The Ideal NHL – Expansion AND Relocation of Franchises

Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

Expansion in the NHL has been a hot topic lately, and rightly so. After the mess that was the lockout-shortened 2012-2013 season, commissioner Gary Bettman talked about how the league was flourishing economically and that expansion could be considered within a few years’ time. However, recently he sounded less enthusiastic about expanding when he said that the two expansion front-runners – Seattle and Quebec City – will not be getting teams in the near future, at least not this year:

We’re not planning on expanding. We’re not in an expansion mode or formal expansion process. We listen when people say, ‘We’d like to come visit you and tell you why we’re interested and where we’re interested.’ Seattle, which seems to have the most number of people interested . . . the fact is, there’s no building that’s on the horizon. The person who controls the rights to build a building in Seattle is intent upon having an NBA team before he builds a building.

Though construction is already underway in Quebec City on an NHL-caliber arena, Bettman knows Seattle is a city that many are eager to see an NHL franchise in:

If we reach a point in time where we decide we want to go through a formal expansion process, then we’ll evaluate all potential applicants and opportunities. I get asked about Seattle far more than I get asked about Quebec City.

But lost in the expansion hype is relocation of NHL franchises. The last time relocation took place was 2011 when the former Atlanta Thrashers franchise was almost expedited off to Winnipeg to become the second coming of the Winnipeg Jets. Relocation is a little easier for the league to carry out. The decision on relocating the Thrashers from Atlanta came in the spring and by the fall, the Jets were already playing in Winnipeg. The Thrashers franchise had ownership and economic problems, so it made sense to move that franchise. But there are current teams that would be better suited elsewhere in the U.S. or Canada, and last year’s divisional and conference realignment may have been set up to accommodate two expansion teams in the Western Conference as well as paving the way for relocation to several new – and former – NHL cities.

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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.

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Relocation: Florida Panthers to Quebec City, Quebec

The Panthers franchise has had a tumultuous existence. In the third season since its inaugural 1993-1994 campaign, the Panthers made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Final where they were swept by the storied Colorado Avalanche. They never made it beyond the first round again in their entire existence, and even went 10 full seasons without making the playoffs before taking the Devils to 7 games in 2011-2012. The last two seasons have been a wash though, as they finished 30th and 29th overall in consecutive seasons. For a team that has had relatively no success in the last decade and basically all century so far, it is no surprise that they ranked dead last in attendance percentage last season (75.5%) and only averaged about 14,525 fans a game. It was even reported that the Panthers were losing $20-30 million a year, and the owner publicly stated that he was losing $100,000 a day. Ironically the founder of now-defunct Blockbuster was the man who decided to put his team in Sunrise, Florida back in the 90’s, so it’s also no surprise that one of his business ventures already failed and another is on a straight path to failure.

Moving the franchise to NHL-hungry Quebec City – which already has a building under construction – would have the franchise see tremendous success in a Canadian market. Canada deserves more than just 7 teams in the NHL and can definitely support more franchises. Canadians are clamoring for more after they got their Winnipeg Jets back, and now they want to make it two homecomings for their nation. And think about how awesome it would be to see the return of the Nordiques and their restored rivalry with the Montreal Canadiens.

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Relocation: Arizona Coyotes to Salt Lake City, Utah

There is no indication that Utah would support an NHL hockey club, but anything would likely be better than the fiscal failure the Coyotes organization has been as of late. After filing for bankruptcy in 2009 and being forced to sell the franchise to the NHL, former owner Jerry Moyes learned the hard way that NHL hockey just doesn’t work in the desert. The Coyotes were under NHL ownership until 2013 when IceArizona purchased the franchise. But that doesn’t mean attendance is any better. The Coyotes ranked dead last in average attendance last season with 13,776 attendees a game. They ranked 29th in attendance percentage but only because their arena is smaller than the Panthers’. Despite their recent playoff success outpacing that of the Panthers, it is a no-brainer that keeping the team in Arizona is only going to do more harm than help to the NHL, and it is unlikely that they will ever land a big-name free agent seeing as how not many players would want to play there.

Salt Lake City could be to the NHL what the Oklahoma City Thunder is to the NBA. When the Thunder moved from Seattle to Oklahoma City, it was unknown whether the small market would be able to support an NBA franchise. Luckily for the NBA, their experiment worked out, and last season fans filled the 18,203 seats to 100% capacity – one of eight in the league to reach full capacity. Salt Lake City could prove to be a victory for the NHL in that sense, as well as creating a regional rivalry with the Colorado Avalanche whose closest geographical rival – the Minnesota Wild – is almost 700 miles away by plane, and even more when traveling on land. The Avs, whose biggest rivals used to be the now-Eastern Conference Detroit Red Wings, could spark a rivalry with a new NHL team in Salt Lake City.

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Relocation: Dallas Stars to Milwaukee, Wisconsin

One has to think that Milwaukee, a city in the hockey-crazed Great Lakes region that has a metropolitan-area population of over 1.5 million people, could support an NHL team. The AHL Milwaukee Admirals garnered an average of almost 6,000 people a game last season, ranking 11th in the league in attendance. Much like the small-town Oklahoma City Thunder, Wisconsin has its own small-market-turned-success story in the NFL’s Green Bay Packers. The Packers are the only publicly-owned, non-profit franchise in all of North American professional sports. In fact, Green Bay only has roughly 300,000 residents in its entire metro area. Therefore the much more densely-populated Milwaukee, who somehow supports an NBA team despite lack of local interest (and as a result is at the bottom of attendance), should welcome a hockey team due to the fact that college hockey is played everywhere in and around Wisconsin. Meanwhile, Chicago and Minneapolis would become divisional and close geographical rivals for a Milwaukee team, with Detroit not much farther away.

The Dallas Stars are not as miserable as the Coyotes and Panthers franchises economically or in regard to fan support, but they are in the bottom ten in average attendance. Their attendance percentage is 84.1% and that puts the Stars at 26th in the NHL. They rank 23rd in average attendance with 15,590 a game, so their arena has a large capacity that just is not being filled. The Stars have been relatively competitive in their time in Texas, even winning a Stanley Cup in 1999 (not without controversy, though). However, the last few seasons have been up and down, as the Stars have had financial problems and missed the playoffs five years in a row before finally seeing postseason action this past season. The Stars have made an impact on the Dallas community, and Dallas is a large market in the U.S., but in the hockey world Dallas is simply not a hotspot for the sport. A return for this franchise to the Northern U.S., Great Lakes region would be an ideal situation for the league.

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Relocation: Carolina Hurricanes to Hartford, Connecticut

This one is a no-brainer in trying to get plummeting franchises back on track – go back to its roots. The Hurricanes moved to North Carolina from Hartford back in 1997. Raleigh, the current home of the Hurricanes franchise, ranks 27th in U.S. TV markets, while Hartford ranks 30th. There is not much of a difference there, but Connecticut is much more interested in hockey than North Carolina and would likely support a team better than Raleigh can. Filling just 82.9% of PNC Arena, the Hurricanes attendance is just as miserable as the team has been in the last few years. The franchise that cannot sign big-name UFAs with a last name other than Staal would likely be better off where it started.

The Hartford Whalers could make a comeback and it is likely that they would not let their team fail a second time (see: devotion to Winnipeg Jets 2.0). Attendance would not be an issue in Connecticut, especially during Bruins-Whalers and Rangers-Whalers games. Although one should not count on a new Hartford franchise cracking the top 10 in league attendance, they would more than likely experience an outpouring of support if given a second chance at having an NHL team. And if Atlanta got a second chance, then there is no reason why Hartford shouldn’t get one.