Your first and last paragraphs are great but CLASS WARFARE
Acording to this logic hockey should only be played in
canada and Northern US
Skating is like running in the NFL (actually CFL would be more appropreate) because everyone needs to run (in the CFL, i dont watch enough nfl to watch the O line)
I'll take that as an opportunity to follow up from the last comment I made in response to a post by Fidel on the previous page:
"However, I'll give you this, Fidel... trying to establish teams in the US southern fringe is akin to trying to put teams in too-small Canadian cities. Those far-southern US cities may have big populations, but there is little to nothing upon which to firmly establish a hockey culture."
Of course it's hard to draw a line on the US map, unlike the clear borderline that exists between Canada and the US. A borderline that, at least with respect to hockey, seems to in some degree be a 'culture line'. However, I think that some will say that some degree of "hockey culture" has been long-established in certain parts of the US, especially in the north or northeast.
I'm going to exclude the NFL from this, since Canada has its own football league. But focusing on the NBA and MLB, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, and Edmonton are obvious omissions from those leagues. Why?
(2009 pop stats) Between the NBA and MLB,
- 22 US metro areas with either an NBA team or MLB team, or both, are smaller than Montreal (3,814,700).
Minneapolis-St. Paul 3,269,814
San Diego 3,053,793
Cleveland-Akron 2,891,988
St. Louis 2,828,990
Tampa-St. Petersburg 2,747,272
Baltimore 2,690,886
Denver 2,552,195
Pittsburgh 2,354,957
- 14 US metro areas with either an NBA team or MLB team, or both, are smaller than Vancouver (2,328,000).
Portland 2,241,841
Cincinnati 2,171,896
Sacramento 2,127,355
Orlando 2,082,421
San Antonio 2,072,128
Kansas City 2,067,585
Charlotte 1,745,524
Indianapolis 1,743,658
Milwaukee 1,559,667
Memphis 1,304,926
- 4 US metro areas with either an NBA team or MLB team are smaller or roughly equal in size to Calgary, Ottawa, and Edmonton (1,230,200, 1,220,700, 1,155,400 respectively).
Oklahoma City 1,227,278
New Orleans 1,189,981
Salt Lake City 1,130,293
Green Bay 304,783
So why is it that the NBA and MLB don't have teams in those Canadian cities?
And I ask, why is it that other than Los Angeles, Dallas, and Houston, which are the only far southern US cities larger than Toronto (where both the NBA and MLB do have a team), the NHL feels that it should be trying to establish hockey markets and a hockey culture in the US deep south?