Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site dciem.UUCP Path: utzoo!dciem!jeff From: jeff@dciem.UUCP (Jeff Richardson) Newsgroups: net.sport.hockey Subject: Re: NHL Expansion, if any Message-ID: <1563@dciem.UUCP> Date: Thu, 30-May-85 10:31:27 EDT Article-I.D.: dciem.1563 Posted: Thu May 30 10:31:27 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 30-May-85 11:39:55 EDT References: <1820@watcgl.UUCP> <5566@ucla-cs.ARPA> <511@alberta.UUCP> <512@alberta.UUCP> Reply-To: jeff@dciem.UUCP (Jeff Richardson) Distribution: net Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada Lines: 56 Summary: > I really don't know much about the Canadian markets. Could Hamilton really > support an NHL team? How about Halifax, or St. John, NB? I'm sure Hamilton could support an NHL team. Hamilton is very close to Toronto and several other fair-sized cities (Kitchener-Waterloo, Burlington, St. Catharines, etc.), so there are probably 4 or 5 million people in the area. Many of us are nuts about hockey, and the area turns out several NHL stars (Wayne Gretzky is from Brantford, which is close enough to Hamilton to drive to a few games a year). However, we don't have a major league hockey team. (You can't call the Leafs a major league hockey team.) Seriously though, the Canadian Football League Toronto-Hamilton rivalry is one of the fiercest I've seen in professional sports in North America (if you're interested, I'll mail you the words to the Toronto vs. Hamilton fight song; they're too obscene to post). With hockey being our number one sport, a hockey rivalry could be even better. If both teams get good (having a team in Hamilton might smarten up Leafs' owner Harold Ballard), the rivalry could be even better than Montreal-Quebec because Hamilton and Toronto are much closer to each other. The New York area supports three teams. I know they have about 4 times as many people, but because hockey's so big here, I'm sure we could support two. St. John is probably too small to support a NHL team, and Fredricton and Moncton are too far away to supply fans to St. John games. Halifax is a better possibility, because there are more people to draw from. I don't know much about Saskatchewan, but I'm sure that they could support a team. It's too bad Saskatoon and Regina aren't closer to each other, or they could do it for sure. However, it may be difficult for any of these areas to support an expansion team, because the new team would be bad for several years, and an expansion team would be much harder for the fans to relate to when they already have their favourite established teams. They may not be able to survive those critical early years when they would lose millions of dollars. This is especially true in my home town Ottawa, which could be a great market, but only if they could get all the dedicated Canadiens fans there to switch their allegiance to the local team. Even in Hamilton, if the team is no better than the Leafs, they're not likely to attract many fans in the first couple of years. Teams could eventually establish themselves in those cities and become very successful, but I think the transfer of an existing franchise is the only way to ensure that the team would last long enough to do that. This brings up another point: If we have a couple of American teams transferring to Canada, we could have a Canadian Conference and an American Conference, possibly with the winners of each meeting in the finals. The NHL executives would like that because it would guarantee a US-based team in the finals, and they could try to promote it to TV audiences as "USA vs. the rest of the world", a marketing strategy that seems to work well in other sports. This would work even better if the American teams were more American and the Canadian teams were more Canadian. See my next article for more details on that idea. -- Jeff Richardson, DCIEM, Toronto (416) 635-2073 {linus,ihnp4,uw-beaver,floyd}!utcsri!dciem!jeff {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!dciem!jeff