The Ideal NHL – Expansion AND Relocation of Franchises

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Expansion: Seattle and Portland

The aforementioned expansion destination Seattle would be an ideal place to start a new franchise. Just last month Patrick Helper of TMMOTS wrote about Seattle and how an NHL-sized arena could be in the works. Chris Hansen, the investor most serious about bringing the NHL to Seattle, has gone on record saying he will only bring an NHL franchise to the Emerald City if an NBA team came first, making whatever hockey team he has a secondary tenant. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, seeing as how the New York Rangers – the second-most valuable NHL franchise and an Original Six team – is the secondary tenant in Madison Square Garden to the NBA’s New York Knicks.

Seattle ranks 14th nationwide in the top 100 television markets in the U.S. and it would rank 12th among current U.S. teams in the NHL. It would be a viable location for the NHL to expand to and the city itself has a population of over 640,000 people who would most likely embrace the fact that major league hockey is back in their city for the first time since 1924 (not to mention the rest of the state of Washington). That number alone surpasses the amount of people who live in Winnipeg. Seattle already has a major junior league team called the Seattle Thunderbirds of the Western Hockey League. They garnered an average of 4,427 fans a game, and although that seems like a shallow number, the attendance percentage in ShoWare Center was 73.5%.

Gary Bettman has tried (and in many ways, failed) to get Southern markets interested in hockey and he has tried to grow the sport where people just don’t care enough to fill the seats of NHL arenas or they don’t have the proper resources to be able to get their kids involved in hockey. But the Pacific Northwest is a different story, as many people in that region love winter sports. This is why the NHL should look at not only Seattle, but Portland, Oregon as well.

Portland is home to one of the WHL’s most successful franchises of the last few years. The Portland Winterhawks have made it to the last four WHL Finals in a row, their only championship coming in 2012-2013 before going on to lose the Memorial Cup to the stacked Halifax Mooseheads of the QMJHL. Portland averaged the second-highest attendance average of 7,329 just behind the Calgary Hitmen (8,252). The city ranks 22nd in the U.S. TV markets, ahead of successful NHL markets Pittsburgh and Buffalo. With approximately 609,000 estimated to be living in the city, plus others around the city, Portland would rank 18th in the NHL by population of the cities that call the teams home, one spot ahead of Vancouver.

Speaking of Vancouver, the Canucks presently do not have any regional rivals. They have the Oilers and the Flames, but they are a plane ride away. They have the Blackhawks, Sharks, and Kings, but those are playoff rivals. Now with Seattle and Portland having their own NHL teams, Vancouver would have not just one but two regional rivals. Canucks fans in these areas no longer have to travel all the way to Vancouver to watch games, nor do they have to deal with crossing the border just to watch NHL hockey. The Vancouver-Seattle-Portland set-up could grow to become just like Toronto-Montreal-Boston or New York Rangers-New Jersey Devils-New York Islanders. Pitting these cities against each other in professional hockey for the first time could prove to be just what the NHL wants it to be – a source of economic growth as well as exposure to the sport in a brand new area.