So how come you're not mentioning Ottawa? They couldn't even sell out Game 7 of the ECF in the nation's capital, wherein ANY other Canadian market, it would've been sold out in five seconds.
How about the Islanders? They couldn't even draw flies during their four straight Cup years, and the only reason they're still around is due to an overbloated TV contract for a team with zilch brand awareness. Even the Devils, who celebrated their Cup wins in parking lots have more brand awareness than the Islanders.
So called "hockey markets" have had plenty of problems over the years, but yet nobody ever said aw shucks, hockey just won't work in Pittsburgh, or Chicago, or whereever else there was a problem.
What makes Nashville not a hockey market? What makes Vegas not one? What makes you the judge of how viable a market is or isn't, and by what data do you claim those aren't?
Is it jealousy? Are you bitter that those teams actually have owners who don't fanny about with an old boys club? Is that it? Are you ignoring how players, coaches, fans, and even posters on this very thread have all praised Nashville for being a great market, and how Vegas is really taking to the Golden Knights? Because that's what posts like yours seem to be all about: you're just jealous that those teams are actually doing something other than looking like a complete joke every season. Now if I'm wrong, then please correct me, because I don't know how else to take it.
Hell, if you want to get really into it, then how come we even bother having a team in Edmonton, hockey market or not? You said it yourself - NHLers don't want to come here. It's been said numerous times over by players and agents alike. They all hate this place, they all think it's some sort of Arctic hellhole, and they'd only come here at the tail-end of their careers, if ever. Hell, the Sharks were tweeting atone point about how horrible Winnipeg was, and they've only got a team again because it was a last minute call.
You have to be able to draft well, but you also need to be able to attract big name talent via free agency. We can't be the Spurs, who had a horseshoe up their ass and lucked into Robinson, then Duncan, then Kawhi, and had Parker and Ginobili as well; we were like that in the eighties, but once that team was broken up, the economic reality kicked us in the ass pretty hard (it didn't help when we goofed up like taking Kelly over Doan, among other gaffes). You have to do both in order to contend for a championship.
Problem is, what big name will come here, right? One poster here said even Vancouver couldn't get a big name to consider them, and if they can't draw folks, what makes us think we could?
It's the same problem in other sports: in the NBA, it's basically LA or bust - why do you think Kawhi signed with the Clippers, one of the most irrelevant teams in sports? It wasn't because the Clippers were this storied franchise. Hell, Marcus Morris spurned the Spurs, an actually storied franchise, for the Knicks simply because he could live it up in New York City, and he sure as hell didn't sign with them because he thought they would win anything in the near future. It's only a matter of time too before Giannis and Luka end up in LA and Boston, as the NBA is blatantly trying to resurrect the rivalry between the only two teams it has ever really cared about.
We, in contrast, are just like those Spurs: we too lucked into five championships, and ever since those responsible all left (and I've been hearing rumblings Popovich will retire after this season, with some fans in SA even hoping he does), we're just another one of those markets: one that may draft some really cool dude before he eventually bails. We're a feeder org: most teams outside LA, Chicago, Boston, NYC and the SFBA in pro sports in general are, let's be honest. That's why audiences are aging: young people see this for themselves and don't care. Would you care if your hometown team was guaranteed to be passed over by big name free agents because your city isn't flashy enough Would you play in Edmonton? In Winnipeg? Calgary? Probably not. You'd probably be asking your agent if the Kings or Bolts have any openings. If you're a millionaire athlete, why wouldn't you go to a city like LA or New York?
So why bother, right? Why even have a team here? If anyone worth a damn would prefer American cities, why try? Why not just send the Oilers on to Houston or Portland or wherever and wash our hands of all this?
The Oilers' problem is that the fans are burned out, both from being strung along since 1990 (2006 was a fluke run, though fun it was), and from the economy being in the dumps. It doesn't help when players and their agents consistently trash your hometown, it doesn't help when players would take less to stay around in their original (American, big city) teams (or, like Tavares, would rather go to a lolcow franchise like the Leafs; sure, Toronto is his hometown, but still, it hurts), it doesn't help when fellow fans would rather take potshots at American teams rather than the owners and the front offices of their own teams that have consistently failed to improve (and if you do that, you're consistently told you're not a real fan), it doesn't help when said owners force cities to build unnecessary arenas right as the sports bubble is about to burst (as one poster here said) due to audiences getting more and more older and more and more people, especially the young, stay home to watch the game (case in point: the CFL trying to build a new stadium in the Maritimes where the economy has been in the dumps for decades and despite more and more young people watching MLS - didn't they see how the Argo players got destroyed by Toronto FC players in that little spat years ago?), and it doesn't help when said owners didn't fire guys who talked about tiered fans or fired coaches over Skype.
The Oilers' problem is a mere symptom of the real problem, which is that pro sports is increasingly being gentrified: in European soccer, clubs like Bayern, Real and Barcelona are already considering splitting off to form their own league, and it'll probably happen within the next ten to twenty years, and then what? Who's going to watch who's left when you can watch the biggest and the best clubs every night? We see the same here: in the NBA, it's basically LA and Boston. Sure, the Warriors had a stretch, and so did the Bulls and the Spurs, but let's be real - LA and Boston is what the league wants, and if it means screwing over fans of do-nothing teams like the Kings and Hawks, so be it. MLB? The Yankees just spend three hundred twenty million on one guy (when you total how much he's making over the span of the contract). How can the others outside the (Red) Sox, Cubs, Dodgers, Giants and Phillies compete?
The fact that the White Sox can literally win a World Series only to be consistently forgotten ever since speaks volumes, wouldn't you agree? How is that even possible?
That is the real problem, overall. Audiences are aging across the board because young people increasingly see all this and think gee, why bother? They see players trashing their hometowns and they're like why bother? We have McDavid here, but can even he make fans overlook a decade plus of failure? How many potential fans have the Oilers lost over that span? Other posters have said that in their places of work, people just roll their eyes - the interest is gone. When I talk to the friends of my kids, I hear from them they never had an interest period.
Simply put, this isn't so much an Oilers' problem as it is a general one for sports: there's no real parity, the players are too chummy with one another (look at Qing James with his obvious collusion), only the big cities matter, the fans care more about rivalries than the players, and local media tends to turn inevitably into puppets for the team, so you get your intelligence insulted regularly. Hell, Len Rhodes literally fired Ed Hervey because winning "wasn't enough" in his eyes. How does that inspire confidence in potential fans? The CFL is already struggling when it comes to bringing in new fans, especially young people; this doesn't help.
Pardon if I'm rambling - I've been lurking on here for a while and felt compelled to speak up, so I apologize if my post seems scatterbrained or whatever.
