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From: rick@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.sport.hockey
Subject: Re: give NHL teams a more local flavour
Message-ID: <5850@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 4-Jun-85 22:50:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.5850
Posted: Tue Jun  4 22:50:30 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 10-Jun-85 02:35:02 EDT
References: <1564@dciem.UUCP>
Reply-To: rick@ucla-cs.UUCP (Richard Gillespie)
Distribution: net
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 70
Keywords: bad idea

In article <1564@dciem.UUCP> jeff@dciem.UUCP (Jeff Richardson) writes:
> ...
>One possibility would be to have the current NHL entry draft preceded by
>territorial draft.  In the territorial draft, each NHL team would be assigned
>its own local territory (the territories would be assigned after a careful
>analysis of where all the NHL players have come from over the years), and it
>would be permitted to draft only players from that area.

You MUST be a Leafs fan, Jeff, because they would be about the only team to
benefit. Ontario supplies more NHL players than any other region on the
continent. I haven't got the stats handy but I assume a significant number
of those are from the Toronto area. But, nonetheless, let's examine the
possibilities. 
For argument's sake let's move the Penguins to Hamilton and the Devils to
Saskatoon. We then have conferences and divisions sort of like:

	Canadian Conference			USA Conference
    East		West		   East	      	      West
    Quebec              Vancouver          Hartford           Los Angeles
    Montreal            Calgary            Boston             St Louis
    Toronto             Edmonton           NY Islanders	      Minnesota
    Hamilton            Saskatoon	   NY Rangers	      Chicago
    Buffalo	        Winnipeg	   Philadelphia	      Detroit
					   Washington
(I arbitrarily moved Buffalo to Canada, no one else wants the city anyway :-)).

Would you want to have the territorial rights of, say, Los Angeles. There
are as many NHL caliber players here as there are NBA players in Toronto
(with apologies to Leo Rautins). You could give LA all the players in the
western USA and it wouldn't be close. The only American teams with a chance
to prosper are the New York teams (I wouldn't want to define the territories
there), Hartford, Boston, and Minnesota. Detroit (with that Compuware team
locally) and Chicago, too, maybe. And the caliber of players from those areas,
in general, isn't as good as Junior A players in Canada. No, I'm afraid that
this isn't going to work Jeff - you can't legislate the American teams to
cut their own throats.
But, Jeff offers a solution:

>               ...  Since most NHL players still come out of Canada, but
>there are more American teams, the American teams' territories would not
>have as much total player potential as the Canadian teams' territories,
>assuming all of Canada is divided up among the Canadian teams and all of
>the US is divided up among the American teams.  That can be compensated
>for by allowing the American teams to pick more players in the territorial
>draft (say, 5 or 6 vs. 3 for the Canadian teams) and making Europe part of
>the American teams' territories.

Great, they can have 5 or 6 awful players that will never make the NHL as
opposed to 3 that have a solid chance. Even throwing in Europe isn't going
to help much.

>There are several advantages to giving the teams more local flavour, ranging
>from allowing the fans to better identify with their team, thereby increasing
>fan interest, to making it beneficial for teams to spend money improving
>the local and regional hockey leagues for young players.

I can only think of 2 examples of this: the Rangers with Fotiu, and the
Black Hawks with Olczyk. The Rangers bow to the fans by playing Fotiu who
is a marginal player. They don't get anything out of it, they just hurt
themselves. The Hawks have a good player in Olczyk so he is a good example
for you. However, I think he is something of a fluke.

>I'd love to hear some comments on this idea.

Ok, the idea is bad. But interesting to think about.
-- 
   Rick Gillespie
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