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If Toronto was to get a second NHL team.....

GenerationW said:
Agree that moving during a lockout is highly unlikely, but the main reason Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa are now making money is the rise of the Canadian dollar, not the salary cap. Buffalo's problems had more to do with the crooks who previously owned the team.

Even with specific ownership and/or arena issues, there weren't supposed to be medium-to-raging fires in Phoenix, Nashville, Florida, Atlanta, the Islanders and who knows where else if the cap worked as the NHL promised.
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Oh of course. It's not so simple to say that the salary cap saved the world, but it certainly helped stabilize those teams I mentioned and gave them a future that is at least more predictable. The entire league has been propped up by the Canadian dollar and obviously, if the dollar ever goes down to 70 cents again, the cap will reflect that and it'll be ccomparatively easier for those teams to cope.

The problems in the southern US would occur with/without a cap. If anything, the cap has made it worse for those teams because they're forced to spend to a minimum, which is probably beyond what they would have spent before.
 
^ I'll use Phoenix as an example to what I meant.

They operated this year within the salary cap (according to http://www.thefourthperiod.com/salarycap/phx.html they operated near the minimum at around $44 million)...yet they still lost (according to media reports) $30 million.

If they were trying to wipe out their losses by payroll (or other expense) reductions they would need such dramatic cuts that they would not be able to sign any real NHL calibre players, which would take away the incentive for fans to buy tickets and corporate sponsors to sign on so the spiral down would be worse.

Operating at the minimum as they are, their real path to black ink is to increase revenue.
 
ya Phoenix is a bit screwed, but I bet they'd prefer to spend 20mill on salaries. It wouldn't be unthinkable for a team on that type of payroll to do decent enough that perhaps they make the playoffs (and then make a pretty good profit off of each home game). I don't think the quality of players is the issue in Phoenix. Hell, most people in Phoenix don't know the difference between a great NHLer and an average one. One of my buddies plays for the Coyotes and he said that awareness of the team is virtually non-existent. His parents went to visit him and on their way down they were talking to some people on the plane from Phoenix and they didn't even know they had an NHL team.
 
Phoenix put its new rink in the wrong part of town, and now the NHL has the city by the cajones because the city wants to keep the Coyotes as a tenant in order to justify the expense. In other words, the city has to waste money on the team to prove the wasted money on the rink wasn't a waste of money.
 
I hate hockey but would love for Toronto to get another team just to be witness to the inevitable meltdowns that would occur on the various forums. It would be delicious.
 
When people talk about a second team in Toronto, they talk about it in a regional context. Whether it's in Markham or Hamilton or whatever, no one cares about artificial boundaries within this discussion.


Also, the reason why the Globe gave us a market viability of D- is because of the initial start up cost. Unless they play in Copps there's a need for a new arena and expansion fees. You're looking at $1billion up front easily. If someone is willing to put up that money then the market is clearly capable of supporting another team based on the 800,000 people who have said they have a very strong interest in NHL hockey but currently cannot afford to go to a game.
 
jn_12 said:
When people talk about a second team in Toronto, they talk about it in a regional context. Whether it's in Markham or Hamilton or whatever, no one cares about artificial boundaries within this discussion.
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I won't presume to speak for everyone as you do here, but surely a team in Hamilton would not be considered a second team for Toronto.
 
Well, I wouldn't be afraid to say that I've chimed in on this issue more than anyone on this board, and I've talked about this on other message boards as well (including the biggest and most knowledgeable hockey board on the internet - hfboards). And I can say that for many people, Hamilton is considered as much a Toronto team as a team in - let's say - Vaughn. In most people's books, anything under an hour's drive is considered local. Here's a question for you: How many teams does New York have? If you answer one then your opinion is exactly opposite to everyone who discusses the business of hockey. If you say two, then you're willing to concede that either boundaries or travel times don't matter because New Jersey plays in Newark and the Islanders play nearly as far away from Manhattan as Toronto is from Hamilton. And if you say three, then you'd be conceding defeat.
 
jn_12 said:
then you'd be conceding defeat.
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Defeat? So, if you make a good argument, present points that may not have been considered, and I look at it from your POV and decide you're right, you call that a defeat? I call that a discussion and open minded consideration of ideas. These are "discussion" boards, not debate teams - there is no defeat or victory.
 
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