The 2007 Stanley Cup Finals

[Guest Vitamin X]

That's true. I had an ex that lived there, off of Lincoln. At least where she lived, it was the pits. I didn't care much for the rest of the city, either. It was like Bakersfield with more people and less cow dung.

[USC Wuz Robbed! 0]

Oh Bakersfield... now that is a terrible town. I heard they were trying to improve the town, but you can't polish a turd and make it something else.

[Guest]

The Predators have a new owner. They're probably moving.

[CanadianChris 0]

Yeah, Balsillie got a team after all.

 

I wonder if he'll move them to Winnipeg. Moving them to Kitchener-Waterloo is a non-starter.

[treble 0]

Yeah, Kitchener makes no sense. My guess is he takes them to Kansas City since he can get a good deal there, but I don't see them being any more relevant there then they are in Nashville.

[Guest]

When he was trying to buy the Pens, he laughed off all suggestions that he would move the team to Kansas City.

[treble 0]

How much of that was not wanting to piss off the Pittsburgh fans, though?

[Guest]

Well, he clearly wanted to move the team, but when asked about KC he laughed it off. That's what I was trying to say.

 

This guy has no intention of keeping the team in the US. If they don't let him move it to Ontario, he'll pull out of the sale or sell them himself, at which point someone will step in at a much lower price and move the team anyway. The only chance that the Predators have of staying in Nashville is if they average 14,000 tickets sold per game. If they do that, it'll be very hard to move them.

[treble 0]

I know he wanted to move the team, I just wasn't sure of the context of where he laughed off the notion of moving to KC. Was it at a press conference in Pittsburgh or just an off the cuff-type comment.

 

Kitchener-Waterloo is his first choice, obviously, but I can't see the NHL making it easy for him to move there. I don't think they'd outright not allow it, but they'd probably make him pay off the Leafs and maybe the Sabres, too, kind of like the Nationals had to do with the Orioles. And where would they play for the first few seasons? Hamilton? The OHL arena in Kitchener? Hey, that's another thing, the Rangers owners probably don't want an NHL team coming into their area. Winnipeg and Kansas City probably make the most sense, and if he doesn't want to go to KC and is dead set on moving them to Canada, I'm thinking they would try and steer him towards putting the team in Winnipeg.

[Guest]

I know he wanted to move the team, I just wasn't sure of the context of where he laughed off the notion of moving to KC. Was it at a press conference in Pittsburgh or just an off the cuff-type comment.

Don't remember.

[CanadianChris 0]

Kitchener-Waterloo is his first choice, obviously, but I can't see the NHL making it easy for him to move there. I don't think they'd outright not allow it, but they'd probably make him pay off the Leafs and maybe the Sabres, too, kind of like the Nationals had to do with the Orioles. And where would they play for the first few seasons? Hamilton? The OHL arena in Kitchener? Hey, that's another thing, the Rangers owners probably don't want an NHL team coming into their area. Winnipeg and Kansas City probably make the most sense, and if he doesn't want to go to KC and is dead set on moving them to Canada, I'm thinking they would try and steer him towards putting the team in Winnipeg.

Winnipeg is the only Canadian option that makes sense. They have a decent population base and an arena already in place (even if it is small by NHL standards).

 

I'm wondering if he's even looked into the feasibility of a team in KW, because I just can't see it as an NHL market. It's about half as big as the smallest market in the league (which I believe is either Calgary or Edmonton), and it's mostly known as a university town, so there aren't necessarily a lot of deep-pocketed folks. It'd be like giving a franchise to Syracuse. I went to school in Waterloo, and it's one of the last cities I could ever see with a major league sports team.

[Guest George's Box]

I wore my Ducks jersey to school yesterday

Hey Mr. I'm-Such-a-Fan-That-I-Shit-Pucks, the proper term is a sweater.

 

The Predators should move to Milwaukee or Winnipeg. If you can get Milwaukee to embrace NHL hockey, that would be a great market, but it's kind of iffy, since it's a fair-weather town excluding the Packers. Winnipeg is a sure thing when it comes to starving for the NHL, which I can't say for Kansas City other than the Sprint Center management starving for a tenant. Anyway, I hope that Nashville loses this team fast, and that many more botched expansion teams are soon to follow. Maybe we can go back to having hockey in places where it snows. What a concept.

 

Oh, and the other dimension to this sale is that it frees up Craig Leopold to buy the Bucks from Herbie Kohl.

[Star Ocean 3 0]

Yes, I can see that everyone else is outraged by my misuse of terms. I understand your anger.

The point of that post wasn't me trying to prove I'm a real fan. Le sigh.

 

- and the answer is the Portland Predators, for the same reasons the Penguins should have gone there if they moved at all.

[CanadianGuitarist 0]

I say jersey. But that doesn't make Czech wrong.

 

 

I was kind of surprised to hear they were going to be sold, although the subsequent idea of the sale of the Bucks to Leopold kind of puts it into perspective. It's kind of hard to believe they weren't doing so well financially, wasn't it? I mean, Nashville doesn't reek of 'hockey roots', but they put a pretty complete team on the ice, with lots of components to success. They had some marquee players in Kariya and Vokoun, and Leopold's playoff guarantee the year before the lock-out seemed to me he was serious about building a winner.

 

Where do the Titans play? If it's Nashville (although I thought it was somewhere else), my final case is blown to pieces.

[Guest Vitamin X]

- and the answer is the Portland Predators, for the same reasons the Penguins should have gone there if they moved at all.

 

What he said. It sucks not to have an American Northwest team in the NHL.

[CanadianChris 0]

Where do the Titans play? If it's Nashville (although I thought it was somewhere else), my final case is blown to pieces.

Indeed they do.

[Guest George's Box]

It's kind of hard to believe they weren't doing so well financially, wasn't it? I mean, Nashville doesn't reek of 'hockey roots', but they put a pretty complete team on the ice, with lots of components to success.

When your season ticket base is under 9,000, it gets pretty easy to believe. Anything less than Wayne Gretzky still doesn't draw flies until the playoffs in the Bettman towns, and even then, I'm not sure the Predators were packing the house without copious comping. It was a bad idea, and let's hope that the Nashville Predators can become a distant memory soon. (CG, what do the Titans have to do with the Predators?)

 

I wouldn't be opposed to the NHL in Portland, especially since that would bump Minnesota back to the Central with Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit, where they really ought to be. However, I'm really pullin' for Winnipeg here.

[CanadianGuitarist 0]

It's kind of hard to believe they weren't doing so well financially, wasn't it? I mean, Nashville doesn't reek of 'hockey roots', but they put a pretty complete team on the ice, with lots of components to success.

(CG, what do the Titans have to do with the Predators?)

 

I'm of the school of thought a team is more likely to be succesful financially if they're the only show in town. Had the Titans not played in Nashville (which I eluded to), it would have added to my case.

[Prophet of Mike Zagurski 0]

The Ducks games sold out fast and I'm sure the Ottawa games also sold out in a short amount of time. I didn't get any tickets.

[CanadianChris 0]

The Ottawa games sold out in 15 minutes. They were selling only one specific section of seats on the website, and those sold out in four minutes. I was lucky to get the pair of tickets I got to Game 3.

[USC Wuz Robbed! 0]

Will the Blackhawks ever be competitive again? *Puts on Ducks sweater*

[Vigo 0]

Kitchener-Waterloo is his first choice, obviously, but I can't see the NHL making it easy for him to move there. I don't think they'd outright not allow it, but they'd probably make him pay off the Leafs and maybe the Sabres, too, kind of like the Nationals had to do with the Orioles. And where would they play for the first few seasons? Hamilton? The OHL arena in Kitchener? Hey, that's another thing, the Rangers owners probably don't want an NHL team coming into their area. Winnipeg and Kansas City probably make the most sense, and if he doesn't want to go to KC and is dead set on moving them to Canada, I'm thinking they would try and steer him towards putting the team in Winnipeg.

Winnipeg is the only Canadian option that makes sense. They have a decent population base and an arena already in place (even if it is small by NHL standards).

 

I'm wondering if he's even looked into the feasibility of a team in KW, because I just can't see it as an NHL market. It's about half as big as the smallest market in the league (which I believe is either Calgary or Edmonton), and it's mostly known as a university town, so there aren't necessarily a lot of deep-pocketed folks. It'd be like giving a franchise to Syracuse. I went to school in Waterloo, and it's one of the last cities I could ever see with a major league sports team.

 

You don't look at an individual cities population you look at the metro area. For example, Edmonton's city population is 730,372 but when you're talking about the metro area, which includes places like Sherwood Park, Beaumont, etc. it balloons up to 1,034,945. Same thing with Kitchener-Waterloo, the city's individual population matters very little it's the area where said city is that's important and Kitchener is located in Canada's most populated area. The fact that they have a metro population of 451,235 means very little. Winnipeg has a metro population of 694,668 but it's pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

 

The Leafs and Senators have very little say about a team moving to Kitchener/Waterloo as it's outside there 80km territorial rights so if Balsillie does move he won't have to pay either team any cash due to stepping into their territorial area. Sure, the Leafs might whine and cry about it but ultimately they can't outright block the move.

 

This is pretty much a foregone conclusion. The Predators will be moved as Balsillie didn't buy a team to so he can lose millions of dollars every season like Leipold has been. The move to Nashville was a bad idea. Deciding where a team goes just because they have an arena already there shouldn't be the main focus of deciding where you're going to move a hockey team. The Predators are a perfect example of this. So will Kansas City get a hockey team? Probably, but it will be an expansion team and not the Predators.

[treble 0]

I don't think he'd move to Kansas City just becaus they have an arena, it's just that the people who built the new arena really want a team to play in there and would probably give him (or anyone) a sweetheart deal if they moved the team there.

[World's Worst Man 0]

The only other city in Ontario that has a large enough population to reasonably have an NHL team is Mississauga, and that is only twenty minutes from Toronto, and essentially IS Toronto as far as the Leafs go. Putting a team in K-W, surrounded by Leafs country, and the pocket of Wings fans in the Southwest, would be ridiculous. Winnipeg or Portland would be just fine.

[Guest George's Box]

Mississauga is just a mega-suburban sprawl like Anaheim/Orange County, Nassau County, North Jersey, etc., right? I'm of the belief that ANY team in the populated part of Ontario would be a hard sell, so that rules out Mississauga, Waterloo-Kitchener (by the way, what happened to the Kiwanis Kavaliers drum corps? I think they folded), and Hamilton. If you've been a Maple Leafs fan all your life, why would you give that up to root for a team with a chrome-plated cat skull on its sweaters? Those cities are fine for junior hockey. When it comes to the NHL, that's been Leafs country for almost eighty years. Winnipeg makes the most sense. They fought harder than anyone to save their team, and have lamented its departure the most as well. I don't know if the MTS Centre can be expanded, but if you throw another 2,000 to 2,500 seats in there, they'll be good to go. 41 packed houses a year. Bank on it.

 

EDIT: Oh and the other problem with Hamilton is that the Copps Coliseum was built like 25 years ago and is no longer really a suitable venue for the NHL due to poor sightlines and crappy concourses and lack of luxury boxes, all that jazz, so now the place is in some Jethro Tullian too-old-to-rock-and-roll-but-too-young-to-die purgatory in which it's not big enough to host an NHL team, but is too vast and empty for the smaller and more intense junior hockey crowds.

[World's Worst Man 0]

Yea, Mississauga is essentially just a suburb, and it's just as fervently pro-Leafs as Toronto itself. Very few people would support another team in the GTA. Hamilton I'm not sure of, because they have their own CFL team, which leads to some backlash against Toronto, but I don't know where the hockey loyalties lie. In any case, it'd be silly to put another team near the franchise with the largest and most loyal fanbase in the country, especially when Detroit and Buffalo are also in the vicinity.

[treble 0]

I think the size of the MTS Centre is probably just right, based on what the Jets drew during their time in Winnipeg. I talked about it about 2 1/2 years ago here. The one link is dead, but the Jets never really drew that well. Sure, there'd be high demand for a team in the first few seasons if they went back, but based on history, a 15,000 seat venue is probably just right for the market.

[Guest George's Box]

You also have to take into account that the Jets were the drizzling shits for a long time (to this day the Jets-Coyotes have never won two rounds of Stanley Cup playoffs), and as much as Winnipeg loved its team, you can only go watch the Edmonton Oilers kick the crap out of them so many times before you spend your entertainment dollars elsewhere in Winnipeg, like

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

shit

[Vigo 0]

Yea, Mississauga is essentially just a suburb, and it's just as fervently pro-Leafs as Toronto itself. Very few people would support another team in the GTA. Hamilton I'm not sure of, because they have their own CFL team, which leads to some backlash against Toronto, but I don't know where the hockey loyalties lie. In any case, it'd be silly to put another team near the franchise with the largest and most loyal fanbase in the country, especially when Detroit and Buffalo are also in the vicinity.

 

You have to factor in the fact that folks can have more than one favorite team that they can support especially when it's so damn hard to get tickets to Leafs games. Ideally, if a team does move to Southern Ontario then you keep them in their current division that way you have a "Toronto" team in each conference. In addition, I'm betting that the Canadian fans who support Detroit and Buffalo probably do so cause they're Leaf haters and so probably have little choice when it comes to watching a live hockey game thus they adopt those teams since they're the closest. Another factor to consider is where the team is in terms of skill when it's moved. People like winners, so if the Predators are a playoff team like they are now when they get moved you'll naturally have an easier time attracting fans.

 

But really though I don't care where the team moves as long as it's to a Canadian city.

[treble 0]

That would probably scare the Leafs a lot, too. Having another team come into 'their' territory and winning a Cup. It probably wouldn't hurt them too much on the bottom line, but that's a big shot to your pride, especially with the Sens possibly winning this year.