there were actually FOUR teams originally, but this fact was somehow lost on the author.

Posted by Waverly from alberta on 07/25/08 at 02:35 PM ET

If there’s one thing that I will EVER say in favor of expansion, it is that there is more hockey talent than ever in the world right now.

Unfortunately, the other reasons that expansion is damaging and bad for the game far outweight that one reason that supports it.

Posted by Nathan on 07/25/08 at 03:00 PM ET

If not for expansion, would Anders Eriksson have been in the NHL last year?

The answer of course is “No”, and of course this means that no, expansion DID dillute the talent pool.

Look, the world talent pool has grown considerably… but still it’s not even with older times when it comes to the NHL.  There are a lot of NHLers who wouldn’t have NHL gigs right now if not for the last round of expansion teams.

Posted by Primis on 07/25/08 at 04:04 PM ET

Never trust the comments that follow a lead-in of, “we are so sophisticated and know more than ALL other fans, so it is our obligation to enlighten the great masses of the ignorant unwashed like the British bringing their gift of civilization throughout the world.”

Arrogant?  Just a touch.

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 07/25/08 at 04:24 PM ET

“Wild fans are the most sophisticated fans of any NHL team.”

I stopped reading after that. Ok, I actually kept reading and his ending to the article is even worse than the beginning. Nothing like crapping on people for being proud of past glories while having no current glories of your own to hang on to.

Posted by Shane from Saskatoon on 07/25/08 at 04:39 PM ET

Nothing like crapping on people for being proud of past glories while having no current glories of your own to hang on to.

Michael Farber doesn’t care about that.

Posted by SYF from Las Vegas, NV on 07/25/08 at 05:21 PM ET

On reading Tom Lynn’s bio, I wonder where he gained his expertise. He wasn’t even thought of during his comparison era. Is he trying to justify his existence??

“Prior to joining the Wild, Lynn, 39 (3/20/68), worked as an attorney in New York for five years at the law firms of Proskauer Rose LLP and Winthrop, Stimson, Putnam & Roberts. During that time, he had extensive interaction with the business of sport and the NHL practicing management-side sports law, representing both leagues and teams.

A native of Syracuse, New York, Lynn played hockey from time-to-time for Yale University from 1986-88 before transferring to LeMoyne College, where he graduated cum laude with a degree in Philosophy in 1991.”

Posted by Ted from Innisfil, Ontario on 07/25/08 at 06:42 PM ET

Wow, that’s a pretty disingenuous comparison right there.

If you made a graph of the general talent level required to play in the NHL over the years, it would be steadily increasing (due to the factors Tom listed, among others) with jumps whenever the league started taking more foreign players and dips whenever the league expanded.  Comparing the start and end of that graph glosses over so much detail that whatever effect expansion had on the league gets totally washed out.

Posted by Ryan from Toronto on 07/25/08 at 07:22 PM ET

his methodology is flawed.  the simple way of looking at it is what would the average talent in the league be if you lopped off 2 teams.  the answer is: higher.  quod erat demonstrandum, case closed, there’s the door, take your spreadsheets and get out.

Posted by bitterguy on 07/25/08 at 07:46 PM ET

This column is right on. The vast majority of people crying about expansion come from north of the border. These neanderthals and xenophobes think the era of straight sticks, uncontrolled thuggery and dump and chase hockey as being the golden years. If you look deeper into the anti expansion argument it really is an anti-American argument disguised as traditionalism. Your column hit the nail on the head, the NHL was entirely Canadian in 1951. It is now down to 55% and dropping. That explains the increasingly shrill nature of the anti-expansion crowd. It is merely Canadian insecurity about loosing control of “its game”.

Posted by Tero from Tacoma on 07/25/08 at 11:54 PM ET

I love it when generally accepted truths get blown up for the BS that they are.  Then when people’s realities get shattered they fight back with personal attacks.  The facts of the article are irrefutable.  Old geysers that go on about the good old days rolled their eyes when old guys said the same thing when they were kids.  In terms of sports, the kids are almost always right.

My next favourite myth was that the Canadiens had an unfair advantage in drafting Quebecois players which helps account for their many Stanley Cups.  This awesome article by Liam Maguire beats that myth to a pulp: http://www.liam.ca/ed20040319.html

Posted by Jerry from Prague on 07/26/08 at 03:31 AM ET

Old geysers that go on about the good old days…

I know I hate it when the geysers fight back. Someone always winds up getting scalded by the hot water.

Seriously, this “argument” may actually be true, but it is so poorly developed that it’s impossible to figure out what his points are in this scattershot piece of fluff.

First, along with annointing Wild fans the most sophisticated of all, he claims that is due to growing up in Minnesota.  So the Wild obviously have no out-of-state fans, and anyone who didn’t grow up in the state that might as well be a southern Canadian province can’t possibly comprehend hockey as well - now that is just stupid, ignorant, and irrelevant right there.

But after that, he points out that the athletes are better because they train all the time and are full-time professionals by the time they are 18.  This would be relevant if the bad hockey players weren’t also full-time professionals by the time they were 18.  Just because you spend a lot of time training and watching your diet and working out doesn’t mean that you will be any good.

But the argument about expansion often doesn’t boil down to the individuals who play it, but the team strategies.

As expansion teams came into the league, and as teams go into a rebuiling phase now, they are going to start off by being horrible.  It’s just the way things always happen.  The problem is that horrible teams can’t retain players as easily when the become free agents if they get tired of losing and don’t think the team will build into a level of competence before they retire, they can’t bring in fans to increase their revenue and meet targets for growth so they can maintain eligibility for revenue sharing and survive financially, they can’t draw the corporate and community support to increase funds and gain the support for money from the local government for support and for building new rinks, and they can’t keep their coaches employed.

If you increase the number of samples drawn from a population, the mean level of a parameter will become more like the mean of the population as a whole.  If the parameter is hockey talent (however you choose to measure it), the results are the same.

And of course, many talented players never had a chance to play in the NHL because they were too small, and a bigger, slower, less-talented player was taken by the team instead to beat on people who were smaller and more talented.

There are just too many threads in his argument to knit into any coherent whole.  It’s just a mess of meddled thinking.

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 07/26/08 at 06:42 AM ET

The “original six are the only REAL hockey teams on earth blah blah blah!” people do piss me off.
With each expansion, average salaries go up, because suddenly an average player gets bumped up a little on the totem pole of players as less skilled players fill in the spots down below.

Of course a season with only 6 teams again would be AWESOME.
Superstars would have to be on the same team. You figure 30 teams. each have at least 3 good players, thats 90 players, fit them into 6 teams and each team has 15 awesome players. And that isn’t counting some teams that already have more than 3 good players. That would be one AWESOME season haha. Maybe Gary will try that next season lol.

Posted by Stewart on 07/26/08 at 09:41 AM ET

Fun fact: there were actually five founding members of the NHL.  Quebec didn’t play for the first two years.

Posted by Doogie2K from Calgary on 07/26/08 at 03:07 PM ET