I'm not really sure where to ask this but thought I'd put it here.
Now that it has been shown that hockey can be hugely successful in non-traditional southern markets, what are the chances of someone giving Atlanta another go? It just seems like there has to someone out there who would feel that if it can work in Nashville then surely we can find a way to make it work in Atlanta.
I didn't follow the Thrashers situation that closely so no idea what truly happened to them. So perhaps this is more of an Atlanta problem and not a hockey problem but just thought I'd throw it out there as a discussion item now that we're in the lull period.
This has been covered in multiple long threads here. The short version is that the Thrashers never, ever had stable, committed ownership during their entire tenure. First, they were owned by faceless AOL-Time Warner, a corporation in the middle of collapse by the time they first hit the ice. Then, there was the canceled sale to David McDavid, for which he sued Time Warner and won hundreds of millions of dollars. Finally, the Atlanta Spirit Group took the team as part of a package to get the only thing they really wanted, which was the Hawks and the arena rights. From that very moment, these basketball-only people gutted the hockey roster, cut back virtually every expense (scouting, inadequate facilities, no head coach for a full season, no marketing at all, etc.), with the full intent to evict them from their building at the first opportunity that they could legally do so.
If Atlanta had an NHL franchise with committed ownership, it would be the first time in history that that's ever happened.
