Written By Tom Schreier
Las Vegas bookmarkers say the odds are better that there will be 32 NHL teams in the 2017-18 season (1/1) then there will be 30 (11/4). In fact, they have 6/5 odds that there will be as many as 34 by that time. Ironically, one of those teams may end up in the City of Sin. Much has been made of possible NHL expansion ever since a report came out that expansion into Vegas was a “done deal,” but the league said that that was “not in our plans” and there was nothing new on that.
Still, expansion and relocation remain viable in the near future. As hockey fans in Minnesota know, a new team brings excitement to a city and, of course, the Wild play in a division of seven teams and other teams play in a division of eight. Because there are 14 teams in the Western Conference and 16 in the Eastern Conference, it’s easier to make the playoffs in the west and eventually the league is going to have to even things out. The question becomes where to put the teams.
The easy answer is to put a team in Seattle and Kansas City. Not only have both cities had NHL teams before — the Seattle Metropolitans (1915-24) and the Kansas City Scouts (1974-76) — but they are a perfect fit in the Pacific and Central divisions, respectively. This still leaves Quebec City and Las Vegas with an unoccupied arenas and the Toronto market underserved, however, so there is some maneuvering still to do. Right now, the best approach is for the NHL to put teams in Seattle and Kansas City, while threatening to move the Phoenix Coyotes or the Florida Panthers to Vegas and Quebec City, respectively, if they can’t put up good attendance numbers.
A Seattle team would have a natural rival in the Vancouver Canucks
A 2:30 hour drive and an international border separates Seattle from Vancouver, and the state of Washington already has hockey history. Reaching way back, the Seattle Metropolitans won the Stanley Cup in 1917 as a member of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association, but folded seven years later. More recently, three Western Hockey League teams have had success drawing major-junior size crowds in the Evergreen State: The Seattle Thunderbirds play in the ShoWare Center in suburban Kent, Wash., the Everett Silvertips play 30 minutes north of the city and the Spokane Chiefs play near Gonzaga University’s campus.
Vancouver already has two teams from Alberta in the division — the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers — and has built up animosity with all three California clubs, which are perennial playoff teams at this point. Seattle would be a nice liaison between Vancouver and California and local investors are interested in building an NHL/NBA arena in order to lure professional basketball back to the city.
While Washington is better known for producing basketball players than hockey players, it is a natural place to draw a crowd for a hockey game. Unlike California, Florida or Texas where it might be hard to get people to go inside on a warm day, Seattle is notorious for it’s rain. And, on top of that, the Seahawks, Mariners and even Major League Soccer’s Sounders are well supported by the city.
The Metropolitans’ rivalry with the Canucks would probably be pretty one-sided in the beginning, much like the Wild-Canucks rivalry (if you want to call it that) in the old Northwest Division, but it would be a start. And from Vancouver or even San Jose’s perspective, the league adds a team that isn’t too far away from them.
Adding a hockey team in Seattle should be a no-brainer.
Kansas City would bridge the gap between Colorado and Dallas in Central Division
Take a look at the Central Division on a map and two outliers stand out: the Dallas Stars and Colorado Avalanche. Chicago, Minnesota and St. Louis are all in the Midwest, making up the heart of the division, Winnipeg is just north of the Twin Cities and Nashville isn’t too far from St. Louis. But Denver and Dallas are out on their own. The Stars gladly will take the change, which keeps them out of the Pacific time zone, and the Predators are kind of close to Dallas (kind of…), but Colorado is really out there.
The Avalanche racked up miles in the old Northwest Division with flights to Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton, but they still don’t play any teams in bordering states. Minnesota doesn’t either, but only Iowa and Wisconsin separate the Wild from the Blackhawks and Blues whereas Colorado is separated from Minnesota, Missouri, Illinois and Texas by Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Oklahoma. Yes, technically Kansas would separate the Kansas City team from Colorado, but for sake of the argument let’s say that that teams plays in Kansas, which means that at least one road trip won’t be separated by one or more states.
Kansas City basically connects those two teams to the rest of the division. An interstate driver has to pass through Kansas City along I-35 to get from the Twin Cities to Dallas, and they will likely connect with I-70 at K.C. in order to get from St. Paul to Denver. Geographically, K.C. is a natural choice.
The major question is whether the city would support a hockey team. There is an NHL-ready arena in downtown Kansas City called the Sprint Center, which has been open since 2008, and the NHL has hosted preseason games there before, but it’s hard to judge until K.C. has a team to call its own. The Kansas City Scouts were an expansion team that played from 1974-76 before relocating to Denver and becoming the Colorado Rockies, and now they are currently the New Jersey Devils.
Like the league’s second foray into the Bay Area and Denver, this time it should work. The Scouts would have a natural rivalry with the Blues, and plenty of other Midwest teams surrounding them. Kansas City is also a progressive city that supports their MLS team in addition to the Chiefs and Royals. It might not seem like a natural place for hockey, but the same could be said about San Jose, Tampa Bay or even St. Louis before they had successful teams.
With good management and strong initial support, the second coming of the Kansas City Scouts could work.
Hockey tradition or a large city: Quebec Nordiques vs. Florida Panthers
Most dynamics regarding relocation and expansion are not simple, but this one is pretty straightforward: Quebec City is dying for a team after the Nordiques left for Denver in the mid-90s and Miami is not a great sports town to begin with, and even less of a natural place for hockey.
The Nordiques relocated to Colorado after the 1994-95 season and the Avalanche won the Stanley Cup the next year. The team that the Avs beat that year was none other than the Florida Panthers. After using a trap system to get all the way to the finals in only their third season of existence, the Panthers were swept in the Finals. They made the playoffs in three of the next four years, but have only qualified for the playoffs once since the 2000-01. Based in Sunrise, a suburb of Miami, the team has failed to gain traction in South Florida and often plays in front of sparse crowds every night. Miami itself is a notoriously poor sports town to begin with, but it’s a large city and the NHL likes having it as a part of their portfolio when they go and try to get television contracts.
On the other hand, Quebec City is a small market with diehard fans. The NHL can show records of sold out crowds and people will likely notice the noise on television, much like the situation in Winnipeg, but it’s not going to impress any cable executives. In short, it comes down to a business decision: Do you want the large market, even if the fans are relatively disengaged? Or do you want fans that will stick it through thick and thin, even if it’s not a great television market?
Or is there a compromise?
Eventually the NHL has to be open to the idea of splitting venues for certain teams. In Florida this will be tough because the Tampa Bay Lightning have a great following in Tampa, St. Petersburg and the surrounding area, but it might be worth having the team play 10 home games in Miami in an effort to make the Lightning “Florida’s team.” This is going to be a tough sell because Tampa and Miami should be natural rivals and rebranding the Bolts as the “Florida Lightning” may isolate a solid non-traditional fanbase in Central Florida.
The other thing to consider is that the Lightning averaged 18,626 fans, 97 percent capacity in the large Tampa Bay Times Forum, and the Panthers averaged 14,525, 75.5 percent capacity, in the BB&T Center in suburban Miami according to hockeyattendance.com. From a business standpoint, it might be a mistake to mess with the Bolts, at least in terms of gate revenue. If it helps rebrand the Lightning as Florida’s team, or even the team of the south — the Atlanta Thrashers relocated to Winnipeg, and the University of Alabama-Huntsville’s Division I program team hosted the Frozen Four at the Tampa Bay Times Forum — it might be worth the risk of upsetting a few fans.
The Atlantic Division is a natural place for the second coming of the Quebec Nordiques, where they would have a natural rivalry with the Montreal Canadiens, and two Florida teams are already very isolated in the division — the entire Metropolitan Division stands in between the Panthers and Lightning and the rest of their division rivals — but unless things really start going poorly in Tampa, there’s no reason to relocate the Lightning right now. There’s bound to be a hockey team in the Sunshine State there for years to come: The question becomes how many.
Can the NHL handle two teams in the desert?
The “shared teams” idea might be hard to pull off in Florida given the discrepancy between the crowds the Lightning draws and the (lack of) attendance at Panthers games, but having the Coyotes play a handful of their home games in Las Vegas should be a no-brainer.
While the idea of having a hockey team in Las Vegas has certainly been thrown around, it’s far from a good idea. Vegas is a vacation destination — basically Disneyland for adults — and while there are certainly people that call Sin City and the surrounding area home, it is neither a large market nor a tested sports market. It’s hard to see Vegas being any better than Phoenix, and adding another team in the desert doesn’t seem to make much sense. But there’s a remedy for that.
The Coyotes rank near the bottom of the league in attendance for a variety of reasons. First of all, the team plays in Glendale, not Scottsdale or Phoenix where the population is significantly larger. Add in multiple losing seasons and you have a recipe for disaster. The team is locked into a bad contract with the city for the long term, which means that while the team is unlikely to relocate, rebranding as the Arizona Coyotes isn’t going to change an poor situation.
A favorable compromise, however, could be made that would be equally beneficial to Phoenix, Las Vegas and the team as a whole: The Coyotes should play 10 games in Vegas.
The Coyotes don’t want to lose their base in Arizona — Phoenix is the 12th largest metro in the U.S., whereas Vegas is the 30th — but at the same time a significant part of that team’s audience is retired people from the Midwest or East Coast that go to games or watch them on television only when their favorite team is in town.
That’s where Vegas comes in. The biggest appeal of adding a team in the entertainment capital of the world is to create events around popular visiting opponents when they are in town. A Las Vegas hockey team is going to draw crowds on nights when teams like the Rangers, Bruins, Canadiens, Maple Leafs and Blackhawks are in town. This would be a way for the Coyotes to parlay a spike in attendance for novelty games in Vegas while also creating demand for seats in their own arena since there are less games.
This idea of a team having two homes would greatly benefit a struggling franchise, especially one that’s trying to sell hockey in the desert.
Why a team in Hamilton, or a second one in Toronto, is a bad idea
Toronto has the opposite dynamic going where unlike Phoenix, they have too much demand for their product. There is a long waiting list for season ticket holders, people gather in masses for away playoff games and American Airlines Center could probably double its capacity and still sell out every night. This for a team that, honestly, hasn’t been that much better than the Coyotes recently.
By no means would a team in Hamilton, Ont., which is about an hour south of Toronto, make the Maple Leafs irrelevant, but it makes little sense to split the passions of a fanbase that has supported their team through thick and through thin (well, mostly thin). A successful team in Hamilton isn’t going to keep the ACC from selling out, but it puts fans in a tough position: Do they support good hockey, or do they show their loyalty to the team?
A second team in Toronto is tempting, if only because of all the hockey fans up there, but it won’t be the Maple Leafs and people may end up showing up to games only to see a live game or a certain team. There are plenty of local offerings, especially at the junior level, that may suffer from a second hockey team, and there’s no sense in ruining what the Leafs have. It’s a unique situation and shouldn’t be taken for granted.
After all, everyone knows the old adage: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Could a team actually have two homes?
It’s time for the NHL to get progressive here. Moving hockey into Sun Belt states, especially to areas with displaced Midwest and East Coast fans, is in no way a bad idea, but the teams have to have good management. Years ago people probably thought it was crazy to have teams in San Jose, Raleigh, Tampa Bay, Los Angeles, Dallas and even St. Louis, but a good hockey team will put butts in the seats no matter where they play. Sure, certain fanbases are more loyal and will continue to fill the arena in building years, but even the Coyotes and Panthers would probably sell out if they had a string of winning seasons.
There would be some contractual things to work out in order to allow teams like the Lightning and Coyotes to play in Miami and Vegas, respectively, as arena lease agreements probably have a minimum game contract. But it would be worth looking into changing those policies if it is better for the individual clubs. Empty seats are good for nobody, even the television people, and the NHL has to be progressive in order to expand hockey into non-traditional markets and have it succeed. Las Vegas probably shouldn’t have a team, but it wouldn’t hurt to have the Coyotes playing the Maple Leafs of Blackhawks there once a year.
Sin City bookies feel that there will be 32 teams in the NHL by 2017-18, but what are the odds that two of them have shared homes?
Tom Schreier can be heard on The Michael Knight Show from 2-3:00 on weekdays. He has written for Bleacher Report and the Yahoo Contributor Network. Follow him on Twitter @tschreier3.