Killion
Registered User
- Feb 19, 2010
- 36,763
- 3,217
I think the owners should have been given NHL expansion franchises in non-WHA cities and those surviving WHA cities should not have have been considered for expansion teams for the next 20-25 years....
There's a reason they supported a league other than the NHL: The NHL was too busy putting teams in Atlanta to pay attention to them.... I really don't know how one person can be so bitter on behalf of a bunch of whiny millionaires.
Maybe MLB should get rid of the Blue Jays. Surely Toronto doesn't deserve a team.
OK Gang, before WW3 breaks out over rojac's opinions & comments, lets just get something straight here and that is that he is not alone in those opinions as your quite likely aware. In fact at one time in some pockets of central Canada & in some 06 US markets that opinion shared by a majority of the fans themselves. Indeed, considerable objection to the 67/68 Expansion of 6 teams, let alone what followed in the 70's & beyond.
The NHL was reactive as opposed to being proactive when it came to Expansion right from the get-go. Expanded in 67/68 as there was a changing of the guard amongst the BOG's generation, they saw how successful the NFL had become with television & their lucrative broadcast contracts and were told by high ranking network execs that they had no hope of securing same without a national footprint.
Further driving all of it from the mid-50's on, several cities including LA threatening anti-trust suits if they didnt open up to Expansion along with the threat of a competitive league whereby the minor-pro WHL & the IHL were experimenting with an interlocking schedule in what were NHL sized markets & the league had to quash that possibility & fast. It still however wasnt enough. WHA is born. QC, Winnipeg & elsewhere who were denied entry "no matter what" essentially formed quite specifically to force Amalgamation as the ABA was conceived & hatched to do with the NBA by 2 Californian Lawyers, the same two Ben Hatskin of Winnipeg employed to draw up the WHA incorporation & charters, franchise agreements & so on.
Long & twisted tale, story, no need to go on at length here. But ya. rojac & many others simply preferred & would prefer a far smaller & free market NHL. Survival of the fittest, law of the jungle, just like real life in so many trades & professions. No safety nets, you make it or break it on performance alone. No Cap, no artificiality, none of this nonsense about parity. Spend to the Moon & if you cant you shouldnt be in the league. Right there you could kiss every single Canadian franchise goodbye but for Toronto, close thing for Montreal, Vancouver wiped out in either the 70's or 90's when Arthur Griffiths Jr. got into trouble with the new arena, the NBA, a failing CDN$ along with CanucksNation none too impressed with the product & ticket sales anemic. US market, massive Contraction & collapse.
So yes, its an opinion & philosophy that exists to this day, even amongst those who werent even around, born until the late 70's or 80's and didnt witness everything that went down. How the Islanders were created solely to block WHA incursion into the NY market; Atlanta a throw-in to balance the Division. You could go team x team x team with respect to Expansions and Relo's, turn over any rock & find something slimy crawling away. Some underhanded duplicitous deal made that benefited one or more members of "The Club".
So on some levels, easy to empathize with rojac, on others, not so much. He's entitled to his opinions. Bear that in mind please.