Canada losing NHL teams from 1994
It's amazing to go back and read these old articles, because it shows how things got where they are today and how things went wrong.
Maybe I'm the only one that has time to read these articles on a work break, but I find them absolutely fascinating about the evolution of the NHL the past 10 years.
This last article just makes me wonder so much more how the league would be different if there would have been a cap and revenue sharing sooner. I'm not saying a hard cap, but even something like the homegrown cap, and how it could have helped a team like the 80's Oilers to keep more of their team intact. There still would have been a big exodus of stars, but on a lesser scale I'd suspect.
It seems like there would still be teams in Winnipeg & Quebec & Hartford if changes were made sooner. You could consider the moves to Phoenix and Raleigh as questionable solutions considering both teams have had their difficulties in their current markets.
10 years ago they were crying apocalypse.
It's somewhat funny to also read how bad the owners were all saying it was 10 years ago, and they still got to this point and some of them made dumb moves along the way that didn't help things. You'd think that if things were really as bad as they were claiming 10 years ago, that half the teams in the league would have folded. Now in the modern era, it's the same bell tolling, and maybe things aren't nearly as bad as they look.