OKC loses the "Nashville factor" because they'd have direct competition, something the Predators don't have. The Predators share Nashville with the Titans, but their schedule only overlaps by 3 months and for one day/night a week (which the NHL usually doesn't schedule too many games directly against NFL games outside of the occasional playoff overlap). An OKC team would only have October ahead of the Thunder while sharing the same building.
With cities that size it tends to be an either/or situation when it comes to NHL and NBA teams. I don't think they could support two teams running simultaneously, especially when the second one would be fighting an uphill battle as it is as a non-traditional sport.
KC...nothing has changed there. Aside from having an arena the only thing the market itself has going for it is that they don't have a NBA team, so a NHL team would have the city to itself in the winter months. I'm not as anti-KC as I was 6 years ago for obvious reasons, but they're still far from the top of the list and with no ownership group and an extremely busy & profitable arena without a primary tenant it's not something I really see them pushing in the near future. KC's window of opportunity closed when we got the arena deal...unfortunately for them that wasn't even a real window since they were simply used (something I'm sure has left a sour taste in their mouths).
Seattle and/or Portland need and will get teams eventually. Seattle sooner than later.
There really aren't a whole lot of legitimate candidates in this country right now. Houston can be thrown up there, but they're also sans interested ownership group.
My view on the southern growth of the game is pretty simple...it got over-saturated too quickly, but was a great thing for the sport in general. There are two teams that I feel never should have been placed in the league because there were already teams in the vicinity of them that hadn't performed solid enough to prove the area was stable enough to support an additional team (in one case they didn't even wait for the other team to start play before they expanded across the across the state). Having a team in Texas is good for the sport (not an expansion team, but had the North Stars not moved there they would have received one of the 90s expansion teams without a doubt). Having
a team in Florida is good for the sport. Having the two major metro areas of California represented is huge and is starting to play dividends for American hockey. I was against Nashville at first, but I've changed my tune there. Atlanta could have, and almost certainly would have worked if they didn't have a lethal 1-2 punch of incompetent management coupled with disinterested owners.
Phoenix...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chancellor Vitale
Other markets include Quebec and possibly Hamilton area (I think that's where the new 20K seat arena is going?). With Hamilton you might get the LA / Anaheim effect though with the Hamilton team always being an afterthought? Or... do we think there are SO many hockey fans in Ontario that it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference and the seats would be filled most nights regardless of the team's record?
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I'd say a more apt comparison would be with the LA/Anaheim baseball teams. It took 40 years, a rich owner, and a championship before the Angels were anything more than a blip on the radar. Despite the fact that they've been a better team than the Dodgers fairly consistently since the turn of the millennium and have been spending just as much as the Dodgers (sometimes more...but now the Dodgers are outspending everyone) the Dodgers still dominate the baseball scene in Southern California. The Angels' presence is growing consistently, but it took a long time.
And they weren't fighting half of what a Hamilton team would in the sense that a.) Orange County is, and has been for a long time, an insanely wealthy place...Hamilton is an industrial city and b.) The Dodgers only moved to LA in 1958...the Angels were an expansion team in 1961.
A Hamilton team would almost certainly fill the arena, but they wouldn't be doing so at the same ticket costs that the Maple Leafs would be able to charge and they'd have a very limited national appeal. I'm a huge proponent of filling unserviced markets before doubling-down on already serviced markets, so I'm against a Hamilton team as long as Seattle, Quebec, and Portland are still teamless, but there are far worse options and I definitely think more highly of a Hamilton option than a Markham option.