Quote:
Originally Posted by jayswin
I mean a lot of actual disaster franchise stories in terms of fan support can be directly correlated with an inability to show them anything to get excited about on the ice for years, sometimes a decade+.
Look at Columbus, a hockey-ish (not sunbelt) market with incredible, jubilant initial support (straight sellouts for a couple years I think), just eroded year after year with nothing happening to the point where 11-13k became the average.
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Absolutely. When you think about it, the idea of expansion franchises sucking balls for years, is terrible for the league (any league).
The NHL got it totally right this time - give the expansion team much more to work with, so that they can build fan support. And if you do that, you can also charge the expansion team more for entry.
But let's keep something else in mind: Vegas was the LONE expansion team, which is unusual. Had there been two teams fighting over the expansion draft scraps, it is a certainty that both teams would have been basement dwellers.