Quote:
Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction
I agree with this in theory and would love it if it could work, but there are about 10 teams that would have no chance of surviving if this happened. Hockey is still a niche sport that is trying to pretend it isn't.
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To be honest I hate sun belt teams where there is not hockey anyway but recruiting 20 talented local kids every 2 years from cities of those sizes is a possibility. I'm not talking about drafting the 20 best local junior players produced by local teams/colleges at the end of their development, more of an academy system like they use in soccer where you teach talented athletes how to play after taking them into the system real young.
Then set up a system to allocate/sign guys from outside the academies, ncaa and euros. A draft there wouldn't bug me so much, as long as the main system becomes more of a meritocracy and some of the players are actually from the communities.