It’s funny, I’ve never heard an MLS fan gripe about the 10 teams that have joined that league in a record span.
Red herring fallacy on your part. MLS fans haven't complained about decreased talent to make a noticeable for two reasons: their youth academies are churning about better players due to simply being more established and the MLS allowed teams to attract more more top quality talent from Europe to come over. Neither was occuring at such a pace before the league's hyperexpansion, talent that didn't come over in such quantity before the hyperexpansion the MLS has experienced.
Fans and pundits have complained about the top to bottom parity on the average roster. It is actually fairly common. It just doesn't affect the league's outlook much because star power is more of a concern from a fan perspective and it doesn't affect the national team, so neither issue is brought to the wider attention of the media.
I’ve never heard an NFL fan ever complain about too many team’s watering down the product at 32 franchises
Another red herring fallacy. The league has expanded only six times since the 70s, and once in this century. They're also not competing with anyone for talent, unlike every other league in the US expect for maybe the NBA. So watered down talent isn't on the NFL fan's radar.
but the moment the NHL even toyed with expanding beyond 30, hockey fans were just devastated at the mere concept
Because the top to bottom level of hockey has decreased. There is not much difference at the moment between fourth liners in the NHL and second/third liners in the AHL. And it has been undeniably linked with expansion.
would it be the above posters position that the USHL should never expand again simply because they believe adding a team would so catastrophically affect the on-ice product of a league that the level of play would be unwatchable?
Never expand again? That's a long time. They shouldn't expand until the quantity and quantity of hockey youth hockey players, both of which have been increasing nearly every year since the turn of the century, catches up with the league. And it should only be to a market capable of fully supporting the team in a USHL-standard arena. Kansas City and St. Louis both weren't good matches. KC couldn't even handle a NAHL team.
I don't think you're on the same wavelength as the rest of us on this. The USHL is about player development. It is all over their website. It is all over any marketing thing they do. As long as the franchises are in the black, I highly doubt they're caring too much about fan experience. Take two seconds and look at anything they do. It is advertising to the players. Besides, the USHL only gets a few thousand fans a game. I highly doubt the vast majority of fans are attending because it is high level hockey or to watch the USAH development model go to work. They likely attend for the same reasons all minor league fans attend: they're having a fun night out at the game. What they're watching on the ice isn't as important as the fan experience. Tha
Adding two or three teams won't affect the attendances in all likely. It will bring the talent level down. If the talent level goes down, they don't get those handful of players on each team that choose them over the OHL, WHL, domestic European leagues, etc. Players are choosing the USHL over the OHL at the moment. The league is the place to play if you want to develop and do everything else USHL alumni do and have done in greater numbers. If the level of play drops, they stop getting those players. If that trend continues for more than a few seasons, you might or might not see fan attendance dip. You will definitely see the league stop being a destination for players who choose to play there over major juniors. Since the USHL chooses when and where they add teams, they aren't going to do it for fans since their concentration is on developing players. And at the end of the day, that's all the league, and all of us for that matter, should care about.
