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.

 

[sabremike]

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.

The biggest impediment the NHL had (and continues to have) compared to baseball, football and basketball is that those sports are far easier to play for very obvious reasons than hockey. The idea that putting teams in Houston or Miami in the 70's would've made the NHL as popular strikes me as far fetched. And what's to say that those franchises wouldn't have been sunk by incompetent ownership in the way Atlanta (twice) , Colorado and Oakland were (or the recently departed Coyotes for that matter)? Having 6 teams until the late 60's was definitely a foolish idea and the backwards thinking of the league in many ways absolutely hurt it.

 

[CandyCanes]

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.

And the NHL barely acknowledges him & the Jets. Definitely deserves to be in the Hart conversation.

 

[MinJaBen]

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.

These arguments are why college football is a mess now. All market based, no passion involved in the decisions of a product that demands passion from the consumer. I don’t think you build a successful sports league by “correctly” spacing the teams in the country to align with the maximum potential viewers, I think success comes from putting teams where they are wanted by passionate fans and owners with resolve to make it work.

 

[chaz4hockey]

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.

FWIW: 50 years ago some of the southern markets you mentioned were not ready for hockey (nor any sport outside of football either). The populace move to the South (including a whole bunch of Northerners) is a very recent phenomenon/shift that has allowed those cities (including the Triangle) to be more viable.

Btw: re Islander comment: “they’ve never added much of anything to the league”. Au contraire. The greatest hockey team of my adult lifetime (best ever in my opinion) played there and replaced the Canadians as the team to beat for 19 straight playoff series from ‘80-‘84 while contenders several years before and after.

Re: Buffalo-saw a Triangle news article just the other day that said Buffalo was the top real estate market in 2024.

It always comes down to a combo of market plus ownership.

 

[HisIceness]

The thing that gets me is that it's nuts that Houston still doesn't have a franchise. I mean for f***s sake Salt Lake City got one before they did. And yes I know the Jazz/HC owner is the same guy but good lord Houston the city alone has more population than SLC as a metro. And SLC is far and away the smallest NBA/NHL market out there and it's not close.

I suppose had the Devils moved to Nashville in 1995, perhaps Houston gets the eventual Nashville bid in 1997. But, I thought for sure that the Coyotes would get moved there, and to be honest I still think they should have. But the Utah guy I guess played fair with the league whereas Fertitta wasn't.

 

[sabremike]

The thing that gets me is that it's nuts that Houston still doesn't have a franchise. I mean for f***s sake Salt Lake City got one before they did. And yes I know the Jazz/HC owner is the same guy but good lord Houston the city alone has more population than SLC as a metro. And SLC is far and away the smallest NBA/NHL market out there and it's not close.

I suppose had the Devils moved to Nashville in 1995, perhaps Houston gets the eventual Nashville bid in 1997. But, I thought for sure that the Coyotes would get moved there, and to be honest I still think they should have. But the Utah guy I guess played fair with the league whereas Fertitta wasn't.

Why would they do that instead of have the Fertittas pay north of a billion dollars in a few years for the expansion team?

(Will note the fact expansion has been entirely motivated by bringing in money for the existing owners and less by doing things in the long term interest of the league is a very fair criticism).

 

[sabremike]

 

[HisIceness]

Why would they do that instead of have the Fertittas pay north of a billion dollars in a few years for the expansion team?

(Will note the fact expansion has been entirely motivated by bringing in money for the existing owners and less by doing things in the long term interest of the league is a very fair criticism).

But hasn't Fertitta said he doesn't want to pay the expansion fees? IIRC that's a reason why Seattle got franchise #32. Now why he didn't pursue the Coyotes more than Utah did I don't know.

 

[Justicebork]

Awkward Yzerman wet dream from October of this year or actual game results from today?

 

[tarheelhockey]

The biggest impediment the NHL had (and continues to have) compared to baseball, football and basketball is that those sports are far easier to play for very obvious reasons than hockey. The idea that putting teams in Houston or Miami in the 70's would've made the NHL as popular strikes me as far fetched. And what's to say that those franchises wouldn't have been sunk by incompetent ownership in the way Atlanta (twice) , Colorado and Oakland were (or the recently departed Coyotes for that matter)? Having 6 teams until the late 60's was definitely a foolish idea and the backwards thinking of the league in many ways absolutely hurt it.

I don’t really think sports participation has much to do with it. It’s a “nice to have” but not an essential ingredient. How many people play football? How many people race cars? For that matter how many people even play baseball anymore? But millions and millions pay to watch, because the spectacle is entertaining in its own right.

I mean, when you come down to it Chicago was no hockey town and still really isn’t one compared to a Boston or Buffalo. The Hawks drew flies for 30 years, until a generation grew up watching Bobby Hull. No different than Miami being moribund until the past few years, and suddenly you’ve got a generation of lifelong fans in the making. It works that way all over the continent. The NHL had to learn the hard way that you can’t just wait for “hockey markets” to spontaneously generate, they have to be built with time. By the 70s, every decent sized town on the continent had an ice rink of some sort. If the game had expanded during the 50s, the players would’ve been there. That was the folly of the Original Six era — sitting on their hands for 30 years, when every other sport was expanding its footprint. They’ve never really recovered that ground and probably never will.

These arguments are why college football is a mess now. All market based, no passion involved in the decisions of a product that demands passion from the consumer. I don’t think you build a successful sports league by “correctly” spacing the teams in the country to align with the maximum potential viewers, I think success comes from putting teams where they are wanted by passionate fans and owners with resolve to make it work.

College football is a mess because they spent 50 years pretending to be amateur club sports while actually being professional sports, and the bubble popped all at once.

The second half of that post is a concise argument for the Carolina Hurricanes to never have existed at all. Passionate fans don’t just spontaneously generate. They need to have a thing to be passionate about. That’s as true of ASU football as it is of Carolina hockey.

FWIW: 50 years ago some of the southern markets you mentioned were not ready for hockey (nor any sport outside of football either). The populace move to the South (including a whole bunch of Northerners) is a very recent phenomenon/shift that has allowed those cities (including the Triangle) to be more viable.

Btw: re Islander comment: “they’ve never added much of anything to the league”. Au contraire. The greatest hockey team of my adult lifetime (best ever in my opinion) played there and replaced the Canadians as the team to beat for 19 straight playoff series from ‘80-‘84 while contenders several years before and after.

Re: Buffalo-saw a Triangle news article just the other day that said Buffalo was the top real estate market in 2024.

It always comes down to a combo of market plus ownership.

So what explains the long term success of markets like St Louis and Los Angeles? They’re being carried by a huge influx of hockey-playing northerners? Not really. They were just solid mid-range markets sitting team-less 20 years longer than they should have, and proved themselves once given the opportunity.

Re: Islanders, it’s a zero sum game. Of all organizations to have a 4-Cup dynasty, the league gained the least by having it be the Islanders. Yes it’s the NYC market but the vast majority of NYC hated that era. That dynasty could have been the reason that the Minnesota North Stars would be a Boston-level cornerstone of the league in 2025, or that hockey became all the rage in California in the 80s, or that there’s a multiplier on the number of passionate Leafs fans. Instead it went to a little-sister franchise that doesn’t move the needle in the slightest in the scheme of things. Some would-have-been Rangers fans became depressed Islanders fans. So what?

Re: Buffalo housing market, I saw the same article. It’s because nobody is building houses in Buffalo, so demand is now far outpacing supply. Better than where they’ve been in recent decades, but still kind of a backhanded distinction.

I do agree that ownership is the key to everything. Like I said before — the NHL had a chance in the 1950s to become a league that attracted smart, well-capitalized investors. Instead they chose to be insular, bordering on inbred, in order to keep the money in the hands of a few families. That’s why they were eventually forced to expand in a panic, making it a league of two-bit snake oil salesman owners who didn’t have the money or business sense to run a modern pro sports franchise. We’re barely out of the era that it made sense for NHL owners to go to jail. That’s what happens when the 100 best owners are all comfortably situated in other leagues, leaving only the wannabes and hucksters buying NHL teams.

 

[chaz4hockey]

I don’t really think sports participation has much to do with it. It’s a “nice to have” but not an essential ingredient. How many people play football? How many people race cars? For that matter how many people even play baseball anymore? But millions and millions pay to watch, because the spectacle is entertaining in its own right.

I mean, when you come down to it Chicago was no hockey town and still really isn’t one compared to a Boston or Buffalo. The Hawks drew flies for 30 years, until a generation grew up watching Bobby Hull. No different than Miami being moribund until the past few years, and suddenly you’ve got a generation of lifelong fans in the making. It works that way all over the continent. The NHL had to learn the hard way that you can’t just wait for “hockey markets” to spontaneously generate, they have to be built with time. By the 70s, every decent sized town on the continent had an ice rink of some sort. If the game had expanded during the 50s, the players would’ve been there. That was the folly of the Original Six era — sitting on their hands for 30 years, when every other sport was expanding its footprint. They’ve never really recovered that ground and probably never will.



College football is a mess because they spent 50 years pretending to be amateur club sports while actually being professional sports, and the bubble popped all at once.

The second half of that post is a concise argument for the Carolina Hurricanes to never have existed at all. Passionate fans don’t just spontaneously generate. They need to have a thing to be passionate about. That’s as true of ASU football as it is of Carolina hockey.



So what explains the long term success of markets like St Louis and Los Angeles? They’re being carried by a huge influx of hockey-playing northerners? Not really. They were just solid mid-range markets sitting team-less 20 years longer than they should have, and proved themselves once given the opportunity.

Re: Islanders, it’s a zero sum game. Of all organizations to have a 4-Cup dynasty, the league gained the least by having it be the Islanders. Yes it’s the NYC market but the vast majority of NYC hated that era. That dynasty could have been the reason that the Minnesota North Stars would be a Boston-level cornerstone of the league in 2025, or that hockey became all the rage in California in the 80s, or that there’s a multiplier on the number of passionate Leafs fans. Instead it went to a little-sister franchise that doesn’t move the needle in the slightest in the scheme of things. Some would-have-been Rangers fans became depressed Islanders fans. So what?

Re: Buffalo housing market, I saw the same article. It’s because nobody is building houses in Buffalo, so demand is now far outpacing supply. Better than where they’ve been in recent decades, but still kind of a backhanded distinction.

I do agree that ownership is the key to everything. Like I said before — the NHL had a chance in the 1950s to become a league that attracted smart, well-capitalized investors. Instead they chose to be insular, bordering on inbred, in order to keep the money in the hands of a few families. That’s why they were eventually forced to expand in a panic, making it a league of two-bit snake oil salesman owners who didn’t have the money or business sense to run a modern pro sports franchise. We’re barely out of the era that it made sense for NHL owners to go to jail. That’s what happens when the 100 best owners are all comfortably situated in other leagues, leaving only the wannabes and hucksters buying NHL teams.

Well, I don’t agree with much of your well written post. I’ll leave it at that.

 

[Finlandia WOAT]

We’re barely out of the era that it made sense for NHL owners to go to jail

The Tampa Bay Lightning becoming a Japanese Yakuza money laundering front was worth it tbh