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Not Going As Planned
by Paul on 05/24/07 at 06:56 PM ET
Comments (2)
from Al Strachan at Fox Sports,
This is a league that does not share its attendance revenues. So a Canadian team might draw well at home, but an American owner couldn’t care less. He’s not going to see any of it. What he does know is that Canadian teams are traditionaly the NHL’s worst road draws. An owner in a major American city doesn’t want to try to sell tickets for games against teams from places like Winnipeg, Quebec and Waterloo — or even Calgary and Edmonton for that matter. He wants visits from New York, Boston, Los Angeles and so on.
Now, once Balsillie purchases the Predators, the battle will be on. He will want to move that team out of Nashville and into Canada. Perhaps, down the road, some other entrepeneur will try to follow a similar pattern with the Atlanta Thrashers or the Florida Panthers, and some of the other cities that Bettman brought into the NHL.
And while Canada is a nice place, it’s not the place to be if you’re trying to establish your sports league as a major league in the United States.
This is what Bettman has wrought.
Filed in: NHL Talk | KK Hockey | Permalink
Comments
Would it have been too much to expect Bettman to exhibit enough foresight to start the Anaheim-Detroit game at 1 p.m. rather than 2 p.m. and thereby minimize the risk of such an occurrence?
Nice boo-boo there, Strach.
Posted by Michael from Columbus, OH on 05/24/07 at 10:25 PM ET
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Tough to take this guy seriously since he has such a long record of ripping Bettman for everything. He also is the nimrod who opened a press conference with Bettman by asking how many viles of anthrax security officials had confiscated from reporters after the NHL starting looking at reporters’ bags after 9/11.
Posted by Bruha on 05/24/07 at 06:52 PM ET