Outside of the Phoenix situation, hasn’t the big talk been the cap going down due to the economy? Maybe this should be looked at as a slowing of the decline that a couple teams may need.

One of the embarrassing parts of Balsillie’s interview with McLean (other than the ridiculous setting) was that McLean tried to paint the potential salary cap affect a team in Hamilton would have as one of the big drivers behind the opposition.

That stupid question allowed Balsillie to smarmily question why it made sense to stop a team because it was too good of an idea that would make too much money.

Hamilton’s success isn’t other clubs problems. They either need to improve their product, business model, or realize they’re in a bad market (it’s either over-saturated or just doesn’t care about hockey).

Point is, the market isn’t saturated right now. Buffalo is 11th in league attendance by raw numbers, with their arena filled to 99.2% capacity on average. Toronto is 2nd by numbers, with an average capacity of 102.7%. The teams are 2 hours apart by car if you count the wait at the border. That’s about the same distance as the Senators and the Canadiens, the Flyers and Capitals, and the Flyers and the Devils. None of those 3 pairings “saturate” their market because there’s just enough distance between them, and there isn’t really any significant grey area in territory that I am aware of in any of those cases. But Hamilton is really close to being right in the middle, so you only have less than an hour’s drive between teams if a third one pops up in the middle.

A 3 team market in Toronto/Hamilton/Buffalo would be close to the saturation of the Greater NYC market of the Devils/Rangers/Islanders. But there are some drastic differences. The greater NYC market, which is the #1 NHL market in the US according to TV revenue, has about 18 million residents. By contrast, the combined populations of Greater Toronto (5,550,000), the Hamilton census metropolitan area (700,000), the Niagara region of Ontario (425,000), the Buffalo–Niagara–Cattaraugus Combined Statistical Area of NY (1,250,000), and Greater Rochester(1,000,000) only add up to about 9 million people. Granted, those 9 million people are far more likely to be hockey fans than the 4.3 million people in Phoenix and even the 18 million people in the NYC metro. The Sabres and the Leafs have their attendance at comfortable levels currently; but in NY one or more of those 3 teams has been in the bottom 5 in attendance for 20 years (there was one exception, where the Devils were 8th from last and the islanders were 9th from last). In fact, the Islanders have been in the bottom 3 of attendance all but 3 years in that 20 year span. Last year, the Islander’s average arena capacity was at 84.5% and they have the smallest arena in the league; NJ’s attendance was 89.6% of capacity, or 8th worst. Yes there’s other issues involved for the Islanders like bad drafts, management problems, and a decaying arena that the town won’t replace, but if there is too much competition in your market it’s much easier for a fan to abandon you after a couple bad years and never come back. It’s bad enough that they’ve taken steps to investigate a possible move to Kansas City by scheduling a preseason game there this fall… and that’s the market the Devils started out in 35 years ago, and left after only 2 seasons to high-tail it to Colorado. So if NY can’t support 3 teams, how is a market half the size of NY is supposed to? If there isn’t enough money/desire for tickets to fill the arena’s in greater NYC, I don’t think 20,000 more NHL fans will appear for 40 games a season out of the 700,000 person population of Hamilton. A decent percentage of Sabres fans come from the Niagara region of Ontario, a lot of people cross back and forth on such a regular basis that the economies are bound together. So if they do manage to rally up enough new NHL fans to shell out for 40 additional home games in that area, then the odds are still good that it’ll end up killing one of the 3 AHL teams in the area (Toronto, Hamilton, Rochester). I know that isn’t going to come up on the NHL’s priority list, but suddenly killing an AHL club is going to hurt the big club in the long run in money and in player development. Families who want to go to a hockey game in this market have options, so there’s a lot of competition even if the majority of those 9 million residents are hockey fans.

The problems with a saturated market don’t stop at population, there’s also the major issue of TV market share. MLB’s Baltimore Orioles only successfully absorbed the move of the Nationals to DC because they own the TV network that broadcasts the National’s games. Otherwise, the hit to their TV revenue had a real threat of pulling them under, even though one club is in the AL and the other in the NL in a very high population area. Three NHL teams competing for TV revenues when the number of TV households in the area won’t change, and you can pretty much guarantee somebody is going to lose money.

I don’t feel that this is a sensible risk to take for the franchise, the NHL, or the local economy up there. I think it’s pretty much a lock that someone is going to lose money or fail completely; and in a hypothetical case it shouldn’t matter which one it’ll be, the fact that it will happen to someone should put the brakes on the move before it happens. I’d much rather see the team move to a market with a better chance of supporting it. I’d rather see the NHL return to Quebec City than this idea (I know the Nordiques left, but they have a lot of residual WHA issues, and there were some horrible draft decisions); at least in that case, you would have a government that wants the NHL back and is willing to build a new arena, a temporary arena already there for the meantime, minimal to no market share competition, you have a built in rivalry with the Habs just waiting to be resurrected, and you have a city full of Av’s fans who would love some hometown hockey to root for after 14 years [I was there last year; the majority of people seem to have kept their loyalty to the Av’s to avoid supporting the Canadiens]. Even with the Nordiques many issues and faux pas that were made in their later years, they still managed to have their arena at 95% average capacity the year they were the worst team in the league, and in their worst attendance year they were well above the Islander’s current numbers. That option has flaws, but there’s other plenty of other options, that’s just one example. I’d still rather see those odds of success than see a relatively stable market get destroyed.