woah, first off, st louis is not a mediocre market. they fuckin love the blues.

secondly, florida was a GREAT sell till they moved/the team sucked. their arena is in the middle of nowhere. its an hour north west of miami, off the sawgrass turnpike. on the other side of the street, literally, is the everglades. its the exact same reason why the marlins do so poorly, the stadium is in the middle of nowhere. and southern florida is super stretched because of everglades to the west, atlantic to the east. theres no central location. when the panthers played at miami arena in downtown, they sold out all the time. if the panthers were closer to civilization, they would do better. not to mention the team sucks. seriously, more people care then youd believe.

not saying they should have a team or its like montreal, but its not that no one here cares, its that its too tough to go to games, and then see the team blow. whats the point?

attendance numbers and TV ratings only tell so much of the story. you should really visit some of these places so you can get a realistic gauge of local interest. theres more to it then meets the eye.

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Well if people aren't buying tickets, and they aren't watching on TV...

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Proud LGBTQQ Individual

but thats not everything. if they put the team in accessible area, many games would be sold out, even if its snowbirds coming to watch the northern teams come in. and just as well, if the team was actually good for a change, people would watch on TV. remember when the sabres were having trouble selling half the arena in 2002-2003? its like that for every team. its not ideal, no. but i would bet my life savings the interest in southern florida is much more then say atlanta and a few other southern teams.

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I've been harping on that also Mike, just looking around and going to local ice rinks and playing hockey with some guys, the interest is there, but some of these people don't have the money to spend on tickets, and some don't want to be assed to buy the top cable/satellite package or a NHL ticket to watch games.

Attendance and TV ratings only go so far, if a team, doesn't even broadcast games on local TV and on cable networks, who cares to buy that channel sometimes?

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the problem with us northerners is we dont want the game treated as a novelty, and we assume its that way in the south. but at the same time, we have to get over ourselves.

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To some, even in the North, the game is a novelty. But there are those real fans who really do love the game as much as other Northerners.

That is the one thing, there are some of these southerners who really do care for the game and could tell you about things you thought they couldn't.

Hockey can work everywhere, it's all about how much you promote the game in the area and how much you make it able to be played in the area. I really wish there were more hockey pro shops here, but we have plenty of ice rinks to play hockey though.

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I've been surprised by some of the die hard fans here in Colorado. At the same time I've seen how overall these people don't care too much about the Av's unless they're winning a cup every year. When I lived in Florida though....man was I shocked. Right after the Lighting won the Cup I couldn't find a set of NHL cards to save my life in any sports memorabilia shop. I ended up having my Dad go to Niagara Falls and get me a set. I mean in general nobody was interested. As a guy who would be beside himself if the Sabres won the cup I couldn't get my head around the lack of interest.

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Winning a cup will turn heads, and not all fans need to be diehard fans anyway, you can be a casual fan of the sport, you don't need to follow it religiously to be a fan and you don't even need to knowing every rule out there in the sport.

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i can agree with this to an extent.

Here in chicago hockey was, for the most part, a dead sport and it mostly revolves around the hawks.

the wolves were good but, chicago never really took hold of them.

When the hawks got good the city did take notice. a few fans started wearing their jerseys out in public and started to show up to games. then this past season everything exploded in a mostly annoying way. i understand that fans will come out of the woodwork or that past fans will come back to the game and the team. the problem arises when all of the bandwagon fans join the fray.

while it might seem like chicago has a huge fanbase, its a show. the fan base is a quality one but most of the people that you saw on tv during the cup only learned about the hawks this year. slowly, as the hawks dont do as well, they will disappear and the attendence will slip over the next several years.

this is kind of the same thing thats happened with carolina and tampa. i think that they do have a solid fan base that has lost the bandwagon people and are back to the core. now how this core decides to support the team is up to them. if floridas area is really in bumblefuck florida like mike said, then i can see why it would be a pain in the ass to go to the game...particularly if the team sucks. i live 45 minutes from chicago, do you think im going to drive down there and spend the money only to see the team get spanked? (ok, i kind of did when buffalo came to chicago a couple years ago and buffalo got rocked)

i think something needs to change in the balance of southern hockey teams. what that is, i dont know.

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CV, i dont think Northern Wisconsin can support an NHL team. maybe Milwaukee, they already have an AHL team, but beyond that i dont think so.

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Check out my website: http://www.artistzero.com

"That wasn't very nice...I do believe you killed my hat."

Driver of the FIRE LINDY RUFF Bandwagon since 2008.

I don't disagree, but for the sake of expansion, there weren't a whole lot of palatable options while still keeping things geographically decent.



I have nothing against the south, as long as fanbases have shown a glimmer of hope. Like I said, I have no issue with moving the Islanders or Devils either.

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Proud LGBTQQ Individual

Care to correct this statement before I shred it?

To the original point, I could never make a reasonable case for NHL expansion. They need to drop 4-6 teams, not add new ones.

its a domino effect. A. they are using a shitty stadium built for soccer (seriously, they made the field extra wide to accommodate soccer fields) and basically, and they have a bad lease, and its seriously in the middle of nowhere. so people dont come. so they field bad teams, draft well, and every so often, they perk up enough to make noise, and won a world series or two, then had a fire sale to complete the rollercoaster.

so fans stay away for a number of reasons, and one of the big ones is the stadium locale. but its an hour north of miami. thats fuckin dumb.

on the other hand, that stadium is fucking hot, because south florida is fucking hot.

i fully expect things to change when their new ballpark opens at the orange bowl site with a roof. its in miami, and itll be nice.

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Sun Life stadium is weak, I'll give you that. It's not in the middle of nowhere though, that's my point.

its in mirmar.... thats no where close to miami. where much of the population is. i mean, if it was in fort lauderdale, thats a different story. but its not. its off a toll road, too. and that sucks. its no where near the central population base of a major metroplex. hows that?

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14 miles from downtown Miami. 16 miles from Fort Lauderdale. 10 Miles from Hollywood.

I just don't agree that it's so out of the way as you say. The new park is in a more downtown location, but it's not like Sun Life is in the boonies.

the main problem is the route to get there. its off the turnpike, as ive said, and the turnpike has few on and off ramps. so you have to take back roads to get there, or the turnpike if you find an exit. so even from downtown miami, you are still looking at an hour drive.

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