The NHL needs more warm weather teams?

They've only got 1 in North Carolina, 1 in Tennessee, 1 in Texas, 1 in Arizona, 2 in Florida, and 3 in California. That's not too many. All those teams have great fan basis, and we all know how much California and Florida love their hockey. Moving a team from Atlanta to Canada was just crazy. Let's get some teams in Mississippi, or maybe even Louisiana. Bet that would work wonders.The NHL needs more warm weather teams?
Are you kidding me? The Phoenix team is in trouble and losing money. TWO teams have moved from Atlanta to cities in Canada (yep, the Calgary Flames used to be the Atlanta Flames) because they couldn't get fan and/or corporate support. I understand the Florida Panthers aren't doing so well either, and I'm not talking about the fact that the team sucks. I don't see that there's demand for hockey in the South either. They go more for football, even high school or college ball.



Please tell me you're just trolling.
Great fan base?



Hockey is the #5 or #6 ranked sport in most southern markets. Viewership ranking either after golf or NASCAR. Most of these teams are losing gigantic amounts of money and attendance is extremely low. During Florida's Stanley Cup appearence, Canadian reporters when around to bars in the city. Out of a dozen bars they visited, not a single one had the hockey game on. TV sponsorship and ad revenue is near bottom as it sports clothing sales.



Meanwhile in Winnipeg, people will go out to see hockey. Besides being the #1 ranked sport, there is almost no other sports in the city. There is no competition from basketball, baseball, etc. The only other major professional team is Canadian football.The NHL needs more warm weather teams?
I don't think soooooooo. You would have a hard time finding a person who knows how to drive a Zamboni in the south.

A northern city which has the best ice skating facilities in the country is Milwaukee. No doubt about Wisconsin fans supporting their teams and they are in the center of Detroit, Minnesota and Chicago.

There only problem is gathering the 80mil or more needed to buy a team. If Harley-Davison would ante up, they could call the team, The Milwaukee Choppers. If not Harley then a consortium of other Wisconsin businesses could own a team. In that case Wisconsin Cannibals would be an appropriate name as Wisconsin seems to have more of them than any other state such as Jeffrey Dahlmer and Ed Gein.
Mississippi and Louisiana are at the bottom of the American socio-economic ladder. You have zero corporate base, zero interest in the game (minor league hockey economics doesn't translate to the NHL), and TV ratings in these markets has never been anywhere in the top-30. There is zero research of any credible data showing that an NHL franchise in either market would work; to be viable you're looking at a paid attendance of 15K per game at an average ticket price of $90, plus all the luxury suites, club seats, and corporate sponsorships.



Atlanta 2.0/Winnipeg 2.0- the franchise went from a 6,000 STH base to a 13K base, and are sold out for the next 3-5 seasons.



The team in Arizona is bleeding money and currently have no owner; the city of Glendale gave them $25mm to cover losses this year.



CAR, TBL, FLA, and the three CAL teams are all doing fine...Dallas needs to finalise the sale and get an owner in place and the team should be doing better.The NHL needs more warm weather teams?
If it didn't mean diluting an already diluted talent pool, I'd go for Houston, New Orleans and Atlanta.

Atlanta fans get a bad rap because they lost the Flames (never won anything), and the Thrashers (never won anything, bad economy, even worse ownership). Atlanta is still a more viable market than any untapped Canadian market - save for Hamilton and Quebec City.
Great fan bases show up all year, not just at playoff time. And being a viable market doesn't translate to a great fan base. Absurd assumption and an F in economics and market research.
The Santiago Panthers would be cool.

Or the Buenos Aires Coyotes.

And let's have a new team. The Sao Paulo Sunburntbuns.



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Let's not...