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The NHL could care less about a battle of Alberta. Like it or not this is an American league and makes decisions accordingly.
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A battle of Alberta is a marketable series featuring the league's most marketable player. In other words, it generates talk and viewership outside of the local markets for the teams involved. Better yet, because of time zones, it doesn't conflict with your major east coast markets, and given that the Kings aren't in this year, there's nothing lost out west, either. It's a choice between that and the Ducks, which have a relatively small fanbase localized in one region. From the standpoint of US networks, given who McDavid plays for, it's found money.
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Disagree? Why does the league continue to subsidize American markets that are a joke, and fight tooth and nail against a second team in Southern Ontario or Quebec city? It's to Maintain the balance of American control in the league.
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This is wrong. The reason there isn't a team in Quebec City or Hamilton is almost entirely due to the power and influence of MLSE and Geoff Molson. In Quebec's case, it's also a matter of the roughly 500,000 people who live there. In Hamilton's, it's also a matter of crippling the Sabres. The fact is that you don't create any new hockey fans by putting new teams in Canada, you take existing hockey fans who are customers of existing teams and shift them over to a new team. This isn't a conspiracy against Canada; it's a league run by ownership who don't want to give up large slices of their pie.