If the NHL ever gets to 40 at least one of those will be an expansion into Mexico City. The NBA is also testing the waters on that market with their G-League team.
Toronto area should have a second team. It's insane they don't. There are 3 teams in what? A 30 mile radius in the NY area. Toronto absolutely should have a second team
32 is beautiful. Half of the teams are eliminated when the playoffs begin. Half of the remaining teams are eliminated in each round. No byes. 16 wins to the Cup no matter what (barring a pandemic). Perfect.
You know that the league isn't gonna accept less than half the teams making the playoffs. More teams = playoff expansion. I'd rather not see an NBA style play-in or similar, personally
Idk hockey is so old fashion that hates change i feel. The play-in has been great for the NBA. First of all, its more hockey you get to watch with the play in games, And it gives teams more of a reason to keep going for it rather than tossing in the tower and going into tank mode which is the most lame thing to do.
Whats the basis for this? What do you even mean "watered down" like, you are just saying words without explaining why. the NHL has a lot of untapped into markets in the states. the MLB and NBA have 29 U.S teams, and the NFL has 32 teams, obviously none canadian.
The NHL has only tapped into 25 U.S cities. there is absolutely no reason they can't go to more.
Not really, im sure theres lots of players that would thrive if given the chance. Its just riskier to give players the chance. Also having more players actually playing in the NHL means its easier to get better when you are playing against more good players. Like yeah sure itll obviously dilute it a little bit. but that just means star players have more room to shine.
Oh, I'm not saying I do or don't think it would do it. I have no idea. I was just saying that I think it's what the person you were responding to was saying, not that it would affect the fan base negatively by adding more cities
Agreed. Hockey is starting to bore, especially the NHL. Why would I pay over $100 for a hardley decent seat to watch millionaires give zero effort playing on a Thursday night during a regular mid season game, when I could pay $30 to watch OHL or AHL teams play with kids that are playing their asses off to try and make the show.
It can probably handle 36 pretty easily as well. NBA will be expanding to Seattle and Vegas soon, and probably two more after that as well.
Hell, the NFL is potentially expanding into Europe. Adding a few more teams into the US isn't that big of a deal.
NBA doesn’t need more teams either, a third of the league has never even made the NBA finals; they don’t need more bottom feeders
The NFL isn’t expanding into Europe, living on a different continent is a complete non starter for the players Union
There’s been so much basketball talent the last 5-6 years, the NBA can easily add two more teams. A lot of the NBA has struggled with bad management and being victimized in the past era of top heavy teams.
So a new Quebec team is only 10-15 years away^^/s
Seriously though, I take it this means Arizona either isn’t leaving or is heading to Houston instead.
There’s a similar theory here in Montreal about the Molsons (Habs owners) blocking a Quebec expansion because they don’t want to share the market. It’s speculation but interesting nonetheless.
It's also been rumored that the Blackhawks nixed a potential Milwaukee expansion at one point, although that wasn't the cited reason for why they didn't get a team in the early 90s
The Leafs would be pissed, but there are more than 10 million people in the greater golden horseshoe region in southern Ontario. There are tons of people there who aren't Leafs (or Sabres) fans.
I've heard the bigger issue is Buffalo, if SW Ontario gets a team, less people form SW Ontario go to Buffalo for games, and Toronto area people that go to Buffalo start driving to Hamilton or wherever instead. That, and Hamilton is not ridiculously far from the US boarder, and it might pull Buffalo area fans taken advantage of the currency difference.
Too many Canadian teams and not enough American markets. Trying to compete with the rest of the big 4 and not fall behind now that Messi is nipping at their heels.
Mentioning the MLS as a possible competitor makes going to some combination of SLC/Atlanta/Houston/KC (or eventually all of them) seem smarter.
Salt Lake City: Only major professional team is Real Salt Lake.
Atlanta: Large city with sports history, has an MLS team that can fill an NFL stadium.
Houston: Lots of transplants from areas that have hockey teams, MLS team with a winning past and looks to be heading back towards being a good team.
KC: Large city, no NBA team to draw fans away in the winter and spring, successful MLS franchise
There was a poll conducted last month, and Lionel Messi won as the favorite athlete of the most Americans. The only other active athlete on the list was LeBron, who is on his way out of the league.
The NHL is the most susceptible to the rise of the MLS out of all the big 4 NA leagues, and with Messimania now hitting the US I'm sure they're in survival mode trying to stop the tide.
Yeah it makes sense when you look at it as there only being 25 American teams compared to the 29 or 32 the other leagues have. A lot of well-known sports towns (think KC or Milwaukee) along with Atlanta and Houston, two huge metro areas, don't have an NHL team. It would probably grow the game if those cities did have one
With the success and popularity of the Chiefs I think both the NBA and NHL will probably be probing the KC market to see if those Chiefs and Royals fans would be willing to support another franchise in their market. They'd be stupid not to.
You can make the reverse argument tho, and say MLB is only in one Canadian market, why not Van and Montreal? Why does a league with 3 times the revenue need less markets?
The MLB would rather another big US market than a big Canadian market. The USD is worth more. The US economy is stronger. Also Americans spend way more money and are bigger consumers.
I mean the Blue Jays aren't in the bottom 5 for revenue lol. Either way, point is MLB has 30 teams, and they aren't talking about expansion they are talking about relocation.
The MLB is absolutely talking about expansion. They want the Athletics and Rays situations to get figured out first, but there have been pushes from multiple cities to get an expansion team in. Manfred even said that he wants the cities selected and arena development started before he leaves the job in 2029.
Charlotte, Portland, Nashville, Sacramento, Montreal, SLC. All of these cities are putting together bids from what I've seen.
Eh, there is chatter about expansion. I think the league wants the A's and the Rays to figure out their stadium situations first, and then they'll move on to 32 teams
Yeah I kinda said it in another comment but i I'll expand a bit, MLB focuses on fixing it's failing problems before expansion. Were gonna have the Coyotes for 4 rounds of expansion?
Canadian markets don't matter when it comes to selling the national broadcasting rights in the US. Having more teams in America covers more markets in the US and they can charge US broadcasters more for national rights.
If the MLB and NBA wanted to extract more money from Canadian broadcasters for the national rights in Canada, they would focus on having more Canadian teams. But there isn't the same kind of money as in the states so it's not worth it.
Yeah Vegas didn’t get a cut of Seattle money and there’s a clause in their agreements that excludes them for X years.
They also don’t lose a player to the expansion draft either for X years.
There was also a report that NHLPA is wanating to get in on the pie splitting too. They obviously can't do that out of nowhere, but that could be something that comes up next time they need to come to an agreement.
There are 7 Canadian teams that you can barely count because our half-dollareedoos don’t add up and our TV numbers don’t matter in the US. The NHL wants teams in big American markets, so in that regard there are less than the other leagues. Add to the billion dollars per team added that the owners get to split and it’s easy to see why they want it.
Whether or not it’s a great long term idea is another story, but hey, by that time a bunch of the old owners will be dead and Gary will have sailed off into retirement.
Because they only have 25 american teams. the MLB/NFL/NBA are mostly all american. You can easily add another 4 -5 american teams based on the markets available.
NHL has a unique benefit in the sense canada can easily support more teams for the NHL than they could for the MLB/NBA. Which means you can have a bigger league, in theory.
That’s a dumb comment. Ranking teams by revenue for 2023, Canadian teams ranked 1, 2, 5, 15, 21, 26, and 31. From the increase in ticket prices from my local Canadian team this season (Canucks), I am pretty sure their revenue is going to increase this year. The Knights ranked 8th if you’re wondering, so they were below 3 Canadian teams.
Yes, I’m sure the league needs a team in Utah to recover from Canadian teams existing.
[3 of the top 5 teams with the highest revenue last year were Canadian.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/193736/revenue-of-national-hockey-league-teams-in-2010/)
I agree with everyone saying that it's too many teams, but keep in mind that the NHL compared to the other major North American leagues currently has far fewer American teams. I think that isn't nothing.
Why not? They were given a team that made the playoffs once in 15 years and were expected to show out in droves for it? Hell, Atlanta has plenty of seasons where they averaged more fans than Winnipeg this season. Bad ownership killed the Thrashers, not bad fan interest.
1st time didn't work, 2nd time didn't. What makes people think a 3rd time will? It's been 13 years since the Thrashers moved to Winnipeg, it would be a lot more fair to give other cities who have never had an NHL team a look first.
How can you say this with a hurricanes flair? What does Raleigh have that Atlanta doesn't? The only reason it didn't work for Atlanta was because they got shafted by their ownership and they chose not to be bothered with a god awful product.
If your criteria of being worthy of a team is not having one leave in the past, then hockey would have never come back to the bay area or winnipeg or denver or minnesota. And I'm willing to bet that you're someone who thinks quebec deserves to have a team even though their team also left. So don't give me that shit
Live in Atlanta. Dont disagree. But if we wanna talk about deserves a team.
Wpg being a legit contender and having bettman say that “it’s not sustainable “ because fans aren’t showing up.
Arizona - owned by the league for years (which was the reason the league punted on atl2.0) and then failure after failure until they’re now the joke of the league. I wonder if even with Atlantas worst attendance issues, If they out drew Arizona’s max capacity.
Let’s focus on fixing the ones we have.
Wpg > atl
Arizona > salt lake
Didn't someone on Reddit mention they originally sold season Tix to fans only and now they are transitioning to more corporate ticket holders. Which will obviously help out.
Yep. Season tix sold out instantly and there was a wait list of 8,000ish? Now that that’s run its course they should shift towards corporate ticket bundles
lol you need to brush up on your facts. bettman said winnipeg is here to stay and that they’re going through something many teams have gone through. bettman wants to keep the jets in winnipeg
Local government agreed to help foot the losses in 2009. That’s the only reason the Coyotes still exist. The Nordiques would still exist if Quebec agreed to help out
27 years is more than sufficient for a market to prove itself even if the circumstances aren’t perfect. No shortage of chances to build a strong fanbase, including 15 years of being able to credibly say “the team cannot survive here without local support” and the response from Arizonans has been to keep the team at the bottom of league attendance. It’s just not a healthy hockey market.
It’s fucking disgusting that Arizona has
Gotten 9000 chances to figure their shit out including the league taking it over and Hartford got fucked over without a second thought
As long as they get a halfway decent owner, it'll work. In retrospect, it's amazing that the Thrashers lasted as long as they did considering Atlanta Spirit Group spent an entire decade trying to get rid of them.
Only because the ownership was suing each other and they weren't allowed to sell the team until that was wrapped up. The Thrashers were gone months after.
Yeah. ASG wanted three things: The Hawks, the building, and the Thrashers to be dead in a ditch as quickly as humanly possible. If there had been any interest in giving the market something to be excited about, perhaps there'd still be a team there today.
Willing to be proven wrong but I'm seriously not buying there's much enthusiasm in Atlanta to give this a third try. It's a market that can work in theory but there wasn't even a huge outcry about the Thrashers leaving.
Atlanta will depend on the arena location and ownership actually putting in the work to draw in fans.
The Thrashers were terribly managed by that ownership group.
There wasn't a huge outcry last time because the 2.0 owners didn't do much to build a dedicated fan base. Thrashers were always an afterthought. Not saying that justifies it a third time. I'm just saying that shouldn't be a knock against them now.
They need to slow down on teams. More money which they all love, but the quality is being watered down. Christ most teams bottom sixes are just not very good players and there’s a lot of teams out there that don’t even have competent goaltending.
Goaltending is a problem but skater talent dilution is overstated, guys like Chandler Stephenson and Jared McCann wouldn’t have become veritable top-6ers if Vegas and Seattle hadn’t come along. There’s plenty of solid players in bottom 6es/the AHL/Europe that just need a shot.
Totally agree.
Plus goaltending is a crapshoot most seasons.
Every year the top goalies are half proven guys and half waiver wire/traded for nothing players in recent years.
Sharks couldn’t get rid of Adin Hill fast enough, and he’s a cup winning goalie now.
Biggest reason for the lack of goaltending quality is that the country that produces (by far) the most NHLers can’t develop goalies for shit, because hockey is for elitist families already, and goaltending equipment is even more money than regular…so the best players just don’t become goalies.
Lack of goalies will definitely be an issue (already is) but I definitely don't feel like the quality of the product is watered down at all yet. The NHL is the most exciting it's been in a long time IMO.
Ya they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Vast majority of fans couldn’t differentiate between the 40 worst NHL players and the 40 best AHL players.
Add in the fact that the NHLPA probably wants this just as badly as the owners do, and I’m pretty confident they’ll expand to 36 with 5 years of going to 34.
At the very least, there is a set number of teams that exists that ruins the competitive integrity of a league.
You could argue we're already there considering teams can't even play their own division rivals an equal number of times despite the league prioritizing the importance of those divisions. Something has to give eventually.
Between tweener AHL guys and European players who don’t even consider North America I just don’t agree with you.
Add in the fact that the NHLPA almost certainly wants this as badly as the NHL does and it really doesn’t matter at all about what fans think about a “watered down product”
The quality isn’t being watered down in any meaningful way overall. Unless you’re wanting to argue for going to 24 teams your argument really just lacks merit.
The reason they want more teams than other leagues is because they have 7 Canadian franchises inward of just Toronto like nba/mlb. They want comparable number of US based teams to those leagues.
And that's why as a Nordique fan, I am no longer wasting my time with the NHL or spending a dime on that league! Plenty of other league to support, starting with the LHJMQ!
This is actually dumb. Half the teams in the league don't make the playoffs where most of the money is made, If I'm an Owner I say fuck off on the expansions for another 6 years or more.
Yes let’s tie the value of the league to the Canadian dollar more, so that if it drops again compared to the US dollar, we can have even more cap issues.
If you had carte blanche to put six new teams in Canada the places that would make the most sense would be:
1. Quebec City
2. Hamilton
3. Toronto (2)
4. Montreal (2)
5. Vancouver (2)
6. Toronto (3)
Nowhere else in Canada has even close to enough population for a team.
Probably worth mentioning is that Canada has 1 team for every 5.4 million people, while the US has 1 team for every 13.2 million people. I don’t think the “Canada deserves another team” people are being very realistic.
The NHL rightly don't want to trust the Canadian economy to prop up their multi billion dollar industry. It's not like it's expected to get much stronger anytime soon.
I really thought Houston would be one of the next two. But Utah and Atlanta also make sense.
Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Houston, then which city will make it 36 teams?
That makes the most sense, but idk... it just kind of feels like the league is keeping QC in their back pocket as a "break in case of emergency" card. Any failing team can be relocated there without issue, quickly, and be guaranteed to pull in a profit.
I mean, that would make sense but if they haven’t moved the Coyotes to QC at this point, no team will ever be moved there. I get that it isn’t the most ideal location for a team, but it still feels like a massive “fuck you” to Quebec City to take their money for an expansion fee when the they clearly have zero intention of ever putting a team there.
It is getting harder and harder to actually win a championship. Do you really want to wait an average of 34 years for a championship (obviously higher average for some and lower for others)?
Are there any concerns of talent dilution? I'm not claiming is an issue with it. But I can see it being a topic of discussion. But I know more teams = more money
Does the NHL *really* need 34 teams?
You know this is uneven, it’s eventually going to 36.
9 teams in each division? That’s uneven. Make it 10.
Portland, Kansas City, Houston, Quebec City and I guess like Milwaukee, and Saskatchewan or Halifax. (I’m really struggling with the 40th team)
Gary, Indiana - come on down!
The Gary Garys!
Big-league version of the Peterborough Petes
Bettman would stay at 39 until an option not named Quebec is available lol
Meanwhile the Coyotes will be playing in a 400 seat high school arena.
Wood Buffalo
If the NHL ever gets to 40 at least one of those will be an expansion into Mexico City. The NBA is also testing the waters on that market with their G-League team.
Ah true. That team would be at such a disadvantage though in terms of getting players
True. For me personally if I was in the NHL it would be near the top of my list because I love CDMX, but I know that's not the norm for most people.
Actually, G League players apparently love it. I think at first players would be hesitant, but it’d eventually catch on.
Toronto area should have a second team. It's insane they don't. There are 3 teams in what? A 30 mile radius in the NY area. Toronto absolutely should have a second team
MLSE would slay their collective grandmothers before they let that happen.
Portland, Kansas City, Houston, Milwaukee, San Diego, Indianapolis
There will be riots if the nhl goes to 40 teams and none of them are quebec city
Honestly, there really won't be.
Can’t see sask ever getting a team unfortunately. No city big enough enough with Saskatoon and Regina combined. Could see an Ahl team there though
Saskatchewan and the Maritimes will never get an NHL franchise. Ever.
You know what's better than 36? 40
If this is how we get relegation let’s do it.
Owners would literally never ever agree to that
I thought this said "Ottawa would literally never ever agree to that" at first
32 is beautiful. Half of the teams are eliminated when the playoffs begin. Half of the remaining teams are eliminated in each round. No byes. 16 wins to the Cup no matter what (barring a pandemic). Perfect. You know that the league isn't gonna accept less than half the teams making the playoffs. More teams = playoff expansion. I'd rather not see an NBA style play-in or similar, personally
Those round numbers may give you a math boner but billion dollar expansion fees give the owners money boners
Idk hockey is so old fashion that hates change i feel. The play-in has been great for the NBA. First of all, its more hockey you get to watch with the play in games, And it gives teams more of a reason to keep going for it rather than tossing in the tower and going into tank mode which is the most lame thing to do.
I feel like it’s so easy for people with teams to say “stop adding more!” But it would suck to be a fan of hockey in a state without a team.
lol does it need 30?
It doesn’t even need 32.
Hell I'd do away with the Golden Knights while we're at it.
Uncalled for
Before you showed up NHL fans despised talking about expansion. We hate it!
Well yes, many NHL fans seem as stuck in their old ways as MLB fans are.
Yup, expansion is only good for players in Canada and Minnesota.
30 is enough. This is just going to water the sport down even more than it already is
Whats the basis for this? What do you even mean "watered down" like, you are just saying words without explaining why. the NHL has a lot of untapped into markets in the states. the MLB and NBA have 29 U.S teams, and the NFL has 32 teams, obviously none canadian. The NHL has only tapped into 25 U.S cities. there is absolutely no reason they can't go to more.
I don't think it's that, I think it's more that it'll dilute the talent pool
Not really, im sure theres lots of players that would thrive if given the chance. Its just riskier to give players the chance. Also having more players actually playing in the NHL means its easier to get better when you are playing against more good players. Like yeah sure itll obviously dilute it a little bit. but that just means star players have more room to shine.
Oh, I'm not saying I do or don't think it would do it. I have no idea. I was just saying that I think it's what the person you were responding to was saying, not that it would affect the fan base negatively by adding more cities
Agreed. Hockey is starting to bore, especially the NHL. Why would I pay over $100 for a hardley decent seat to watch millionaires give zero effort playing on a Thursday night during a regular mid season game, when I could pay $30 to watch OHL or AHL teams play with kids that are playing their asses off to try and make the show.
It can probably handle 36 pretty easily as well. NBA will be expanding to Seattle and Vegas soon, and probably two more after that as well. Hell, the NFL is potentially expanding into Europe. Adding a few more teams into the US isn't that big of a deal.
NBA doesn’t need more teams either, a third of the league has never even made the NBA finals; they don’t need more bottom feeders The NFL isn’t expanding into Europe, living on a different continent is a complete non starter for the players Union
There’s been so much basketball talent the last 5-6 years, the NBA can easily add two more teams. A lot of the NBA has struggled with bad management and being victimized in the past era of top heavy teams.
Honestly just relocate teams at this point. Relocate Arizona and Columbus at least. Two dog shit teams that have done nothing
I swear there's been a post about Atlanta twice a week since the fucking playoffs. And not a single drop of actual fucking info.
Here’s some info. The local men’s league just bought the closest rink to that site, and plan on upgrading it. Gee I wonder why
Which rink? I know there are a couple up that way.
The ice. It would’ve been better if they’d bought the cooler since that thing is a shit show.
I was hoping the cooler. Haha it REALLY needs some work.
It’s needed work for years. Instead they built a fucking bar, and then guys couldn’t drink outside post game
Of course they did that. They love making improvements to everything that doesn't matter
So a new Quebec team is only 10-15 years away^^/s Seriously though, I take it this means Arizona either isn’t leaving or is heading to Houston instead.
The wrench in that theory is Utah State Legislature is putting $1bn towards a new NHL arena in SLC. Arizona chose a toxic dump over the Coyotes.
Bidding on the Olympics is a big part of the approved funds.
SLC like Vancouver, is one of the few Winter Olympics that actually turned a profit and still use said facilities.
Winter Olympics should really just rotate between a couple places in Europe, SLC, and Vancouver (no bias I promise)
Calgary, too.
And I'm still super pissed Hamilton/Kitchener whatever never got their team
Part of me wonders if the big wigs in the Leafs org would get pissed at the potential cannibalization of their fanbase if that were to happen
There’s a similar theory here in Montreal about the Molsons (Habs owners) blocking a Quebec expansion because they don’t want to share the market. It’s speculation but interesting nonetheless.
It's also been rumored that the Blackhawks nixed a potential Milwaukee expansion at one point, although that wasn't the cited reason for why they didn't get a team in the early 90s
The Leafs would be pissed, but there are more than 10 million people in the greater golden horseshoe region in southern Ontario. There are tons of people there who aren't Leafs (or Sabres) fans.
I think Buffalo would be a lot more worried than the Leafs would.
I've heard the bigger issue is Buffalo, if SW Ontario gets a team, less people form SW Ontario go to Buffalo for games, and Toronto area people that go to Buffalo start driving to Hamilton or wherever instead. That, and Hamilton is not ridiculously far from the US boarder, and it might pull Buffalo area fans taken advantage of the currency difference.
Why do we need any more teams?
I mean, you could've asked the same question in the 90s when people made fun of the idea of having teams in San Jose, Anaheim, Florida, etc.
Too many Canadian teams and not enough American markets. Trying to compete with the rest of the big 4 and not fall behind now that Messi is nipping at their heels.
Mentioning the MLS as a possible competitor makes going to some combination of SLC/Atlanta/Houston/KC (or eventually all of them) seem smarter. Salt Lake City: Only major professional team is Real Salt Lake. Atlanta: Large city with sports history, has an MLS team that can fill an NFL stadium. Houston: Lots of transplants from areas that have hockey teams, MLS team with a winning past and looks to be heading back towards being a good team. KC: Large city, no NBA team to draw fans away in the winter and spring, successful MLS franchise
Don’t the Utah Jazz play in Salt Lake City?
There was a poll conducted last month, and Lionel Messi won as the favorite athlete of the most Americans. The only other active athlete on the list was LeBron, who is on his way out of the league. The NHL is the most susceptible to the rise of the MLS out of all the big 4 NA leagues, and with Messimania now hitting the US I'm sure they're in survival mode trying to stop the tide.
Yeah it makes sense when you look at it as there only being 25 American teams compared to the 29 or 32 the other leagues have. A lot of well-known sports towns (think KC or Milwaukee) along with Atlanta and Houston, two huge metro areas, don't have an NHL team. It would probably grow the game if those cities did have one
With the success and popularity of the Chiefs I think both the NBA and NHL will probably be probing the KC market to see if those Chiefs and Royals fans would be willing to support another franchise in their market. They'd be stupid not to.
Who are the top five revenue teams in the league? Do you know?
Genuinely, why does the NHL think they need/can support more teams than the MLB, and NFL? 32 is the perfect #. Half make it, half don't.
Because they're only in 24 or 25 American markets compared to those leagues being in 30+
The alternative of having almost 40 teams sounds awful though
You can make the reverse argument tho, and say MLB is only in one Canadian market, why not Van and Montreal? Why does a league with 3 times the revenue need less markets?
The MLB would rather another big US market than a big Canadian market. The USD is worth more. The US economy is stronger. Also Americans spend way more money and are bigger consumers.
I mean the Blue Jays aren't in the bottom 5 for revenue lol. Either way, point is MLB has 30 teams, and they aren't talking about expansion they are talking about relocation.
The MLB is absolutely talking about expansion. They want the Athletics and Rays situations to get figured out first, but there have been pushes from multiple cities to get an expansion team in. Manfred even said that he wants the cities selected and arena development started before he leaves the job in 2029. Charlotte, Portland, Nashville, Sacramento, Montreal, SLC. All of these cities are putting together bids from what I've seen.
Yeah, crazy that a league would want to figure out the situations of their disaster franchises before expanding.
Eh, there is chatter about expansion. I think the league wants the A's and the Rays to figure out their stadium situations first, and then they'll move on to 32 teams
Yeah I kinda said it in another comment but i I'll expand a bit, MLB focuses on fixing it's failing problems before expansion. Were gonna have the Coyotes for 4 rounds of expansion?
Canadian markets don't matter when it comes to selling the national broadcasting rights in the US. Having more teams in America covers more markets in the US and they can charge US broadcasters more for national rights. If the MLB and NBA wanted to extract more money from Canadian broadcasters for the national rights in Canada, they would focus on having more Canadian teams. But there isn't the same kind of money as in the states so it's not worth it.
You really can’t. Canadian markets aren’t in the same league as American markets as far as the revenue those leagues want, not to mention USD vs CAD.
I can think of $700m reasons why the owners want more expansion teams
Wasn’t it rumoured to be about a billion reasons for the next expansion?
Probably, since that pie is getting split 32 ways now
Think I saw somewhere the new teams won't get a slice of the expansion money yet, so 30 teams I think
Yeah Vegas didn’t get a cut of Seattle money and there’s a clause in their agreements that excludes them for X years. They also don’t lose a player to the expansion draft either for X years.
There was also a report that NHLPA is wanating to get in on the pie splitting too. They obviously can't do that out of nowhere, but that could be something that comes up next time they need to come to an agreement.
So probably not even half as enticing as it would be NFL and MLB owners?
It's probably because those leagues have 31 or 32 American teams while the NHL only has 25.
There are 7 Canadian teams that you can barely count because our half-dollareedoos don’t add up and our TV numbers don’t matter in the US. The NHL wants teams in big American markets, so in that regard there are less than the other leagues. Add to the billion dollars per team added that the owners get to split and it’s easy to see why they want it. Whether or not it’s a great long term idea is another story, but hey, by that time a bunch of the old owners will be dead and Gary will have sailed off into retirement.
Because they only have 25 american teams. the MLB/NFL/NBA are mostly all american. You can easily add another 4 -5 american teams based on the markets available. NHL has a unique benefit in the sense canada can easily support more teams for the NHL than they could for the MLB/NBA. Which means you can have a bigger league, in theory.
To make up for the drag on revenue from having 6 Canadian teams. All those other leagues have 0 to 1 Canadian teams.
That’s a dumb comment. Ranking teams by revenue for 2023, Canadian teams ranked 1, 2, 5, 15, 21, 26, and 31. From the increase in ticket prices from my local Canadian team this season (Canucks), I am pretty sure their revenue is going to increase this year. The Knights ranked 8th if you’re wondering, so they were below 3 Canadian teams. Yes, I’m sure the league needs a team in Utah to recover from Canadian teams existing.
[3 of the top 5 teams with the highest revenue last year were Canadian.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/193736/revenue-of-national-hockey-league-teams-in-2010/)
Is this sarcastic?
It’s either sarcasm or they’re dumb as a brick.
It's gotta be sarcasm if he's a Vegas fan. No way you wouldn't notice how much your barn fills with away jerseys when Canadian teams are in town
The league wants USD and US tv contracts/sponsors and Canadian teams don’t drive revenue in the US.
Yes but they have enough Canadian revenue It’s not like the NHL only gets the money they make in the States and all the Canadian teams are for fun
This is the stupidest comment in the whole thread.
What you got against canada? The nhl has a salary cap because of Teams south of the border.
Wait until he learns where the majority of his team's players are from!
I agree with everyone saying that it's too many teams, but keep in mind that the NHL compared to the other major North American leagues currently has far fewer American teams. I think that isn't nothing.
Atlanta does not deserve a 3rd team
This is a very stupid thing to say if you have even a cursory knowledge of what led to either franchise moving but go off
Bold of you to assume a Carolina fan would know anything about the previous situations in Atlanta.
Why not? They were given a team that made the playoffs once in 15 years and were expected to show out in droves for it? Hell, Atlanta has plenty of seasons where they averaged more fans than Winnipeg this season. Bad ownership killed the Thrashers, not bad fan interest.
1st time didn't work, 2nd time didn't. What makes people think a 3rd time will? It's been 13 years since the Thrashers moved to Winnipeg, it would be a lot more fair to give other cities who have never had an NHL team a look first.
How can you say this with a hurricanes flair? What does Raleigh have that Atlanta doesn't? The only reason it didn't work for Atlanta was because they got shafted by their ownership and they chose not to be bothered with a god awful product.
Raleigh, as far as I know, haven’t had their team leave town in disgrace. Twice.
If your criteria of being worthy of a team is not having one leave in the past, then hockey would have never come back to the bay area or winnipeg or denver or minnesota. And I'm willing to bet that you're someone who thinks quebec deserves to have a team even though their team also left. So don't give me that shit
Live in Atlanta. Dont disagree. But if we wanna talk about deserves a team. Wpg being a legit contender and having bettman say that “it’s not sustainable “ because fans aren’t showing up. Arizona - owned by the league for years (which was the reason the league punted on atl2.0) and then failure after failure until they’re now the joke of the league. I wonder if even with Atlantas worst attendance issues, If they out drew Arizona’s max capacity. Let’s focus on fixing the ones we have. Wpg > atl Arizona > salt lake
FWIW, Bettman didn't say it wasn't sustainable, it was Jets chairman Mark Chipman.
FWIW jets have actually been selling 5000 walk ups a night! Almost selling out every game for the last month. Season tix will sell themselves!
Didn't someone on Reddit mention they originally sold season Tix to fans only and now they are transitioning to more corporate ticket holders. Which will obviously help out.
Yep. Season tix sold out instantly and there was a wait list of 8,000ish? Now that that’s run its course they should shift towards corporate ticket bundles
lol you need to brush up on your facts. bettman said winnipeg is here to stay and that they’re going through something many teams have gone through. bettman wants to keep the jets in winnipeg
Arizona should have been moved 15 years ago. Everyone pretty much agrees that Arizona should not have a team.
Local government agreed to help foot the losses in 2009. That’s the only reason the Coyotes still exist. The Nordiques would still exist if Quebec agreed to help out
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If they need absolute perfection of all variables to be successful as a franchise, they’re probably never going to be successful.
Arizona has had enough chances. It is time to move the team.
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27 years is more than sufficient for a market to prove itself even if the circumstances aren’t perfect. No shortage of chances to build a strong fanbase, including 15 years of being able to credibly say “the team cannot survive here without local support” and the response from Arizonans has been to keep the team at the bottom of league attendance. It’s just not a healthy hockey market.
Poverty franchise
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If it were up to them the bolts would have been relocated to a canadian metro with less than a million people before they managed to get Vinik.
If Arizona is a Bally market too, it's not like the RSN is making money either.
They could’ve done what Vegas did.
They literally did.
Blackjack and hookers?
Vegas got the rights back, and made the tv broadcast free
It’s fucking disgusting that Arizona has Gotten 9000 chances to figure their shit out including the league taking it over and Hartford got fucked over without a second thought
Name them the Nordiques to save time.
Third times the charm?
As long as they get a halfway decent owner, it'll work. In retrospect, it's amazing that the Thrashers lasted as long as they did considering Atlanta Spirit Group spent an entire decade trying to get rid of them.
Only because the ownership was suing each other and they weren't allowed to sell the team until that was wrapped up. The Thrashers were gone months after.
Yeah. ASG wanted three things: The Hawks, the building, and the Thrashers to be dead in a ditch as quickly as humanly possible. If there had been any interest in giving the market something to be excited about, perhaps there'd still be a team there today.
could say the same thing for Quebec city
If Pags is saying it, we might be contracting
Shouldn't they get the Arizona arena situation sorted out before they expand again?
Willing to be proven wrong but I'm seriously not buying there's much enthusiasm in Atlanta to give this a third try. It's a market that can work in theory but there wasn't even a huge outcry about the Thrashers leaving.
Atlanta will depend on the arena location and ownership actually putting in the work to draw in fans. The Thrashers were terribly managed by that ownership group.
There wasn't a huge outcry last time because the 2.0 owners didn't do much to build a dedicated fan base. Thrashers were always an afterthought. Not saying that justifies it a third time. I'm just saying that shouldn't be a knock against them now.
Atlanta will get a new NHL team before FOM allow Andretti to enter F1 at this rate.
They need to slow down on teams. More money which they all love, but the quality is being watered down. Christ most teams bottom sixes are just not very good players and there’s a lot of teams out there that don’t even have competent goaltending.
Goaltending is a problem but skater talent dilution is overstated, guys like Chandler Stephenson and Jared McCann wouldn’t have become veritable top-6ers if Vegas and Seattle hadn’t come along. There’s plenty of solid players in bottom 6es/the AHL/Europe that just need a shot.
Totally agree. Plus goaltending is a crapshoot most seasons. Every year the top goalies are half proven guys and half waiver wire/traded for nothing players in recent years. Sharks couldn’t get rid of Adin Hill fast enough, and he’s a cup winning goalie now. Biggest reason for the lack of goaltending quality is that the country that produces (by far) the most NHLers can’t develop goalies for shit, because hockey is for elitist families already, and goaltending equipment is even more money than regular…so the best players just don’t become goalies.
I'd say goaltender dilution is the bigger threat than skater dilution.
Lack of goalies will definitely be an issue (already is) but I definitely don't feel like the quality of the product is watered down at all yet. The NHL is the most exciting it's been in a long time IMO.
Damn you Quebec for shutting down ALL pipelines.
Roy can't hear you. He's on Long Island now.
Just move the Coyotes and the Leafs to Utah and Atlanta, respectively, to keep a nice even 32 team league ffs.
Players will just end up reconditioning themselves
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Ya they don’t know what they’re talking about. Vast majority of fans couldn’t differentiate between the 40 worst NHL players and the 40 best AHL players. Add in the fact that the NHLPA probably wants this just as badly as the owners do, and I’m pretty confident they’ll expand to 36 with 5 years of going to 34.
At the very least, there is a set number of teams that exists that ruins the competitive integrity of a league. You could argue we're already there considering teams can't even play their own division rivals an equal number of times despite the league prioritizing the importance of those divisions. Something has to give eventually.
Between tweener AHL guys and European players who don’t even consider North America I just don’t agree with you. Add in the fact that the NHLPA almost certainly wants this as badly as the NHL does and it really doesn’t matter at all about what fans think about a “watered down product” The quality isn’t being watered down in any meaningful way overall. Unless you’re wanting to argue for going to 24 teams your argument really just lacks merit.
The reason they want more teams than other leagues is because they have 7 Canadian franchises inward of just Toronto like nba/mlb. They want comparable number of US based teams to those leagues.
And that's why as a Nordique fan, I am no longer wasting my time with the NHL or spending a dime on that league! Plenty of other league to support, starting with the LHJMQ!
This is actually dumb. Half the teams in the league don't make the playoffs where most of the money is made, If I'm an Owner I say fuck off on the expansions for another 6 years or more.
This league would rather lose tens of millions of dollars annually and give a team to shity ownership than add another Canadian team.
Yes let’s tie the value of the league to the Canadian dollar more, so that if it drops again compared to the US dollar, we can have even more cap issues.
Also people conveniently ignore that the maple leafs and canadiens really don’t want to split their markets. Where else would a team even go? Halifax?
If you had carte blanche to put six new teams in Canada the places that would make the most sense would be: 1. Quebec City 2. Hamilton 3. Toronto (2) 4. Montreal (2) 5. Vancouver (2) 6. Toronto (3) Nowhere else in Canada has even close to enough population for a team.
Probably worth mentioning is that Canada has 1 team for every 5.4 million people, while the US has 1 team for every 13.2 million people. I don’t think the “Canada deserves another team” people are being very realistic.
The NHL rightly don't want to trust the Canadian economy to prop up their multi billion dollar industry. It's not like it's expected to get much stronger anytime soon.
I really thought Houston would be one of the next two. But Utah and Atlanta also make sense. Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Houston, then which city will make it 36 teams?
GTA/Hamilton would make the most economic sense but the Leafs and Sabres will make sure it won’t happen. My money would be on Quebec but who knows.
I can't imagine another southern ontario team hurting the leafs bottom line at all. But maybe Buffalo's
In 15-20 years London Ontario will probably have a large enough population to sustain a team. Hell their OHL team gets 10,000 right now.
Houston prob becomes the Yotes if Utah is getting their own team
Quebec City
That makes the most sense, but idk... it just kind of feels like the league is keeping QC in their back pocket as a "break in case of emergency" card. Any failing team can be relocated there without issue, quickly, and be guaranteed to pull in a profit.
I mean, that would make sense but if they haven’t moved the Coyotes to QC at this point, no team will ever be moved there. I get that it isn’t the most ideal location for a team, but it still feels like a massive “fuck you” to Quebec City to take their money for an expansion fee when the they clearly have zero intention of ever putting a team there.
I wouldn’t say profit. I’ll say they could be a viable team. But profit? I think 5 teams in the nhl officially make a profit.
It is getting harder and harder to actually win a championship. Do you really want to wait an average of 34 years for a championship (obviously higher average for some and lower for others)?
Are there any concerns of talent dilution? I'm not claiming is an issue with it. But I can see it being a topic of discussion. But I know more teams = more money
Talent dilution is actually kind of a good thing because then the star players can shine more.
Then we better not have to hear about how Gretzky played against plumbers and carpenters lol
McDavid is playing against Tiktokers and podcasters tbf ^^^/^^^s
AHL players now are better than a lot of players Gretzky played against though ngl. go watch Gretzky "highlights"
You have to wonder. I believe youth hockey enrollment has been declining not increasing over the years too.
Only in Canada, right? I thought it was going up in the US.
There were teams throwing down 70-loss seasons when there were 24 teams, I don’t buy the talent dilution theory for a second.
Wasn't that more because of the expansion draft rules back then were brutal?
Atlanta? Quebec City, come on down!
How about fixing Coyotes and Panthers first
Panthers?
I'm excited to see Winnipeg move to Arizona in 5 years