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The best way to regain the early 90's stature of the NHL is to get them off the Versus Network, and get them on a more high profile network, like ESPN.
And the best way to do that is to get a stronger fan base and corporate support for each NHL team.
And the best way of doing that is to relocate the weakest southern US teams to the northern US cities and maybe one in Canada.
Bettman, you tried the Sun Belt experiment; time to admit it was a failure.
lose the following teams: atlanta, florida, tampa, phoenix, anaheim, carolina, ottawa, dallas. bring back quebec. new teams in hamilton and/or winnipeg. try to go back to 21 teams, 7 canadian.
lose the corporate arena names.
bring back home ice advantage. small rinks. more cramped visitors lockers and benches. sell no more than 500 tickets to visitor fans.
Only improvement the NHL needs to make is force everyone to go to the bigger ice sheet, Olympic size. Get away from these small rinks where clutch-and-grab, dump-and-chase rule the day. Bigger ice favors skaters and puck handlers.
Only improvement the NHL needs to make is force everyone to go to the bigger ice sheet, Olympic size. Get away from these small rinks where clutch-and-grab, dump-and-chase rule the day. Bigger ice favors skaters and puck handlers.
Hate to agree...but just look at Olympic hockey. Very exciting up and down the ice action.
Strange... in my opinion all the Olympic hockey games that didn't take place in Vancouver or SLC were complete snoozefests, big ice creates an impression of slow speeds.
Maybe it didn't work everywhere, but if you wanna be a major league, that's how you do it. To be in a "big four" you need teams in Phoenix, Anaheim or Raleigh. Regional leagues are for lacrosse and indoor soccer, in the US hockey right now is more popular than ever and mostly due to Southern expansion, otherwise it would still be on par with biathlon as it was in the 70's.
Location: Moose Jaw, in between the Moose's butt and nose.
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I get mad when I hear those dis the Southern Experiment, especially here in (or close to) Vancouver. I don't want to get back to the days 20 years ago where the NHL was basically looked upon many more like the CFL, instead of somewhat close to the NBA, NFL and MLB.....sorry, up until 1991, there was 1 team in the US totally west of the Mississippi River....don't want to go back to that again.
Winnipeg, would be a huge mistake, if Phoenix went back there.
Phoenix can't/won't support its team and Southern California does not need two teams. I'm not even sure that Florida needs two teams, either. Having teams in the Sun Belt is fine, but they need to be realistic about it. And Nashville?!
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