The Canadian NHL teams aren't going to secede from the league and start a new Canadian league.
There won't be a Canadian pro hockey league starting up.
Hamilton's not getting an NHL team.

It's best to just forget about these ideas and move on.

The renovated arena will attract the same sports teams/leagues as always, but will now attract more concerts and other non-sporting events. That's perfectly fine.
 
berklon said:
The Canadian NHL teams aren't going to secede from the league and start a new Canadian league.
There won't be a Canadian pro hockey league starting up.
Hamilton's not getting an NHL team.

It's best to just forget about these ideas and move on.

The renovated arena will attract the same sports teams/leagues as always, but will now attract more concerts and other non-sporting events. That's perfectly fine.
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Yes and the USA will never join forces with its cold War enemy to become a fascist state and will never try to take over Canada, all this crazy talk of things that have like a bazillion percent chance of never happening!!
 
The idea of the Canadian and American NHL teams splitting apart is crazy far-fetched. And the idea of Copps/FirstOntario/Hamilton Arena becoming a secondary music-first arena and co-existing with another NHL-sized arena in Hamilton is also crazy far-fetched.

The NHL dream is very dead for the moment. But I would prefer to never say never. If there were a super-passionate person (Canadian or otherwise) with billions of dollars out there ready to be spent on a Hamilton NHL team, it could happen overnight. Unfortunately, that person does not seem to exist, at least at the moment.
 
I unfortunately think that the NHL (and sports leagues in general) are no longer cool with just allowing a motivated ownership group to buy and establish a team wherever. Starting a new team on a risky business model that ultimately ends up moving in a decade is what the NHL and others are trying to avoid, it is bad for business and franchise valuations, which is why they are slow walking expansion. I believe we are starting to see the leagues have particular destinations in mind to place a team, determined through market research, and they are okay to wait until the ownership group/arena deals are in place and they can be confident that a new team will be a 100% zero or minimal risk slam dunk in that market. I believe this is why we saw the NHL keep an expansion slot open after Vegas while the Seattle ownership group was getting their house in order, and this approach has worked so I expect them to continue like this.

Hamilton on paper would be the smallest metro in the league, smaller than Buffalo, Winnipeg, and Quebec City (which in itself is deemed “too small”, although Winnipeg and Quebec City are funnily enough on track to be larger than Buffalo in the next 5-10 years), but would have the benefit of drawing from the GTA and Southern Ontario, so size isn’t really a problem. I think the dollar is by far the largest obstacle right now, and it is no coincidence that we haven’t seen a new team in the country since the CAD was at or above parity with the USD. There are also very clearly many ownership groups that could buy a new team, there were many from the GTA that came out of the woodwork for the Ottawa Senators bid:
  • Remington Group (developer of Downtown Markham and behind the failed GTA Centre Arena project);
  • Kimel Family/Harlo Capital (condo developer in the GTA, formerly a shareholder in the Pittsburgh Penguins);
  • Andre Desmarais (former Co-CEO of PowerCorp);
  • Paul Rivett (former co-owner of the Toronto Star/Nordstar Capital);
  • Patrick Dovigi (CEO of GFL Environmental).
You could also potentially include Larry Tanenbaum/Kilmer Sports Ventures in this list of prospective ownership groups seeing as he is about to get bought out of MLSE by Rogers. So ultimately, prospective ownership does not exactly seem to be a problem, it’s the league approaching expansion with destinations that are already in mind (Houston and Atlanta, clearly), which will prevent a team from coming to Hamilton for the foreseeable future.

EDIT: Mixed up Larry Tanenbaum and Harold Ballard. Unfortunately a guy who has been dead since 1990 is not going to make a good prospective owner lol.
 
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ericmacm said:
I unfortunately think that the NHL (and sports leagues in general) are no longer cool with just allowing a motivated ownership group to buy and establish a team wherever. Starting a new team on a risky business model that ultimately ends up moving in a decade is what the NHL and others are trying to avoid, it is bad for business and franchise valuations, which is why they are slow walking expansion. I believe we are starting to see the leagues have particular destinations in mind to place a team, determined through market research, and they are okay to wait until the ownership group/arena deals are in place and they can be confident that a new team will be a 100% zero or minimal risk slam dunk in that market. I believe this is why we saw the NHL keep an expansion slot open after Vegas while the Seattle ownership group was getting their house in order, and this approach has worked so I expect them to continue like this.

Hamilton on paper would be the smallest metro in the league, smaller than Buffalo, Winnipeg, and Quebec City (which in itself is deemed “too small”, although Winnipeg and Quebec City are funnily enough on track to be larger than Buffalo in the next 5-10 years), but would have the benefit of drawing from the GTA and Southern Ontario, so size isn’t really a problem. I think the dollar is by far the largest obstacle right now, and it is no coincidence that we haven’t seen a new team in the country since the CAD was at or above parity with the USD. There are also very clearly many ownership groups that could buy a new team, there were many from the GTA that came out of the woodwork for the Ottawa Senators bid:
  • Remington Group (developer of Downtown Markham and behind the failed GTA Centre Arena project);
  • Kimel Family/Harlo Capital (condo developer in the GTA, formerly a shareholder in the Pittsburgh Penguins);
  • Andre Desmarais (former Co-CEO of PowerCorp);
  • Paul Rivett (former co-owner of the Toronto Star/Nordstar Capital);
  • Patrick Dovigi (CEO of GFL Environmental).
You could also potentially include Harold Ballard/Kilmer Sports Ventures in this list of prospective ownership groups seeing as he is about to get bought out of MLSE by Rogers. So ultimately, prospective ownership does not exactly seem to be a problem, it’s the league approaching expansion with destinations that are already in mind (Houston and Atlanta, clearly), which will prevent a team from coming to Hamilton for the foreseeable future.
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I agree with what you're saying, the NHL has been operating this way for some time now.

The irony of your statement, the first paragraph at least, is that in terms of safe, stable, profitable, passionate markets available to the NHL, Hamilton probably tops the list, yet they don't come here.

The world is very unstable, the NHL hasn't been overly concerned with Canada for years. Canadian's should move away from the NHL.
 
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This is awesome. I really, really, really hope that the city can do something to clean up the area around the Salvation Army, or at least have some seriously increased police presence during events to steer people away from the especially challenged spots.
 
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