Looks like Seattle is getting an NHL franchise, as the league’s executive committee voted 9-0 yesterday to forward the city’s bid for an expansion team to a full vote of owners in December. Assuming all goes according to plan, Seattle should have a team playing in a rebuilt KeyArena by the fall of 2020, unless—
[NHL commissioner Gary Bettman] said speculation that a potential NHL lockout in September 2019 might delay a Seattle launch until October 2021 was overblown.
“The focus for everybody is 2020,” Bettman said. “That’s what we’re focused on. There are a variety of factors that could impact that, including the construction timeline. The sooner construction can begin, obviously, the more likely an early start.”
It’s a tight construction timeline, admittedly, and it’s not like there would be an easy backup plan for hosting games if the arena rebuild isn’t ready in time. (The WNBA champion Storm will be playing at least next season at the University of Washington’s 10,000-seat arena, which isn’t equipped for hockey; the university’s hockey team plays at OlympicView Arena, which holds so few people the internet can’t even be bothered to count the seats.) But one of these years, Seattle will become the NHL’s 32nd franchise, which, as previously noted, is just fine.
The fight over an NBA team, on the other hand, is just beginning, and could yet end up involving proposals for relocation, not just expansion. So it’s still possible that somebody will end up getting screwed by Seattle’s new arena, even if it’s residents of some other city that gets shaken down for money via a “You don’t want us to move to Seattle, now do you?” threat. Everything’s a tradeoff — especially under modern predatory capitalism.
Bad for Quebec City! Boooooooo!
That NHL calibre hockey arena they built with no tenant is going to need to be replaced by the time they get another team…
Move the Florida Panthers to QC. Nobody in Florida gives a damn about them anyway. Move the Coyotes to Portland.
The fundamental inability of people to understand how the NHL’s business model works (teams aren’t pins on a map, free to be moved around to whatever city loves hockey the most) will never cease to amaze me.
The entire Quebec City metropolitan area has fewer than 800,000 people that’s nit enough for an NHL team just because they have a big arena doesn’t mean they are entitled to a team.
Winnipeg says hi
That goes in the FoS Top #10 responses. EVER.
You could put an NHL team in in Moncton (metro area population <150,000) and the arena would fill up every game. In case you didn't realize, Quebec City is in Canada, which is full of Canadians, who love hockey more than anyone has ever loved anything.
Not at $250-300 per ticket (like Edmonton) you couldn’t.
Many Canadians love hockey, but not all. And in small cities where there is next to no corporate base and very few high paying jobs, the disposable income necessary to support an NHL team is just not available.
The fundamental inability of people to understand hyperbole will never cease to amaze me.
They put an NHL team in Ottawa (metro area population 1.3 million), which is in Canada, which is full of Canadians, and the arena averaged 3,000 empty seats every game last season.
Anon:
There’s a fine line between hyperbole and stupidity. It was (and is) not clear which side of that line your comment was on.
Sorry dude but it was kind of short sighted for Quebec City to build the new arena before they got a team.
Quebec City: The Hartford,Connecticut of Canada. :(
WTH ! The Kontinental hockey league has 25 teams spread over a 2 billion population base. Talk about diluted talent pool for a league where 50% of it’s players come from Ontario and zero from any African, Asian or Latin or Middle eastern country. Yes folks it’s easy to claim the top talent in the world when absolutely statistically no one plays the game.
Where do you get 2 billion from? Because there is one KHL team in China with no native Chinese players? OK, come on.
Again, Soccer Man, absolutely no one is mentioning or criticizing soccer. Never really get the defensiveness of supposed soccer “fans” that they have to criticize other sports that people like. Hockey is a great game, so’s soccer. Why can’t you be secure enough to just let other people enjoy what they like. You want to pick out what beer to drink too?
Hockey is a great game, you need to stop stalking me, really dude stop crushing.
as someone that lived down the street from OVA and played in a beer league there it might fit 2k with SRO.
as for the new club, i’m excited but upset that 1 or both our WHL clubs move after 2020. the T-birds could do well in Tacoma or Olympia but but i don’t see them staying in Kent when the NHL starts up. The Silvertips could remain in Everett for a bit longer but i’d bet 5 years is the best the WHL could hope for.
my guess is that this NHL club will not last too long.
this is a bad expansion and obviously they are using it only as a revenue source and will lead to a lockout regardless of what dear Mr Buttman claims. they can’t share that money with the players now can they??? never forget that Philip Anschutz and the Walton clan own multiple clubs and arenas (including the new Key arena)
One thing that seems to consistently get missed on NHL in Seattle is that, unlike Vegas, this franchise will slot in somewhere between 5th and 8th on the domestic sports landscape.
It might turn out to be very popular (the district does have more than 5m people to lure fans from), or it might fail to gain a foothold in the competitive sporting calendar. It’s very hard to say.
So long as the business owners are taking the risk, though, I’m just fine with it. It’s entirely their business to conquer or fail with, so long as little or no tax money goes into supporting it.
30,000 season ticket sales, which blew away what Vegas did, says that NHL in Seattle with a .500 hockey team will do just fine. This is not 1988, or 1998. The population has grown considerably in the past few years, with many transplants from cities with NHL teams. The Seattle area is a different and diverse animal that won’t settle for the usual Husky and Seahawks absolutism.
Re the T-Birds, if they leave Showare, they’ll leave town. The Tacoma Dome, from what I understand, doesn’t have an Ice sheet for hockey anymore and I don’t believe Olympia has a similar facility in capacity (or strong enough interest for that matter) to accommodate/support hockey.
I think you mean 30,000 season ticket deposits (was it a $50 or $100 deposit fans had to put down?), not actual confirmed full payment sales.
As with the Tesla Model 3 and the LVGK I would expect that a significant percentage of those deposits were from speculators who expect to flip their reserved place in line to actual fans later on for a huge profit.
This is how modern marketing is done, unfortunately, and it skews actual demand quite badly. If the punters had to put at least 50% of their $2-5k season ticket purchase down now, it would have kept the speculators to a minimum.
When the bar to entry is so low, why wouldn’t speculators jump in? Even if you only make $500 on the season ticket package you flip a year down the road, it’s still a great ROI on a $100 deposit.
And Andrew Barroway does not want to talk about any franchise financials nor his arena quest.
https://twitter.com/craigsmorgan/status/1047493786027220993
And this guy reports their ‘ask’ is too much.
https://twitter.com/BuyYourHomeNow/status/1047545598872711168
Can the Tacoma Dome accomodate hockey?
It has in the past – Tacoma Rockets in the WHL in the early 90s and Tacoma Sabercats of the WCHL (since absorbed by the ECHL) from 97-02. Looking at Google Images for hockey in there makes it seem like an unnatural sort of atmosphere, and I don’t know if there is still an ice plant (30mm renovation recently, no mention of ice plant)
Easily enough solved:
https://www.swallowtailgardenseeds.com/perennials/iceplant.html
Murray won’t be happy about this. How is he supposed to threaten to move the Flames without the Seattle boogeyman to play? Nobody buys the Houston relocation angle.