Thursday, January 22, 2015

Canadian Band - NHL Travel Tag Team for Outlander Canada

Will we (the league or fans) settle with Quebec City and Toronto2 in the vast lands of the provinces as the next expansion?  It's not new turf for the NHL.  Couldn't T2 be called something else like "Ontario" for a better broader market blitz?

Please make comments as to what you think would be a good name for a travel team that is essentially a tag team for towns in Canada that don't already have a franchise to call their own.

What would you say?:  What would you call an all-other-Canada team?
Canadian Band?   The Misfits?  The Rebels?  Outter Banks Mounted Patrol     The Bear Ducks     Mighty Pucks     Outdoorsman     Overlords?     The Moose Flock      the Gooses     the Meeses     the Hockeysexuals .... the Fightin' Anglo-Frenchies....not important to me right now.  The puck has to have a chance to land before deciding an encompassing name.
wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_outdoor_ice_hockey_games

What I'm interested in is the list of cities it could call camp.
A rink in every town, right?  In Canada.
Let's talk population and then let's talk which cities have rinks that could at least seat more than some parents and a few uncles.

Old Montreal Canadiens practice outdoors
Population in order of non-NHL cities:

The 9th largest area is Hamilton  -  in Greater Toronto
Kitchener                                                                                        All in Ontario
London
St. Catherines - Niagara

I might be funnin' for just a little bit and say that Ohio is so wonderful all of these places in Canada just want to be close.  But then I would have to give Cleveland a compliment.  But Who Dey and Go Reds.
Every place Canadian up there is close to Toronto.

wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_census_metropolitan_areas_and_agglomerations_in_Canada

Then the list goes on from hugging more of Ontario, stretching provinces coast to coast from Nova Scotia to British Columbia.  The areas of Halifax and Victoria having north of 300,000 people.  Would 3% of them attend a game.  Is there a facility big enough in those stretches?

If we had two Canadian expansions one could be east and the other west, with an adequate facility to be the anchors for a little more viewership in Vancouver and Hamilton.

wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_indoor_arenas_in_Canada

What are we going to define as "big enough"?  Does it have to be upwards of 13,000 seats for the typical NHL match?  Certainly, if a match were less frequent the desire and ticket price could be higher, certainly in Canada and the likes of Halifax and Saskatoon.


I would love some ice veined Canuck to tell me a thing or two about my spouting.


See more expansion, co-location and relocation talk for football, baseball, basketball, hockey and soccer on my blog http://prosportsexpansion.blogspot.com/ 

#NHLRelocate #NHLExpansion

1 comment: