NHL Contingency Schedule moves Phoenix to Winnipeg, Jets join NW division

[Ben Kenobi]

San Antonio is lovely, but it's not likely to be able to support two winter sports franchases, and the Spurs are well entrenched.

Atlanta has the Hawks as well.

Same for Cleveland (which is smaller than Columbus) and its NBA franchise.

Ohio is probably big enough to have two teams. They have more hockey history than Columbus did, with the Barons.

And Baltimore, when there's already an NHL team in DC? That's barely a 2-team market in football and baseball. Disagree with that one as well.

Columbus is a smaller Metro area than just Baltimore. Raleigh is smaller, so is Nashville.

That would leave Portland, Phoenix, Atlanta and Miami as the only metro areas in the top 25 without teams. The smallest market would be Buffalo (at just over a million).

Hamilton would have 2.3 million (Hamilton, Kitchener, Waterloo, Oshawa, London and St Catherines).

Houston, over 5. San Antonio over 2. Seattle, over 3. Cleveland, 2 + 2, so around 4. Kansas City, over 2. San Diego, 3. Baltimore, over 2.

You'd have an argument to move the Sabres out of Buffalo, instead of the Miami team. Personally, I could live with keeping Atlanta as well, over Baltimore.

That would leave Phoenix. Is Phoenix stronger than the other options of San Diego, Sacramento, Portland or Las Vegas? I'm not sure.

[-Jrabbit]

It's about the strength of the franchise, not the size of the market. Canadian markets are generally smaller but hugely invested in the sport. Not so in the southern US. It's a tough sell. So Buffalo is more viable than San Antonio or even Houston in my mind. (BTW, Minneapolis remains an anomaly to me; WTF happened there? Was that just an owner's decision? If so, that city belongs on your list.)

[Guynemer]

?

Minneapolis has a team again.

[Asher]

Minnesota lives and breathes hockey.

[Guynemer]

Indeed. When it comes to hockey, Minnesota and Michigan might as well be annexed by Ontario.

[notyoueither]

BTW, Minneapolis remains an anomaly to me; WTF happened there? Was that just an owner's decision?

Yeah, that was a very perverse move by an owner.

The wiki contains some mirth material.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_North_Stars

As is well explained in a 1993 Sports Illustrated article,[9] owner Norman Green was much reviled in Minnesota following the decision (due to poor attendance during a string of losing seasons, the failure to reach stadium deals in Minneapolis or Saint Paul, and a sexual harassment lawsuit against Green that resulted in his wife threatening to leave him unless he moved the team) to move the franchise. The Sports Illustrated article included a quote from North Stars booster club president Julie Hammond: "When [Norm Green] came here, he said, 'Only an idiot could lose money on hockey in Minnesota.' Well, I guess he proved that point."

From what I've heard, the low attendance had as much to do with a Wirtz type owner-fan relationship as the team's record.

[Drake Tungsten]

There are already too many teams in Canada. The Coyotes should stay in Phoenix and the Canadiens should move to Houston.

Also, Sharks to San Diego, Flames to San Francisco. Alberta doesn't warrant two teams.

[Ben Kenobi]

It's about the strength of the franchise, not the size of the market. Canadian markets are generally smaller but hugely invested in the sport.

Buffalo isn't really a strong market. The problem with Winnipeg is that it is a metro area of 675 thousand people. Even if the average person in Winnipeg is twice as interested, that would translate to the equivalent of 1.3 million people, which is still a very small hockey market. They would have to be 4x as interested, and I'm not sure that would happen. Hamilton on the other hand is viable.

[Kontiki]

How does a suburb on the far eastern fringe of Toronto become part of a mythological metro Hamilton?

Also, a partial list of cities that would be failures of Raleigh proportions:

San Diego
Baltimore
San Antonio

And some others that wouldn't be good, but may barely be able to support a team:

Houston
Cleveland
Seattle
Portland

[Wezil]

I notice the league wants the team to stay in the desert so long as the city and not the NHL pay the losses.

Awesome. I hope they stay in Phoenix for another decade so I can continue laughing at the fools that thought it was a good deal.

[Wezil]

Get Bettman on the phone. Mexico City needs a team.

[-Jrabbit]

Anchorage!

[Ben Kenobi]

San Diego
Baltimore
San Antonio

Raleigh Metro is 1.15 million people.

San Antonio Metro is 2.1 million people.

If you include Austin, that's another 1.7 million people, as compared to Raleigh-Durham-Fayetteville which has about 2.5. So 2.5 vs close to 4 million people? No contest.

Baltimore has 2.6 million people and they are further north than Raleigh.

San Diego has 3 million people.

Frankly I don't understand why there is a team in Raleigh, when San Diego and San Antonio and Baltimore are all much better places to be.

[Ben Kenobi]

How does a suburb on the far eastern fringe of Toronto become part of a mythological metro Hamilton?

I could slice Metro Toronto + southern ontario (-windsor) which would give me a market of 3.5 million fans each for the Leafs and a Hamilton team.

Up to you.

[Kontiki]

Seriously, is the depth of your analytical ability to look at population numbers? I remember you had this same problem when discussing high speed rail.

Metro Atlanta is almost 5.5 million, and even larger if you want to throw an area around it the size of southern Ontario. Yet they had the third lowest average attendance in the league this season. Behind metro areas of 19+ million (New York Islanders) and 4.2 million (Phoenix). It's not like these teams have lucrative TV or merchandising operations either, so why does it matter if some other area with absolutely no background in hockey has X millions of people? Like Wezil said, you may as well put a team in Mexico City if that's the only metric you're capable of looking at.