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Expansion in 2017-18?


dlbalr

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Unless 'Black Knight' is a gambling term, that sucks rocks :angry2: There are SO many cooler names you could pick (Black Jacks, High Rollers, etc.). However, maybe this military college means a great deal to local yokel Vegas-ites, so I guess there's that; although it was my understanding that the team will try to plug into the tourist/casino crowd, in which case a gambling-based name seems like an absolute no brainer.

Gambling is still taboo. The only reason the taboo has calmed down is Draft Kings, who gives the promotions a cut of the cash. The more money the teams make, the less questionable they are to gambling. Even then, they don't want to be the HOCKEY TEAM GAMBLERS due to stigma.

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Gambling is still taboo. The only reason the taboo has calmed down is Draft Kings, who gives the promotions a cut of the cash. The more money the teams make, the less questionable they are to gambling. Even then, they don't want to be the HOCKEY TEAM GAMBLERS due to stigma.

Stigma? In 2015? The age of legalized marijuana and trans-gendered athletes?

Unless you mean it's verboten in pro sports specifically. I suppose I could see that, but then again this ain't baseball. I just don't see what the problem is. Anyway, like I said when I brought it up, it's 99% certain that expansion teams will pick uninspired or outright crappy, soulless names, so it's not like I had any expectations.

Quebec City - f**k.

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Stigma? In 2015? The age of legalized marijuana and trans-gendered athletes?

Unless you mean it's verboten in pro sports specifically. I suppose I could see that, but then again this ain't baseball. I just don't see what the problem is. Anyway, like I said when I brought it up, it's 99% certain that expansion teams will pick uninspired or outright crappy, soulless names, so it's not like I had any expectations.

Quebec City - f**k.

I always made a team in NHL06 for Gamecube called the Las Vegas Millionaires. Their logo was a dollar bill and every time a team scored, it played a slot machine jingle.

That said, gambling in sports will always have a super serious stigma. In baseball it's the Black Sox and Pete Rose. In basketball it's the gambling referee Tim Donaghy and the Boston college point shaving scandal. NFL it was Alex Karras and Paul Hornung. Don't remember the NHL gambling problem? It was Rick Tocchet, who when coaching the Phoenix Coyotes a couple years back was taking bets from Janet Gretzky and NHL players on football and basketball. They called it the "Operation Slap Shot" sting. There was also Don Gallinger and Billy Raylor in 1948 who were betting on their own games and banned for life (well, until 1970). Babe Pratt was another who bet on games but he never bet on the Leafs so he was brought back soon after.

There's always the fear that moving to Vegas will lead to rampant gambling that they can't control. Of course, it's the technology age and anyone can gamble without leaving their home or making a phone call. "Embracing" the gambling is taboo. Hence why they'd prefer to name them after a military school, since teams based on war (Maple Leafs, Blue Jackets, Blackhawks) is a-okay.

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From the sounds of things, only Vegas and Quebec City applied.

The league made it official, only those two cities put in an application. I wonder, would they consider adding just one team (Vegas)? I can't see them finding an Eastern team willing to move out West to make room for Quebec and I'm not sure they'd want to throw Quebec out West. All along, this has been thought of as the formalization process for Vegas, could they go to 31 teams? Considering there's already an imbalance in division sizes, I think they might be able to pull that off if they wanted.

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The league made it official, only those two cities put in an application. I wonder, would they consider adding just one team (Vegas)? I can't see them finding an Eastern team willing to move out West to make room for Quebec and I'm not sure they'd want to throw Quebec out West. All along, this has been thought of as the formalization process for Vegas, could they go to 31 teams? Considering there's already an imbalance in division sizes, I think they might be able to pull that off if they wanted.

There have been some interesting official bids in the past. While only two bids feels like both goes in, there have been a lot that failed, starting with the Hampton Road Rhinos. The article discusses some of the failed bids in the 90s;

- Norfolk, Virginia (Hampton Road Rhinos)

- Houston, Texas

- Hamilton, Ontario

- Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

None of which got teams but at least put bids in. There was consideration to move Hartford to Norfolk but the NHL turned down the application, which pushed Karmanos to instead move to Carolina. Moving to Raleigh meant the end of a Norfolk NHL team.

While I think both will get teams, NHL might push one to instead consider location if it becomes available (Florida breaks their lease, Arizona moves in 2017). Both make way more sense than expansion, and allows the NHL to wait a bit for Seattle and Milwaukee to get their act together.

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The league made it official, only those two cities put in an application. I wonder, would they consider adding just one team (Vegas)? I can't see them finding an Eastern team willing to move out West to make room for Quebec and I'm not sure they'd want to throw Quebec out West. All along, this has been thought of as the formalization process for Vegas, could they go to 31 teams? Considering there's already an imbalance in division sizes, I think they might be able to pull that off if they wanted.

They had a pretty good idea all along that one team might come from the east. Secondly, I doubt they would turn down the expansion fee, estimated at 1/2 billion, have an odd number of teams, just so they wouldn't have to put another team in the west. Last I heard, it was unclear when the bidding deadline actually was. maybe there is still time for a bid.

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They had a pretty good idea all along that one team might come from the east. Secondly, I doubt they would turn down the expansion fee, estimated at 1/2 billion, have an odd number of teams, just so they wouldn't have to put another team in the west. Last I heard, it was unclear when the bidding deadline actually was. maybe there is still time for a bid.

NHL sent out a press release today throwing serious shade at the people who missed the deadline so... Better luck next season for some?

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NHL sent out a press release today throwing serious shade at the people who missed the deadline so... Better luck next season for some?

Next round--- I am thinking, not likely to go to 34--36 makes a lot more sense. Not going to happen for a while, if ever. Probably if you were sincere about a franchise, you should have been in on this round. Maybe Seattle is vying for team flop to avoid expansion fee.

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Next round--- I am thinking, not likely to go to 34--36 makes a lot more sense. Not going to happen for a while, if ever. Probably if you were sincere about a franchise, you should have been in on this round. Maybe Seattle is vying for team flop to avoid expansion fee.

32 is going to be the tops for the Nhl for quite a while I think, and hey if you missed this run, you are out of luck for quite some time.No need to expand, other than franchise fees. You can wait for arizona to flop , that is your best plan, maybe that is what they are thinking.

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Is there any concern at all about the viability of a Quebec City team - ? The Loonie is in the toilet (and are oil prices really likely to rise with Iran's reserves about to go on-stream in the global market?), it's a government town and therefore probably relatively low in corporate sponsorship dollars, and, of course, there's the very high Quebec tax rates. I'm sure all involved have done their due diligence, and I suppose Ottawa has some of the same issues, but I wonder about it a bit.

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Is there any concern at all about the viability of a Quebec City team - ? The Loonie is in the toilet (and are oil prices really likely to rise with Iran's reserves about to go on-stream in the global market?), it's a government town and therefore probably relatively low in corporate sponsorship dollars, and, of course, there's the very high Quebec tax rates. I'm sure all involved have done their due diligence, and I suppose Ottawa has some of the same issues, but I wonder about it a bit.

Five biggest issues for the Nordiques 20 years ago:

- Needed a new arena

- Wasn't making enough revenue

- Weak television deal in French only

- Weak Canadian dollar

- Quebec was the second smallest city in North American with a professional sports team and unemployment was high

How 20 years has addressed those issues:

- Videotron Centre (paid for by the provincial government, which is awful and ridiculous but whatever, it's the scam everyone pulls)

- Revenue sharing in the NHL helps fix this

- TV deals are bigger money than ever and a Quebec team can actually get bilingual support due to the amount of stations. They are also going to be owned by a media conglomerate.

- Dollar is still weak but not as weak

- Population has grown since 1995 (metropolitan area bigger than Winnipeg) and they now have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country.

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If the Nordiques enter as a Western Conference team, we'd get many double-headers nights.. lots of potential TV revenues. Watch the Habs play at 7pm then the Nordiques game at 9-10pm.

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I'm all for a team in Quebec City as I'm 99.9% sure the Nordiques are coming back. One positive would likely be RDS covering them so nobody would have to watch sportsnet or TVA in games broadcasted there. I'm also all for Las Vegas Black Knights; how can the team fail in the middle of a gambling mecca where casinos comp everything? seats will be sold whether there are asses in them or not!

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I'm all for a team in Quebec City as I'm 99.9% sure the Nordiques are coming back. One positive would likely be RDS covering them so nobody would have to watch sportsnet or TVA in games broadcasted there. I'm also all for Las Vegas Black Knights; how can the team fail in the middle of a gambling mecca where casinos comp everything? seats will be sold whether there are asses in them or not!

It's probably highly unlikely that RDS gets the Quebec games. Quebecor owns TVA Sports and has a big hand in the proposed team with Peladeau as the front guy for their bid. They're going to want their own channel to have the games to make it more of a 'must subscribe' channel.

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There will be a war in Québec for the Nordiques games. Quebecor stepped very hard on Bell's foot with their NHL deal taking away Saturday's Habs games.

Looking forward to see Bell trying to pull something similar and trying to grab some of the Nordiques games somehow.

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There will be a war in Québec for the Nordiques games. Quebecor stepped very hard on Bell's foot with their NHL deal taking away Saturday's Habs games.

Looking forward to see Bell trying to pull something similar and trying to grab some of the Nordiques games somehow.

Regional rights are only worth so much though and RDS drastically overpaid (and admitted as much) to retain Montreal's since they had a clause in their contract that said they got the last right to match any other offer. RDS may want the rights but they're not going to pay anywhere near as much and they don't have matching rights for any Quebec expansion franchise.

More likely is that we see a situation similar to MLB's Toronto Blue Jays where the company that owns the team also owns the TV network. They then 'pay' a vastly below market value price designed to doctor the books of TVA/Quebecor as a whole (shuffle money from one entity to another within the same company). That way, Quebecor can, in a way, recoup some of the extra money paid for the expansion franchise by not having to pay market value for the TV rights.

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Yark. So you say that TVA Sports could show a Habs game on TVA Sports 2 and a Nordiques Games on TVA Sports on a Saturday night ?

The colour guy on TVA Sports already sucks. Imagine on TVA Sports 2 when two games are played simultaneously...

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Yark. So you say that TVA Sports could show a Habs game on TVA Sports 2 and a Nordiques Games on TVA Sports on a Saturday night ?

The colour guy on TVA Sports already sucks. Imagine on TVA Sports 2 when two games are played simultaneously...

On a Saturday, even if RDS got the regional rights, your scenario would probably happen. Only TVA can show national games and as was the case with the Habs, the national games were all Saturdays. They could maybe go with the Habs on TVA Sports and the Nordiques on TVA (the main network) but still, it'd be their commentary crews.

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Let's just pray a meteor crashes into Quebec City's new arena (while vacant of course) and all this talk becomes moot.

And hey, if it wanted to take out PK Peladeau (the EVIL PK) while it's at it, that'd be much appreciated. Two turds with one stone.

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why the hate?

I think Cuke explained it quite well in like the first reply to this thread:

I'm an outlier in wanting no part of the Nordiques; I see that as a huge pain in the ass for the Habs. But living as I do in the Vancouver area, I'm cowabunga for a team in Seattle. They'd instantly become my second favourite team just to drive the locals crazy; and I even have a name for them - THE SEATTLE SOCKEYE!!

The Nordiques are an inevitability but that doesn't make me like it. I hope they once again stay a failure franchise for over a decade despite gathering some of the best players to play the game. I want them to be our whipping boys.

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Still don't get why is so against a team in Q-city, great rivalry always makes for funner games with a full rowdy rink. Than a likely struggling Seattle team, who would rank lower in popularity than even Washington State NCAA teams.

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Still don't get why is so against a team in Q-city, great rivalry always makes for funner games with a full rowdy rink. Than a likely struggling Seattle team, who would rank lower in popularity than even Washington State NCAA teams.

The politics behind a Quebec City team scare me. Considering how much Geoff Molson already panders in terms of placing restrictive rules on who can be hired for certain positions, the presence of another French-based team makes it seem likely that those self-imposed rules will only increase, much to the detriment of the Canadiens. I, for one, don't want that to happen.

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