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Give it to Moncton. Halifax will rush it, screw the entire structuring of their economic balance up, have the team go under, and ask questions later. It's the story of Halifax and Nova Scotia in general. Stupid city council, government, and very unsupportive people when we don't have a winning team. Look at the Mooseheads for example. Only until we started winning again this year did people start attending games. Much like most cities, but this city in particular makes me almost sick to my stomach sometimes with it's inability to build on anything or take a successful step forward without screwing everything else up around it. Hey, we can always be proud that Stephen Harper let us have that ship building contract. Ships Start Here, but nothing else will for at least 20 more years.
This more than anything else. I don't blame people for staying away from Mooseheads games in past seasons since they were truly *godawful* for years but I've never lived in a city where whining is more deeply entwined into civic identity than Halifax. There's actually a lot more potential for urban development here than you give it credit for but so much of it is screamed down by people hellbent on keeping the city as some kind of 19th-century commune.
Half-true. They said no to building a stadium for the 2015 women's world cup but will continue to pursue the possibility. Which is for the best, what they were proposing for the WWC wouldn't have been suitable for the CFL anyway.
Wrong. They basically shot themselves now in both feet.
Halifax is off the CFL radar for the long-term. Say hello to either Quebec City or Moncton.
There's also 200-300,000 people who live in Labrador, 10% of which I wouldn't be surprised to make the day trek to see an NHL game once a year.
Please check your facts before posting stuff like this. You're off by a factor of 10; there aren't even 30 thousand people in Labrador and you don't make a "day trek" to the Maritimes from there. There's no direct flight; you're stopping over either in Newfoundland proper or somewhere in Quebec.
Just getting from Newfoundland (about 500,000 population) to the Maritimes requires either a stupidly expensive flight or an 8/14 hour ferry ride that only gets you to Sydney, Cape Breton, leaving one another 4-hour drive to get anywhere else worth going.
Anyway, now that that silliness has been dispatched, let me just say Halifax is deep at the bottom of the pool of potential NHL cities, well after (in no particular order) Quebec, Hamilton, Toronto 2, Montreal 2, and at least a half-dozen American cities. That's assuming this often-backwards-looking city could get its act together to build something resembling a suitable arena, which I doubt will happen any time in the next 20 years.
After looking at google maps (distances between cities) and population size.
I feel the Maritimes as a whole could succeed.
There's also 200-300,000 people who live in Labrador, 10% of which I wouldn't be surprised to make the day trek to see an NHL game once a year.
I mean, let's be honest, how are the Maritimes in a negative compared to Winnipeg?
I'm also going to bring up Maine in this too. Certainly not the South-west but it wouldn't surprise me to see people make the 6-7 hour journey from that the U.S. either.
The issue here would be success. I'm not so sure a team in the Maritimes would support a losing franchise for a decade.
I also agree with Moncton, more open space to build an arena and more central to the population area.
I don't think many people would like to make the trip by boat to see the games. The arena would have to hold 14 to 15 000 seats and the loss of revenue would come from few luxury suits ( not many world class companies have meetings in Halifax ), TV revenue by en-globing all the provinces would be fair but not huge because not many companies would pay huge fees for advertising in over there.
I still think it's more probable in Halifax than Saskatoon. Overall both markets wouldn't be more attractive than Kansas City and certainly Las Vegas.
Moncton has 70k of population and Halifax 400k, why is Moncton even considered?
Moncton is the Hub City for the 3 maritime provinces. It has short drive times to all of Halifax, Saint John, Fredericton and PEI in general. The only population centre that isn't within a 2 hour drive of Moncton is Sydney. While Halifax may have 400K, Moncton could draw on closer to a million people.
As mentioned, Labrador has less than 30,000 people. Goose Bay is the biggest town up there with under 8,000 people, however, they do have regular air service direct and non-stop to Halifax. It's $569 round trip from Goose to Halifax (before taxes), but that can come down to $379 + tax if you choose to route through either Gander or St. John's. That said, fares start at $99 non-stop from St. John's to Halifax which would open up another 200,000 people for Halifax.
Moncton may be more centrally located, but.... c'mon, seriously? You guys are fooling yourself if you honestly think that the NHL wouldn't laugh any proposal of putting an NHL team in a town that small out of a board of governors meeting, even if it is very centrally located. They'd only put it in the major city of the area or on the outskirts of said city. Even if there are more people in a 2 hour drive distance from Moncton, that doesn't really matter if the core fanbase attending games, people that live probably within a half hour to an hour of the arena, is substantially lower in Moncton then Halifax.
If the Maritimes are ever seriously considered, it'd be Halifax or bust.
Moncton may be more centrally located, but.... c'mon, seriously? You guys are fooling yourself if you honestly think that the NHL wouldn't laugh any proposal of putting an NHL team in a town that small out of a board of governors meeting, even if it is very centrally located. They'd only put it in the major city of the area or on the outskirts of said city. Even if there are more people in a 2 hour drive distance from Moncton, that doesn't really matter if the core fanbase attending games, people that live probably within a half hour to an hour of the arena, is substantially lower in Moncton then Halifax.
If the Maritimes are ever seriously considered, it'd be Halifax or bust.
This. I could see it being possible for a CFL team since there are a small number of home games and there's more of a pilgrimage tradition with football, but nobody in Halifax (or anywhere else in Atlantic Canada, really) is going to trek all the way back and forth to Moncton enough times to ever justify buying seasons tickets for hockey. Not that there's ever going to be an NHL team in the Maritimes to begin with but still.
Moncton has 70k of population and Halifax 400k, why is Moncton even considered?
That's misleading...
First of off, Moncton's population would more accurately be about 135-140k. the 'city core' has about 70k, but thats misleading if you don't include the 20-25k from Dieppe (which is basically connected to Moncton, the only distinction between the 2 is an invisible line and more ppl speaking French), Riverview's 20k (again, basically connected to the city) and the 15-20k that live on the outskirts. NB didn't amalgamate the entire region into Moncton like NS did with Halifax ('HRM' covers a massive land area. That 400k is derived from a land area that is almost 1.5x the size of Montreal's Metro Area)
second, as many have said, Moncton is centrally located. The population living within a 3hr radius from the city centre is about the same for both Moncton and Halifax (and if you expand out further Moncton starts to pull ahead). So in terms of size for a potential fanbase the two locations are about equal.
But as alluded to also in this thread, Moncton has much stronger fan and corporate support for these type of things than Halifax.
Once again tho, this is all moot b/c he Maritimes are a Q-League region now, and seems quite content with junior hockey (though I personally wouldnt mind seeing a WHA-like league that was a step above the AHL but below the NHL that targeted a lot of strong markets no in the Major Leagues. But that's a pipe dream)
First of off, Moncton's population would more accurately be about 135-140k. the 'city core' has about 70k, but thats misleading if you don't include the 20-25k from Dieppe (which is basically connected to Moncton, the only distinction between the 2 is an invisible line and more ppl speaking French), Riverview's 20k (again, basically connected to the city) and the 15-20k that live on the outskirts. NB didn't amalgamate the entire region into Moncton like NS did with Halifax ('HRM' covers a massive land area. That 400k is derived from a land area that is almost 1.5x the size of Montreal's Metro Area)
second, as many have said, Moncton is centrally located. The population living within a 3hr radius from the city centre is about the same for both Moncton and Halifax (and if you expand out further Moncton starts to pull ahead). So in terms of size for a potential fanbase the two locations are about equal.
But as alluded to also in this thread, Moncton has much stronger fan and corporate support for these type of things than Halifax.
Once again tho, this is all moot b/c he Maritimes are a Q-League region now, and seems quite content with junior hockey (though I personally wouldnt mind seeing a WHA-like league that was a step above the AHL but below the NHL that targeted a lot of strong markets no in the Major Leagues. But that's a pipe dream)
Still saying that an 15 000 seats arena would be daily filled with a city of 70k to 140k is non-sense. But since most $ comes from corporate luxury suites it's more like science-fiction that Moncton would host a team.
