolves and waited until the 90s to even dip their toes into the Sunbelt. The Minnesota North Stars should be a 60 year old legacy-heavy franchise, like the Minnesota Vikings. Dallas’ hockey team should carry the same kind of clout as the Mavericks or Rangers. The Atlanta Flames should have a national brand from decades as part of the Turner broadcast empire, like the Braves. Instead the Wild are a crap brand and Dallas is a mid hockey market even when things are going well, and I won’t even comment on how badly Atlanta has been botched. What does the NHL get out of that exchange? Five 1970s Cups for Montreal and teams in Calgary and Buffalo.

For a long time it’s been a league run by men who weren’t quite rich enough, and not quite smart enough. Even today we see the same thought process repeating itself.

 

[Blueline Bomber]

In a season with questionable goaltending around the league, Connor Hellebuyck is just running away with the Vezina. His 6th shutout tonight, giving him as many shutouts as he has losses on the year.

And honestly, he might need to start being in Hart conversation.

 

[sabremike]

Chicago being bad is a disaster for the league from a national ratings standpoint. They’re the only central time zone team that really genuinely has clout in the mainstream, so they’re the backbone of national broadcast schedules. I’m sure the league is trying to platform Bedard to become a household name leading a Cup contender a few years from now — but they damned sure better hope that actually happens, otherwise they’ll have tanked a bunch of broadcasts like the WC for nothing.

It’s really a problem tracing back decades from the way they fed expansion teams to the wolves and waited until the 90s to even dip their toes into the Sunbelt. The Minnesota North Stars should be a 60 year old legacy-heavy franchise, like the Minnesota Vikings. Dallas’ hockey team should carry the same kind of clout as the Mavericks or Rangers. The Atlanta Flames should have a national brand from decades as part of the Turner broadcast empire, like the Braves. Instead the Wild are a crap brand and Dallas is a mid hockey market even when things are going well, and I won’t even comment on how badly Atlanta has been botched. What does the NHL get out of that exchange? Five 1970s Cups for Montreal and teams in Calgary and Buffalo.

For a long time it’s been a league run by men who weren’t quite rich enough, and not quite smart enough. Even today we see the same thought process repeating itself.

What in the heck does Buffalo have to do with any of this? Are you seriously arguing Buffalo wasn't worthy of getting a team in 1970 or doesn't deserve one? How is the existence of the Sabres in any way connected with the league's failures in the Sun Belt?

 

[tarheelhockey]

What in the heck does Buffalo have to do with any of this? Are you seriously arguing Buffalo wasn't worthy of getting a team in 1970 or doesn't deserve one? How is the existence of the Sabres in any way connected with the league's failures in the Sun Belt?

Taking the timeline of the league’s expansion for granted* it would simply have been strategically smarter to put a team in, say, Houston or Dallas or Miami than Buffalo.

As it played out in reality, the 1967 expansion made sense —eastern teams in Philly and Pittsburgh, central teams in Minneapolis and StL, western teams in LA and San Francisco. Okay, that all makes sense.

The rest of the 70s was poorly conceived and largely driven by reactions to the WHA. Vancouver and Atlanta, sure. Kansas City made time-zone sense but why did there need to be two teams in Missouri? And then that franchise ends up in NJ as a market-splitter which simply peeled off Rangers and Flyers fans without adding anything. Meanwhile the Islanders were just a pawn to prevent a WHA team landing in Nassau; nearly the entire history of that franchise has been a disaster and they’ve never added much of anything to the league. And then there’s Washington, which made sense as an expansion market except that they did everything possible to kill the market with an unwatchable product.

Then there’s the WHA transfer, where they once again had Houston and Indianapolis staring them in the face and decided instead to go with Edmonton, Hartford, QC and Winnipeg. And while I realize they couldn’t just “make” owners move their teams, it would have been the perfect time to insist on moving those teams to markets like Dallas, Houston, Miami. Instead they take on these largely non-viable markets and end up with relocations left and right.

And then there’s Buffalo. I didn’t mean that Buffalo doesn’t “deserve” a team, sincerely, but at the same time what does it add to the league? In an alternate universe where the Sabres never exist, Buffalo is still a hockey town and that region is still covered by the overlap of multiple Original Six teams. There’s no particular compelling reason why that area needed a team. I could’ve said the same for the Islanders or Devils. Hell, I could say the same for the Canes. It would have been much smarter to take the Houston WHA franchise instead of Hartford. Raleigh doesn’t add anything in particular compared to a top 10 market.

It was just a dumb, haphazard approach to expansion. An NHL that’s run with the same mindset as MLB and the NFL would have looked very different, and run 30-50 years ahead of the one we’re experiencing now.

* which we shouldn’t take for granted, because the choice to hold off on expansion till 1967 was dumbfoundingly stupid and perhaps the singular reason the NHL fell permanently behind the NFL and NBA in popularity. Simply expanding in step with the league’s growing popularity in the 1950s would have put the entire operation on a different trajectory… but no, it was very important to have 1/3rd as much footprint at the other leagues.