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

[hangman005]

Really not sure why they think Atlanta would work this 3rd time around….

I think not having owners who are actively trying to kick the team out of the market would be a huge improvement, lets alone the growth in the Atlanta area.

 

[voyageur]

A billion in expansion fees and it costs another billion (minimum) to build an arena. Besides Atlanta, who's doing that?

I think Ishbia who just shelled out $4 billion for the Suns could be the saviour in Phoenix. He expressed interest, and then you heard nothing, except positive feedback from Daly, that's usually a good sign talks are ongoing.

Atlanta, somebody will pony up. It's crazy to think that the Thrashers sold for $110 million in 2011, and the franchise value now is 10X higher. I get new TV contracts, gambling revenues, and such, but it's a phenomenon of sports franchises, I think, more than anything, becoming the symbol of elite wealth.

With both markets though, the arena is the question. Sounds like Ishbia wants a newer arena than American West, or whatever it is now, and Atlanta hasn't broken ground, and probably won't until they are awarded a franchise with a timeline on the arena, like Seattle. So it's a process...

 

[Pinkfloyd]

I really like pro-hockey in North America as a concept. I also like The Edmonton Oilers' history, legacy, and current team in general (my club since early 1980s). I enjoy seeing the highlights of all the fine games and great athletes in the pro-leagues.

At the same time, I hate the NHL itself.

In its first 50 years, the NHL was run by a bunch of robber-baron scumbags, whose names now adorn major awards in the League.

Nowadays, the NHL is run by a bunch of capitalist whores who do whatever lowest-common denominator business practice will get the shortest-route to quick-money to line owners' pockets (over-expansion, gambling ads).

I do miss the NHL of 1986-87 through 1993-94, when there was an abundance of great players because the League wasn't over-expanded.

If the NHL's main priority was long-term sustainable success, then they would prioritize making the best-possible product on the ice to entertain fans. The way to do that is keep "growing" the sport gradually, while having about (for today's market) 24-26 teams (I'd actually be happier with less, but I could live with that).

So, the best possible thing to do is to reduce the number of teams, not add to it. It's quite obvious that today's NHL rosters are watered-down in terms of median talent level. Some clubs these days (San Jose last year comes to mind) are basically AHL clubs.

What the NHL is trying to do now is to re-create c.1975 when there were 32 professional hockey teams in North America in an era of almost no US players and a tiny number of Europeans. The NHL is desperate to over-expand to create a short-term financial boom so the current owners and execs can all retire with their 200 million in savings.

Like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football that Lucy holds, the NHL continues to try to put hockey franchises in Atlanta (hey, maybe third time's a charm!).

The way they drag the season out into late June now is a disgrace.

It's all such a shame, because many of the recent rule-alterations and 'tweaks' the to game, and the current crop of young and peak players, is great. The athletes continue to get better and more skilled. The market for hockey is bigger than ever.

But short-term aims for fast-profit will always fail. The one consistent aspect of the NHL throughout its history is that is has succeeded despite itself -- it has always been run by idiots.

I don't see much here to justify any of your claims. The time you reference still had bad teams like Quebec that was similar to the Sharks. What evidence is there that the rosters are watered-down compared to really any sort of time period? My opinion of this is that it's just baseless complaints because some people can't handle changing with the times. The league is fine as it relates to player talent. A lot of these sorts of complaints just lack real context.

 

[StreetHawk]

I think Ishbia who just shelled out $4 billion for the Suns could be the saviour in Phoenix. He expressed interest, and then you heard nothing, except positive feedback from Daly, that's usually a good sign talks are ongoing.

With both markets though, the arena is the question. Sounds like Ishbia wants a newer arena than American West, or whatever it is now, and Atlanta hasn't broken ground, and probably won't until they are awarded a franchise with a timeline on the arena, like Seattle. So it's a process...

PHX put in like $150/160 mill to renovate the arena just around Covid time as the Suns lease was due to expire in 2022. With the reno, the lease is now pushed up to 2037. And the arena stayed the same sightline wise. So, it's not an NHL arena that can seat over 17K.

See if that land auction that the Coyotes were looking into will end up being the new location for an arena.

 

[SkarEffect]

Some folks will use the balance of their lifetime, saying they remember only one, and in this way, QC would have only lost one team while Atlanta has lost two (I was born days after the Flames moved, so I don't remember them, therefore...). Others will use creative phrasing, saying things like "Atlanta is the only city to lose two expansion franchises". Because neither of Quebec's teams were formally considered *expansion teams*, it paints Atlanta negatively while keeping QC looking so fresh and so clean.

But no... QC has lost two. The Bulldogs and the Nordiques. Both cities have changed quite a bit since the loss of their first (and second) franchises, but both the Flames and the Bulldogs are ancient history at this point.

At the end of the day, if the Flames are fair game, so too are the Bulldogs. No amount of disingenuous arguments will change this.
Some folks will use the balance of their lifetime, saying they remember only one, and in this way, QC would have only lost one team while Atlanta has lost two (I was born days after the Flames moved, so I don't remember them, therefore...). Others will use creative phrasing, saying things like "Atlanta is the only city to lose two expansion franchises". Because neither of Quebec's teams were formally considered *expansion teams*, it paints Atlanta negatively while keeping QC looking so

like I stated, the hate for Atlanta is real.

 

[nhlanon1]

I'm not saying's impossible - just incredibly impractical. The European team would have to do something like 3-4 roadtrips that would each be 10-14 games long so they'd be in the US for a month at time. I assume the US teams would play all the road games in one trip.

What would you do for the play-off's?

Overall - it seems unlikely that the juice would be worth the squeeze.

They could also establish some kind of neutral arena somewhere. Then the Euro teams can stay there for a month or so, get their games in and go back. Or the Euro teams can play extra games against each other.

 

[Beukeboom Fan]

They could also establish some kind of neutral arena somewhere. Then the Euro teams can stay there for a month or so, get their games in and go back. Or the Euro teams can play extra games against each other.

If the Euro team is playing a significant portion of their home games at a neutral site in NA - why not just put the team in the neutral site city?

 

[Maple Leaf]

There is no ice in Atlanta or houston

 

[Cas]

There is no ice in Atlanta or houston

There's no ice in Miami, Tampa, Las Vegas, or Los Angeles either.

The presence or absence of naturally-occurring ice doesn't appear to have any correlation with the success or failure of professional hockey teams.

 

[OG6ix]

There's no ice in Miami, Tampa, Las Vegas, or Los Angeles either.

The presence or absence of naturally-occurring ice doesn't appear to have any correlation with the success or failure of professional hockey teams.

There's barely any ice in Toronto these days, winters have been mild here for years. Many rinks I grew up with are shut down or converted.

 

[VivaLasVegas]

PKP

And Atlanta again?

F'd up league

Seems like the League concluded that Peladeau was not serious about paying $1 billion for an expansion franchise, and at any rate he hasn't post-COVID submitted an application accompanied by the $1 billion check. Personally, I am of the belief that if the League were offered $1 billion to put a franchise in Tijuana, the League would approve the application and cash the check before lunchtime.

Which brings me to Atlanta: Why should the League not take the $1 billion? Basically, it is free money. If Atlanta fails again, so what? In five years somebody else will pay the League another $1+ billion to try again, and that's just more free money. The only ones out dinero are the investors, but investors are big boys with deep pockets who presumably understand the investment risks they are undertaking, and not any fans cashing out their IRAs to make it happen.

For all the NHL video fluff about hockey lore and tradition, the great battles of the past and the great stars of the past, the hard truth is that the NHL is nothing more than a business enterprise whose goal is to enrich its members. We lowly fans are but mere consumers of the product they offer whose sole choice is to consume that product or not, and the business enterprise cares nothing about individual fans but only whether the fans in the aggregate are buying the product or not.

And, yes, like any other business, the NHL has suffered from so-called "enshitification", i.e., lessening the quality of the product to increase profits. That's what businesses do, particular if within their niche they have a monopoly. Again, do we as mere consumers continue to buy the product or not? Some will say "that's not the hockey that I want to watch" and go off to something else, but so long as new consumers arise to take their place, from the perspective of the NHL all is good.

 

[LT]

There is no ice in Atlanta or houston

This is incorrect for Houston.

They just reinstalled the ice machines in the Toyota Center.

There are also 4 rinks around the city. Not much, but an NHL team being around would probably help bump that up to 10-15 within several years.

 

[Golden_Jet]

Does the NHL even have time to approve a new franchise before the current CBA is up? Because if they don't get it done fast, almost definitely the NHLPA is going to go into the next CBA negotiations (current CBA expires at the end of the 25-26 season) insisting on expansion fee revenue being including as hockey related revenue. It looks like with Seattle they started the process in late 2017.

That would result in huge escrow payments in the subsequent years.

 

[rojac]

That would result in huge escrow payments in the subsequent years.

If they were to do it (and I'm not saying they will or should), they could artificially spread the expansion fee over a number of years. So, let's say that they choose to spread it over 10 years and then add an expansion team with a 1.5B fee. Basically, each year for the next 10 years, HR would go up 150M. The money is still all paid at the beginning and immediately distributed to teams but it's added to the HRR slowly over time.

 

[Golden_Jet]

If they were to do it (and I'm not saying they will or should), they could artificially spread the expansion fee over a number of years. So, let's say that they choose to spread it over 10 years and then add an expansion team with a 1.5B fee. Basically, each year for the next 10 years, HR would go up 150M. The money is still all paid at the beginning and immediately distributed to teams but it's added to the HRR slowly over time.

I don’t think the owners agree, but if they did, and doing it your way, Which makes more sense, would be $75 million each.

So a cap bump of ~ 2+ million a year. Still an escrow bump, but nowhere near as bad if one year.

 

[Soundwave]

The PA should go after expansion fee revenue. Without players those new expansion teams are worthless, no one would pay even $2 a ticket to go watch the owners play.

Either that or they will probably scare the NHL and use that as leverage to get other concessions like maybe a soft cap where teams are allowed to exceed the cap roof and pay into a luxury tax like the NBA.

 

[Golden_Jet]

The PA should go after expansion fee revenue. Without players those new expansion teams are worthless, no one would pay even $2 a ticket to go watch the owners play.

Either that or they will probably scare the NHL and use that as leverage to get other concessions like maybe a soft cap where teams are allowed to exceed the cap roof and pay into a luxury tax like the NBA.

Heard you on the previous page, when you made the same post, and I responded with, huge escrow is the end result.

 

[Soundwave]

Heard you on the previous page, when you made the same post, and I responded with, huge escrow is the end result.

I'm sure the PA lawyers will figure out something, NBAPA is eying the same situation.

They deserve their cut of that money, because without players those expansion teams aren't worth shit.

The reason PA's didn't go after expansion fees in the past is they used to be much smaller, it used to be $100 million would get an expansion team, now these league's are asking for upwards of 1 billion, lol, no way was that just going to go ignored forever.

 

[Lonewolfe2015]

There's no way the league doesn't go to 36 then. Staying at 34 doesn't make any logistical sense.

 

[Golden_Jet]

I'm sure the PA lawyers will figure out something, NBAPA is eying the same situation.

They deserve their cut of that money, because without players those expansion teams aren't worth shit.

The reason PA's didn't go after expansion fees in the past is they used to be much smaller, it used to be $100 million would get an expansion team, now these league's are asking for upwards of 1 billion, lol, no way was that just going to go ignored forever.

That would force the cap up around 20-25 million plus the usual 5 million. Which would screw teams the following year, when cap would drop 20 million.

Not sure what the PA lawyers could figure out.

 

[Soundwave]

That would force the cap up around 20-25 million plus the usual 5 million. Which would screw teams the following year.

Not sure what the PA lawyers could figure out.

Well I'm not assuming they would get the full expansion fee into HRR obviously, just a cut of it.

Also why should the PA be afraid of getting their share, if I was working a job where the company was expanding into new locations making half a billion dollars minimum every time out because primarily of me and the work I was doing, I damn sure would say "hey wait a minute, why am I not getting a cut of any of that?".

Owners getting the full cut of expansion fee revenue when those teams are worthless without players is frankly kind of ridiculous. I think the PA only let this slide in the past because expansion fees in the past were not as sky high as they are now.

 

[cptjeff]

There's no way the league doesn't go to 36 then. Staying at 34 doesn't make any logistical sense.

This *is* a league that played with 21 teams in two divisions for more than a decade.

 

[Duffy13]

So is Houston already out of it? Saw something where the potential owners are moaning about franchise fees already which doesn't bode well for them.... I can't imagine the league only wants to expand with 1 team, they've recently liked to have 1 team ready to go at a determined time, and then the next team the following season.

Anyways, they should focus on a much better, inclusive Network package that turfs blackouts, and has a solid online option, with a NFL/NBA like production... Too many bullcrap homer broadcasts on full Nation wide gamedays.... otherwise this guy is going full pirate!!!!

 

[Golden_Jet]

Well I'm not assuming they would get the full expansion fee into HRR obviously, just a cut of it.

Also why should the PA be afraid of getting their share, if I was working a job where the company was expanding into new locations making half a billion dollars minimum every time out because primarily of me and the work I was doing, I damn sure would say "hey wait a minute, why am I not getting a cut of any of that?".

Owners getting the full cut of expansion fee revenue when those teams are worthless without players is frankly kind of ridiculous. I think the PA only let this slide in the past because expansion fees in the past were not as sky high as they are now.

I think the owners counter would be, they have to build an arena, which obviously the 1/32 expansion fee money wouldn’t cover,

 

[LT]

Fertitta seems to think he can whine and play hardball and get a better deal. No idea why he thinks this.

He already tipped his hand at being interested with the ice maker returning to Toyota Center.

There is an opportunity to completely develop a hockey community in one of the biggest cities in the US. It worked in Dallas. It's worked in several southern cities. If the team is winning and the sport is made readily accessible, the fans and the money will follow.