We had that "can baseball be saved" thread, so I thought we could do one for the sport that always needs the most saving of all. So any ideas pertaining to rule changes, expansion/relocation/alignment, marketing, throw them out.

I think the league footprint is worth exploring, because they fucked it up so badly and the whole Southern Hockey Experiment debate always generates a lot of heat. I've never been against the NHL putting down roots in big markets where hockey won't be hugely popular per capita, but it has to be done with some foresight and planning, which Bettman and the Board of Governors never saw fit to do. The other proviso is that that shouldn't come at the expense of the medium-sized northern cities that were the heart and soul of the league. Still, the league wanted to get to 30 teams, so we have to get there.

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Honestly, move the team out of Phoenix to somewhere back north, and move Columbus somewhere that isn't Columbus. I think there's enough following in Florida to justify both teams being there (although, much like the Devil Rays, they have transplant fandom issues), but the team in Miami appears to be back on track and Tampa is in better shape than they were 5 years ago.

I don't think rules changes are necessary, I find the league to be more free flowing than it was in the heyday of the Devils winning Cups with the dump and chase.

I would say you need more presence in Canada, so moving Phoenix to Quebec would work. Let's move Columbus to, say, I don't really care where. Honestly, I think it would be in the league's best interest to contract at least 2 teams. The ones I truly identify are Phoenix and Columbus, so fuck it. They're gone. Instead of having 2 conferences, let's just call it 4 divisions with 7 teams each:

East: Boston, New Jersey, Montreal, Rangers, Islanders, Tampa, Miami
Central: Pittsburgh, Philly, Toronto, Washington, Ottawa, Carolina, Buffalo
Midwest: Chicago, Detroit, St Louis, Minnesota, Dallas, Winnipeg, Nashville
West: San Jose, Anaheim, LA, Vancouver, Colorado, Calgary, Edmonton

Season structure would be 7 games against each team in your division, and 2 games against everyone else, so you're going from 82 to 84 games in the regular season.

Playoff format would still include 16 teams, but the first 2 rounds would be based on the final division seeding. Semi-finals would be seeded 1-4 based on record of who comes out of the division rounds.

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The issue with Miami/Florida, to me, is that it isn't Miami. The Panthers used to play in downtown Miami with the Heat, but they scurried up to Broward County as soon as they got some cheap land out by the Glades. I never understood the distinction some insist upon between "Miami" and "South Florida," but now that I've spent time there, I get it. Broward is a cultural vacuum that represents everything insidious and icky and dumb about American suburbia, and it's this sprawl, not Miami, that the Panthers are out to represent: the ten-lane highways to nowhere, the gated communities of little cinderblock cottages where everyone owns a boat, the uneasy sense of placelessness that you get when everyone is from somewhere else and wants to create a private little facsimile of Somewhere Else but with nice weather. Let me tell you, it's a mindfuck to walk past a faux-Cuban strip mall with a Philly cheesesteak stand and a Brooklyn pizza parlor.

It would be great if the Panthers, or Los Panteras, actually tried to make overtures to the Hispanic population, but all they want to do is sell travel packages to Habs games and set up big corporate suites so that the curious South Floridian phenomenon of the idle nouveau-riche can live large on some unspecified person/corporation's dime. Their television ratings are horrifyingly abysmal; they're estimated to get about 2,000 households a night and they lose to infomercials. They're not back on track. They were never on a track. They're a waste.

Columbus doesn't really subtract from the league but certainly doesn't add anything. They're only there now for the grace of a government bailout wherein the county bought their arena, which they stupidly built down the street from Ohio State's identical arena, and worked out some dual-management agreement with OSU.

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Any fix that doesnt involve bringing back the Nordiques and the Whalers can be thrown in the trash can.

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Would you contract the Panthers, and keep Columbus around?

I truly believe that contraction is more necessary to fix the product than it ever was in Major League Baseball.

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If had to choose 2 teams to get rid of it would be the Coyotes and Panthers.

I think the Jackets stlil need more time. They've had like one playoff season in their franchise history. They seem to be on the right track now with that team so lets see what some winning can do for their fanbase.

Yea, keep Columbus.

I agree about losing some teams. No point in relocating to me unless if you reallyyyy wanted to then at least move them to Canada.

I feel the talent is watered down and it's not just a hockey thing, it's all of sports. It's just hockey can't afford it.

I don't really follow the business of hockey so I'm just kind of talking out my ass here. Anyone know if Wisconsin has any interest in a team?

Less southern teams, more Canadian teams, learn how to market the sport better. Don't let a channel like Vs carry vital playoff games.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

My issue with Columbus is that it sucks as a town. I think they would be better served in a larger metro area, even Cleveland or Cincinnati.

Phoenix for hockey has been a bad idea for the last 20 years. That isn't changing anytime soon.

Hank: I love the idea of moving a team to Quebec City. Hartford was a bad idea for an NHL team, and it still is. Too close to Boston, and too much of a Bruins fan base to truly allow another NHL team to thrive. Even in reading on the history of the team, that fact is full acknowledged.

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The VS thing was terrible. That goes back to the 04 lockout. Just dumb. Bettman screwed the pooch on that whole deal because the lockout was one of the things that really turned ESPN off the product, which is sad, because the NHL was a staple of the early days of the network.

Now that they've rebranded to NBCSN, it's starting to get to more places. I know on DirecTv, it was moved to the main sports station section about a year and a half ago. And their coverage is good.

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They need to start with a young fan base and somehow get kids and families more interested. I don't know how they'd do it or pay for it but I think it would pay off for them.

I know the Whalers were doomed from the get go but I always dug their jerseys.

I have always had odd 'other team' obsessions. When I was younger I liked the Whalers and Senators, then it was the Coyotes (because of Roenick) and then it became the Caps because they had some good playoff battles with the Pens and I have a friend that is a huge Penguins fan.

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This was a good place to start:

http://www.nhl.com/kids/pages/street001.html

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They need to get off NBC Sports too. Get on a real channel that shows sports besides golf, bowling, volleyball, and women's softball.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

So let's suppose Bettman didn't totally bungle the 1995 CBA the way he did. He totally screwed up negotiations and had to be bailed out by the rich owners who, surprise, came up with a CBA that let rich owners do whatever they wanted. This utter lack of foresight eventually cost us three teams and a full season. So let's say they get the salary cap/rollback they wanted and some way to account for the Canadian dollar. So Minnesota (and yeah, let's say that move never happened either; a hockey league without Minnesota is like a football league without Texas), Quebec City, Winnipeg, and Hartford are all preserved. That opens up Dallas and Denver for expansion, and even Phoenix if you want to go about it with some modicum of planning. It could have worked if they got their Scottsdale arena and owners who weren't crooks.

Seattle should have gotten a team on several occasions, but in the '90s they were hijacked by the owner of the Supersonics, who prepared an expansion bid so that he could show up for the proposal and say "never mind, there is no proposal," thus preserving Seattle for the Supersonics, who ended up leaving anyway. Seattle has wealthy, educated, tech-savvy people (DUH), which is what the NHL covets and needs, so that should have been an expansion team somewhere down the line.

I'd like a ninth Canadian team. Hamilton always wanted a team; the owner of Tim Hortons made a bid for a team, but the NHL has been sabotaging Hamilton interests for years now out of deference to the Maple Leafs. Halifax might have been interesting had they built an arena that was large enough and had the revenue sharing necessary, but they're on Atlantic Time, and that makes scheduling really wacky. So I don't know.

So for a 28-team league, you could go:
Smythe: Los Angeles, San Jose, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Denver, Seattle
Norris: Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Minnesota, Winnipeg, Toronto, Dallas
Adams: Boston, Buffalo, Hartford, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec, Hamilton or Halifax
Patrick: New York, Long Island, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington, Tampa Bay

Three home and three away against each division team (36)
Two home and two away against the other division (28)
One game home or away against the other conference (14)
Six games in which you double up on other conference teams. For the Original Six, this would ensure that the Blackhawks, Maple Leafs, and Red Wings play the Bruins, Rangers, and Canadiens home and away every year. It could also do the same for the WHA teams (Edmonton and Winnipeg, Hartford and Quebec) or some Expansion Six matches.

That gives you 84 games, and let's say four preseason games because few things in this world are more tedious and useless than preseason hockey. 1-8 seeding in the playoffs.

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Think about it though. ESPN doesn't want them. What other national network can devote the time to them that NBC does? CBS Sports Network sucks. FS1 is too busy focusing on MMA to care about anything else.

And when it comes right down to it, this is how a new network grows. Having a Chicago/Boston final last year didn't hurt, either.

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I really thought Backstrom's Geico commercial was going to be the ad that put hockey on the map in the States.

Thumbs up for the old school division names

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As a former resident of Wisconsin, albeit the state line area, here's the story. Hockey is very popular throughout Wisconsin, kind of a Minnesota Lite (and really, what else is Wisconsin but Minnesota Lite?) -- with the notable exception of the Milwaukee area, where a lot of the state's population lives. I mean, sure, you'll get Hawks fans and Wings fans here and there, but the whole pond hockey/prep hockey culture isn't really there like it is around La Crosse or Eau Claire. SE Wisconsin is more college basketball territory -- you know, because they play for the love of the game and try hard out there and know the fundamentals AND ARE WHITE OR AT LEAST NOT SCARY-BLACK IN CASE YOU DIDN'T GET IT -- or just Packers Packers Packers all day every day. So there's just no way to accommodate the dilemma of all the hockey fans being north and west of Milwaukee. Madison has a pretty popular college hockey program. I feel like that's as good as it's ever gonna get. The Ads were fairly popular as an IHL team, but the crowds have been dismal as a Predators feeder, which you really can't call a surprise. Even the most passionate hockey fans in Wisconsin seem to think the window on a four-league Milwaukee has closed, and the only way the NHL comes in is if the NBA goes out.

The real tragedy is that the Bradley Center was built for hockey and not for basketball, and it shows. Lloyd Pettit married into the Bradley family, and so they gifted Milwaukee with a hockey arena that Bill Wirtz wouldn't let a hockey team occupy.

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I suppose if we're playing God, we could have kept the NHL on ESPN, but Shapiro hated the NHL (and seemed to hate anything that wasn't scripted or poker) and gave them an insulting offer just to lose them. While it's been a rough start with OLN/Versus, I think the NBC Sports brand has some prestige behind it.

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Thanks, CH.

Seattle it is!

I remember reading about Shapiro in the book.

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Really?? Even if they do a fantastic job with the product that's not really the word I'd use.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Actually, they don't do a fantastic job at all, but "NBC Sports" sounds better than the Outdoor Life Network.

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Agreed.



Also they need to get an analyst like Charles Barkley. I'm pretty sure like 15-20% of TNT's NBA ratings are solely because of him. Best studio analyst in the history of televised sports.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

They need better marketing

I don't dispute that, but at least the program is in place.

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They've tried to cultivate that with Jeremy Roenick, but the problem with Roenick -- and really, all these guys -- is that they're all in too deep on the hockey fraternity to speak some truth for the little people and risk ruining relationships.

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The NBA is the same way. That's why Barkley is our national treasure.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Yes, Hartford was sandwiched between the Bruins and the Rangers/Islanders/Devils, but if you could have marketed the NHL properly, there's no reason why they couldn't have had their slice of New England. Look at Raleigh, where they ended up. There are three major college basketball programs in one small city. I think New England could have managed two hockey teams.

Where it went wrong for the Whalers was just how poorly run the team was. To wit: they hired Pierre McGuire to coach the team and he has since gone down in history as one of the worst coaches in the history of the league. They drafted Chris Pronger only to trade him for Brendan Shahahan, who himself was promptly traded for spare parts. Even when they were a decent club in the '80s with Ron Francis, Kevin Dineen, Joel Quenneville, etc., the divisional playoffs just meant they routinely got crushed by vastly superior Boston/Montreal teams. While the Whalers suffered from benign incompetence under the original ownership, they were actively sabotaged by Karmanos and Rutherford, who had no intention to keep the team in Hartford and intended to move to Auburn Hills, Raleigh, or an abandoned aircraft hangar in Columbus until such time that a real arena was built.

Also, the Hartford Civic Center was a dump and still is a dump. It's one of those buildings where there's not a good seat in the house.

I guess what it comes down to for me is that while Hartford wasn't a perfect market, it's still vastly preferable to Raleigh.

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