What makes a great hockey market?

The Toronto Maple Leafs – who wouldn’t want to be like them? Sure, Habs fans in this world would scream “ME!” at this question, but follow me on this one. The Leafs have not won a Stanley Cup in 40 years, and it’s been awhile since their last playoff appearance, but they are still the most profitable team in the NHL. People from Newfoundland to British Columbia bleed blue and white, and though they will be the first to heap criticism on their own, they will forever be Leaf fans. They pass on their Leaf allegiance to their children, who then pass it on to their children. The Air Canada Centre sells out just about every single game, it’s virtually impossible to get season tickets, and Maple Leaf fans dish out hard-earned money for ‘nosebleed’ tickets. The Leafs organization is just rolling in the dough, so which team would not like to enjoy this kind of success?

Which brings me to what everyone has been talking about lately: hockey markets. There have been whispers for awhile that the NHL will be expanding within a few years, and it has been confirmed that AEG is building a new arena in Las Vegas that can house hockey or basketball franchises (or both). And then there are the existing franchises that are on the verge of relocating because they are in poor hockey markets.

What makes a good hockey market? I think there are basically two things that all teams need: fan support and corporate support. It’s not enough to have casual fans – teams need to have fans who have hockey knowledge and who are willing to spend money on tickets and merchandise. If you’re a new team in the area and the ‘fans’ are cheering for every goal scored – even the ones scored by the visiting team – you’re in trouble from the get-go (this should have been Nashville’s first clue). If a team cannot draw a decent number of fans for each game, then there will be little corporate support, and the franchise is in the toilet.

Nashville is the current problem market in the NHL. The owner of the Predators, Craig Leipold, has been losing money on this team since day one. The biggest problem is that there is no fan support, so there is basically no corporate support. Leipold invoked a clause in the arena’s lease that says that if the team draws an average of less than 14,000 fans per game for 2 consecutive years, then the team can break the lease with the arena. Last year, the Predators played for less than 14,000 people per game, and if 2007-08 follows the same path, bye-bye lease.

Leipold wants to sell his team (and hand off the money pit to someone else) and the biggest fear is that the team will leave the city. First, Jim Balsillie made a ridiculous offer to buy the Predators, and then promptly made arrangements with the kind people of Hamilton to bring the Predators to Ontario in the near future – that deal with Leipold quickly disappeared, since Balsillie just couldn’t play by the rules. Soon after, a group of investors (mostly Nashville locals) decided to buy the team to keep it in the city. It now looks like that deal is close to crumbling because of issues with the lease.

My two cents on this situation is that Nashville is not a good hockey market. It’s hardly a market at all. Sure, there are Predators fans in Nashville, but I don’t think that there are enough of them to support an entire franchise. If a business continually loses money, they don’t hang around just because of the few customers that stop by on a regular basis. The NHL should cut their losses now, get out of Nashville and go into a city that has a good market for hockey. I don’t blame Gary Bettman for expanding the league to southern markets in the 90s to capitalize on the 'Wayne Gretzky effect', or whatever you want to call it, but I have the feeling that he doesn’t want to admit that he was wrong. A lot (if not most) of these franchises are suffering financially, and this is only bringing down the entire league.

If I was commissioner, I’d put a halt to any talks of expansion. The NHL is simply not ready for more teams. There are so many franchises that are in trouble and their problems should be addressed. A number of teams need to relocate in order to strengthen the league, and these relocation cities should be in proven hockey markets (not ‘experiments’). I’d put together a committee to look into possible relocation cities, and I would put a focus on Canadian cities – Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Quebec City, Halifax. Who knows, maybe two or three of these cities would be great NHL markets that could boost league revenue.

And as for Las Vegas, I’d avoid it like the plague. Any professional sports franchise in that city is risking scandal. A lot of athletes like to party and gamble, and Vegas will be too tempting for some – especially with the Las Vegas Strip being literally a block away from the new AEG arena.

Pre-Season Predictions: Central Division

The Detroit Red Wings are always a threat in the race for the Stanley Cup, and this year won’t be any different. They lost Schneider, but immediately signed a capable defenseman in Rafalski – he should fit in nicely with the likes of Chelios and Lidstrom. The Red Wings still have a nice little trio up front that should give the opposition headaches; it’s hard to believe that Zetterberg, Holmstrom, and Datsyuk were drafted so late in their respective years. And don’t forget Hasek, who proved last season that he’s still got the goods.

I predict that the Red Wings will win their division by a mile, and they might even make it to the Western Conference Finals again. Considering how well they played last season, and how they few changes they made this off-season, expect big things from Detroit.

Now there’s the Nashville Predators. Last season, they played extremely well and probably should have made it to the second round of the playoffs, but San Jose stood in the way. You would expect good things this year, but that won’t happen. The team has been essentially blown apart, with their best players either traded or leaving before disaster strikes. They still have some pretty good players in Hamhuis, Weber, Radulov, and Dumont, but they lost Timonen, Hartnell, Kariya, Forsberg (unless he resigns), and Vokoun.

It seems stupid that the Predators would completely unload their talent when have a winning team, but it has to be in order to (1) not lose as much money this year, and (2) facilitate a move to another market. I think that putting a team in Nashville was a bad idea to begin with because it is simply not a hockey market, and Craig Leipold’s finances seem to agree because he has lost about $70M on this franchise. The average attendance was under 14,000 this past year, and if they can get the same record this coming season, the Preds will be able to break their lease and move out of town. Why not help things along by having a somewhat crappy team? I really don’t think that Nashville will be around for the playoffs this year.

The St. Louis Blues is a team that has fallen on hard times, but I like some of the guys on their team. I haven’t really seen them play as a team, but I watched a number of them play for Team Canada at the World Championships this past summer. Brewer, Jackman, Mayers and McClement really impressed me. They’ll also have some fresh faces on the team, like Erik Johnson and Paul Kariya, and veteran player Tkachuk is back for another go at it.

I don’t know of the Blues will actually make the playoffs this year – I expect them to finish between 9th and 11th in the conference. But who knows? Head Coach Andy Murray is an extremely likeable guy and capable coach (I was uber-impressed with him at Worlds), and he could very well make a huge difference this year and get the team into the post-season.

The Columbus Blue Jackets have never made the playoffs, and they won’t be breaking that trend this year. Longtime GM Doug MacLean got his walking papers this spring because he failed to make the team better, but his replacement Scott Howson hasn’t done anything this summer to better the team either. Maybe he has something up his sleeve, but that sleeve’s looking pretty empty to me. I’d like to see Nash and Zherdev play better hockey (especially the latter). I’d also like to see Voracek play a few games to see how he’ll do after a great year in Halifax, but don’t get me wrong – he’s no Sidney Crosby or Jordan Staal. He very well might get a chance with Columbus, but I expect he’ll be back with the Mooseheads this fall.

Evan Grossman said that the Chicago Blackhawks could be the next “Pittsburgh Penguins” and I tend to agree. Years of poor performances gave them high draft choices, and the Blackhawks are on the upswing as a result. Toews has proven to be a skilled player who can perform under pressure (hello World Juniors ’07). Kane is also an offensive threat, and hopefully his size won’t give him trouble at the NHL level. But it’s not just the rookies that will bring excitement to Chicago: they also have Ruutu, Havlat, Khabibulin, and a number of young defensemen who are looking good. Hopefully Samsonov will regain his Calder Trophy-winning play and not be the disaster we saw in Montreal. Will the Blackhawks make the playoffs this year? Probably not, but they’ll be thisclose.