NHL Board of Governors to approve opening of expansion process; Atlanta and Houston believed to be leading candidates

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Viqsi

"that chick from Ohio"
Oct 5, 2007
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If you had said 6, 12 or 24 or 30 sure.

It’s very hard to believe anyone thought 21 was the perfect number to stop at.
7 Canadian teams in seven major cities (today's seven but with QC instead of Ottawa), and 14 teams - exactly double that - in the US. "Perfect proportion."
 
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SUX2BU

User of an ad-infested forum
Feb 6, 2018
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D6C22DE592194B58FB62E2770842D556649ABAE5
 

Pinkfloyd

Registered User
Oct 29, 2006
71,155
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Folsom
I want more stars, not another 2 teams worth of AHL talent brought into the NHL. If you like a lower overall talent level, that's fine.
Expansion only offers the possibility of more stars being created. We just brought in two teams into the league. They were not AHL caliber teams. The overall talent level cannot be shown to have been lowered in the previous expansions. You're running off of unwarranted assumptions.
 

895

Registered User
Jun 15, 2007
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7 Canadian teams in seven major cities (today's seven but with QC instead of Ottawa), and 14 teams - exactly double that - in the US. "Perfect proportion."
Was the NHL not divided into two conferences. and 4 divisions with 5 teams, 5 teams, 5 teams and 6 teams?

People thought this was ideal?
 

Viqsi

"that chick from Ohio"
Oct 5, 2007
55,334
34,566
40N 83W (approx)
Was the NHL not divided into two conferences. and 4 divisions with 5 teams, 5 teams, 5 teams and 6 teams?

People thought this was ideal?
Yes, it was so divided. And the fact that it's so hard to believe is in fact why the example was brought up. I'm not sure if anyone actually truly thought that particular arrangement was ideal per se but I have seen the claim made before.

I imagine they'd have made "and this is arguably EVEN BETTER" type claims for 24 teams when Ottawa was added 'cause it was still 2:1 US:CA, but that lasted for all of one year.
 

ohcomeonref

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Oct 18, 2014
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Expansion only offers the possibility of more stars being created. We just brought in two teams into the league. They were not AHL caliber teams. The overall talent level cannot be shown to have been lowered in the previous expansions. You're running off of unwarranted assumptions.

Honestly I never really considered that 2 more teams would naturally develop more stars as well. I was looking at it in a pretty one-dimensional way, my bad. Carry on homie.

Edit: the Ducks got screwed in the last expansion draft too, but that was largely managements fault.
 

dj4aces

An Intricate Piece of Infinity
Dec 17, 2007
6,430
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Duluth, GA
If NHL hockey in Atlanta didn't work the first two times, why would it now?

That's not a rhetorical question. I'm genuinely curious.
Well...

1. Better ownership.
The NHL in Atlanta has been plagued with ownership issues of one sort or another since the 1970s. Real estate developer Tom Cousins went broke when the real estate market in the city collapsed, and he had to sell. Ted Turner bought the Hawks and Omni, but not the Flames because he didn't think the sport was good for TV, so the team was sold to the highest bidder.

The Thrashers ownership saga has been covered ad nauseam on these boards, but you can find a lot of those details in the Atlanta thread on the business board.

In terms of Atlanta 3.0, both named groups appear to be deeply passionate and dedicated to making hockey work here.

2. Location.
Downtown is a place no one wants to go. Period. Mic drop. But that's also not the end of the story. In many markets, a team might be located downtown because there are fans in all corners of a metro area who might wish to attend games. But that's not necessarily true for hockey in Atlanta. Hockey fans have, for the longest time, primarily exist north of the city. It's been this way for a good while now. The two known Atlanta groups have arena proposals north of town.


These are the biggest two reasons. I'm sure others have more to add.
 
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Moist ReadOnly

Registered User
Jun 7, 2024
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If NHL hockey in Atlanta didn't work the first two times, why would it now?

That's not a rhetorical question. I'm genuinely curious.
Its well understood that Atlanta, both times, never stood a chance; only thing keeping them there was winning a Cup

Once due to ownership and once due to the old relocation habits of professional sports
 

LPHabsFan

Registered User
Jul 14, 2003
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Good situations attract good owners. If previous situations attracted bad owners, it's because the situation was bad. As much as we want to blame ASG, and rightfully so, if the underlying situation involving the city of Atlanta as a hockey market was good, an owner would have stepped in and scooped them up for pennies on the dollar even if it meant needing an arena since ASG wasn't going to let them play out of their arena (the name is escaping me).

You're also dealing with a lot of negative history with that city and hockey so that's another hurdle to overcome.

Building in the suburbs has worked out amazingly for sports franchises in the past so I'm sure it's going to work out this time. And while right now the fans might be where they're looking to build it, that may not be the case 5, 10, 15 years from now. Because when you're building where your fans are, you're less likely to attract those that might otherwise be interested if it were not for the location. That's ultimately why a central location was the norm for so many years.

And also, similarly to Arizona, this seems more like a property deal than a true desire to bring the NHL back and watch it succeed despite all the positive things the people involved have said.

When you're dealing with these massive real estate developments, events can make things change real quickly and put a stop to it pretty easily (Westgate).
 

AtlantaWhaler

Thrash/Preds/Sabres
Jul 3, 2009
20,086
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Good situations attract good owners. If previous situations attracted bad owners, it's because the situation was bad. As much as we want to blame ASG, and rightfully so, if the underlying situation involving the city of Atlanta as a hockey market was good, an owner would have stepped in and scooped them up for pennies on the dollar even if it meant needing an arena since ASG wasn't going to let them play out of their arena (the name is escaping me).

You're also dealing with a lot of negative history with that city and hockey so that's another hurdle to overcome.

Building in the suburbs has worked out amazingly for sports franchises in the past so I'm sure it's going to work out this time. And while right now the fans might be where they're looking to build it, that may not be the case 5, 10, 15 years from now. Because when you're building where your fans are, you're less likely to attract those that might otherwise be interested if it were not for the location. That's ultimately why a central location was the norm for so many years.

And also, similarly to Arizona, this seems more like a property deal than a true desire to bring the NHL back and watch it succeed despite all the positive things the people involved have said.

When you're dealing with these massive real estate developments, events can make things change real quickly and put a stop to it pretty easily (Westgate).
Nobody wanted to buy the team because they had no place to play.

Well, the one similar mass development in burbs here in Atlanta is the Battery where the Braves play. So far, in the 6 years it's been around, it's printed money and the team has been top-5 in attendance.
 

dj4aces

An Intricate Piece of Infinity
Dec 17, 2007
6,430
1,507
Duluth, GA
Good situations attract good owners. If previous situations attracted bad owners, it's because the situation was bad. As much as we want to blame ASG, and rightfully so, if the underlying situation involving the city of Atlanta as a hockey market was good, an owner would have stepped in and scooped them up for pennies on the dollar even if it meant needing an arena since ASG wasn't going to let them play out of their arena (the name is escaping me).

The Atlanta Spirit group featured one of Turner's sons as a part-owner, which had a thing or two to do with why Turner Broadcasting broke a verbal agreement they had in place with David McDavid to sell the Thrashers, Hawks, and Philips Arena to him, Now, prior to that agreement, Atlanta Spirit didn't want the Thrashers, but when it was announced that there was an agreement in place, they convinced Turner Broadcasting to sell to them instead by offering to take the Thrashers.

Once the purchase was complete, Atlanta Spirit *immediately* began trying to sell the Thrashers for relocation. A trade the Hawks made, however, put a damper on that as the majority owner (Steve Belkin) disagreed with it and walked away, filing a lawsuit for control of the assets on his way out. As the ownership of the Thrashers was then in question at that point, no one had any rights to sell it to anyone else.

Once the almost six year legal battle came to an end though, the race was on to sell. There were a lot of local suitors lining up to take a crack at buying the team, but it all fell apart when they got to the whole "negotiating a lease" part. Why, you might ask? Because they were predatory, leases that no one in their right mind would pay, that even if an ownership group was desperate to keep the team in town and were willing to legitimately *pay anything* to do so, they still wouldn't pay the lease. And Atlanta Spirit could do it too, because Philips was the only NHL rink in town. Yeah, there's the building here in Duluth, but that's a whole other can of worms, and the league probably wouldn't have allowed it to be used until a new building was constructed.

So no... at least in terms of Atlanta, your paragraph is empirically false. Furthermore, I know you've seen this story before, so you should know better.
 

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