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

[LeafGrief]

Sure, keep alienating the core fan bases with expansion and chasing the new dollars. Fans of the small market teams will applaud the addition of more small markets and the owners will bathe in expansion fees, but more teams doesn’t just dilute skill level, it dilutes the entertainment product. Most of the games on the schedule are already boring, fewer rivalries is boring, and boring sucks.

What does more teams actually do for the big markets? The Leafs, Habs, and Rangers have been keeping half the league in business for decades with equalization payments, so the league pays them back by making championships harder to win, top players harder to come by, and making decisions based on the fans who hate them.

By all means, milk the good will of the big clubs. Our owners have bought into the Ponzi Scheme of expansion whole hog, but at the end of the day the league wakes up and realizes the Leafs and Habs have lost two thirds of their fan bases, all that magical franchise value they’re getting from expansion fees will disappear like the mirage it is.

Canada loves hockey, you can see how much the country followed the Oilers run, but there’s 82 regular season games and the interest is dying among my friends and family. This wave of expansion isn’t the main thing to blame, but it is the clearest indicator that the league just does not give a single hoot about the clubs that paid the bills for the last 50 years, and the reality check will be fierce when it comes.

Anyone paying a billion dollars for a place at the NHL table is a sucker.

 

[Lazlo Hollyfeld]

That's ... typically how things go. But it's fine.

I will freely admit that I'm not the smartest person in the room. However, I do tend to listen to those who are.

So, let's approach this from another direction, shall we? What makes you or some other posters think the talent pool is already too diluted to expand again? Are Bill Daly, Gary Bettman, and others wrong when they say the talent pool is fine and one could add a number of new teams and not see a problem? How so?

You guys wanna convince me that this isn't about gatekeeping and is about actual demonstrable talent dilution? Now's your chance.

Difficulty: Don't cite bad moves by bad GMs. That's already been tried, and it didn't work.

Are you using Gary Bettman and Bill Daly as a reputable source on anything?

"fans think the game has never been better" during the clutch and grab era
"There's no link between concussions and CTE"
"helmet ads are temporary"
"you'll have to drag me kicking and screaming to put ads on jerseys"
"We're not looking to expand to Seattle"
"fans love the digital ads"

Honestly I don't know how much talent dilution will be an issue but the fact that Bettman and Daly are saying it's not a problem is the biggest evidence it probably is.

My main issue is the season is already too long. With more teams there'll be ones that barely play one another. Rivalries will be watered down. Less chance for some markets to see star players.

 

[dj4aces]

Are you using Gary Bettman and Bill Daly as a reputable source on anything?

No, although I can see how you and others might have connected those dots. That was my mistake. Just because tweedle-dee and tweedle-dumbass are saying something doesn't necessarily make it true -- or false, for that matter -- but I digress.

The fact remains though, that people who actually pay attention to these things know what dilution of the talent pool would look like and what it'll take to actually dilute said pool.

So far, no one has provided anything to empirically prove said talent pool has yet to recover from Vegas and Seattle, much less that it will become worse with Atlanta and Houston. Just anecdotes, which only tells the story if the listener doesn't know better.

 

[tucker3434]

Sure, keep alienating the core fan bases with expansion and chasing the new dollars. Fans of the small market teams will applaud the addition of more small markets and the owners will bathe in expansion fees, but more teams doesn’t just dilute skill level, it dilutes the entertainment product. Most of the games on the schedule are already boring, fewer rivalries is boring, and boring sucks.

What does more teams actually do for the big markets? The Leafs, Habs, and Rangers have been keeping half the league in business for decades with equalization payments, so the league pays them back by making championships harder to win, top players harder to come by, and making decisions based on the fans who hate them.

By all means, milk the good will of the big clubs. Our owners have bought into the Ponzi Scheme of expansion whole hog, but at the end of the day the league wakes up and realizes the Leafs and Habs have lost two thirds of their fan bases, all that magical franchise value they’re getting from expansion fees will disappear like the mirage it is.

Canada loves hockey, you can see how much the country followed the Oilers run, but there’s 82 regular season games and the interest is dying among my friends and family. This wave of expansion isn’t the main thing to blame, but it is the clearest indicator that the league just does not give a single hoot about the clubs that paid the bills for the last 50 years, and the reality check will be fierce when it comes.

Anyone paying a billion dollars for a place at the NHL table is a sucker.

Expansion is the reason the Leafs are worth however many billion they were just valued in sale. How do people not understand this?

 

[VaporTrail]

Stop adding teams to the NHL...Create a second tier and implement relegation...This would also help teams from deliberately tanking.

 

[EMcx2]

Relegation is not happening in the NHL... If you think it's a possibility you really don't understand how the business of professional hockey works in the North America.

 

[dj4aces]

Stop adding teams to the NHL...Create a second tier and implement relegation...This would also help teams from deliberately tanking.

How do you convince owners to support this? How do you convince the fans of relegated teams to spend NHL dollars to see what basically amounts to an AHL-caliber team?

Genuinely curious.

 

[nerevarine]

So the nhl will have more teams than every other big professional league in north america right?

 

[Tawnos]

So the nhl will have more teams than every other big professional league in north america right?

Fitting for a league with the most viable markets of any big pro league in North America.

 

[ICanMotteBelieveIt]

Such an obvious money grab. There's enough teams already.

 

[JS19]

There’s no debate to be had, expansion dilutes.
Have a good day, no use continuing this.

People are missing the point about the whole dilution concern. Using examples of losing X star player and replacing him with league-average replacement player or worse only takes into account the impacts felt in the short term and disregards what teams do to replace the star player via the draft or free agency. And this isn't really representative of whether talent was actually diluted. In addition, I think people forget hockey is a global sport, how many times have we seen players move over from international leagues and into the NHL via the draft or free agency?

In fact, this logic can be extended to when the league moved from Original Six to 12 in the 60s and then 16, 18, to eventually 32 right now. You would have said the talent would be diluted in any of the previous years, especially when you're dealing with a mix of no minor hockey league(s), the smaller number of roster spots and skill level of players, and the direction of the league (admittedly, your best argument would have been expansion in the 70s-90s diluting talent, but when you look at those teams now, there's more talent now than there ever was, so is that really a good argument?)

At some point, people need to realize they're rehashing a stupid talking point that has no basis in reality or history.

 

[Viqsi]

People were ready to give up on Ottawa and rightfully so. Their economics and fan support was/is horrible and their owner was a POS. Had they moved, I wouldn't have been surprised and it 100% would have been justifiable. They got what Atlanta/Arizona needed; a white knight owner willing to invest hundreds of millions of dollars.

Chicago and Toronto? They had shitty owners but they were never losing 10's of millions of dollars per year. Big difference.

That was exactly my point. "Bad ownership means a bad situation" was a bullshit argument and that was what I was pointing out.

 

[Viqsi]

Sure, keep alienating the core fan bases

Well, if those teams don't continue to get fan support, that clearly means they don't deserve to stick around because they're obviously Not A Hockey Market. That's how I'm told it works, anyways.