NHL jumping the Atlantic?
It’s now widely known that Gary Bettman and Bill Daly are considering expanding the NHL to include European-based teams. “As time goes on, you’ll see us making increasing movement into Europe,” Bill Daly said in an interview.
Sure, it would be exciting to watch the Buffalo Sabres face off against the Prague Bullfrogs and see our Montreal Canadiens run up the score VS the Helsinki Fighting Cheetahs. But the idea is just stupid! Why? A couple of reasons:
1- Travel: It’s just too expensive. Unless you have enough teams to make up their own conference, the airfare is just too much.
2- Talent: The NHL is already considered the best hockey league in the world, with every other league considered “second tier”. If you mesh both and water down the talent, the NHL will just be another second tier league.
3- Soccer: Gary Bettman does realise that if the NHL does move to Europe, it’ll be competing with the most popular sport there, right? European soccer is played during winter, they have almost the same schedule as hockey here.
4- STUPID STUPID STUPID!: They have a tough enough time fielding 30 competitive teams here in North America and an even tougher time filling up 30 arenas, so adding more teams just makes no sense right now. Unless they’re adding teams in proven hockey markets (i.e Quebec City, Manitoba etc), then there is no need for it at the moment.
Drop the idea and focus on better marketing the teams we have now. Bigger isn’t always better…unless we’re talking about beer pitchers at MadHatters.
No Comments
No comments yet.
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
