It’s not the Winged Wheel, but it’s better than some in the league today. Also, Gordie Howe played for the Hartford Whalers.
On the other side of the coin, hopefully we will never see anything like this again:
An Army buddy is from Hartford and back in the 99s he brought me back a Ray Ferraro jersey.
In the decades and several moves I lost it.
Seriously wish I still had that jersey
Ray’s son Landon was drafted by the Red Wings, playing mostly in Grand Rapids and in a few Red Wings’ games. The Wings waived him and Boston picked him up. When Landon played his first game for Boston, against Toronto, Ray was the analyst on the Maple Leaf broadcasts.
Also one of my favorite analyst for hockey.
As long as this thread is still open and had a lot of the subject on the Arizona Coyotes, I will resurrect it with the latest. It looks like @jimtoo has the answer to his question, and it is yes and no:
Bettman finally realizes that playing in a 5000 seat college arena with no new area in sight is not viable. At the same time, he apparently gives the Coyotes owner the rights to another franchise if they ever do get a new arena built. Any bets on whether that ever happens?
Even before that announcement, the NHL admitted that they were preparing two 2024-2025 schedules, one with the Coyotes in Tempe and the other with them in SLC.
I don’t think that owner will have another franchise in the Phoenix area. He has pissed off a lot people there. For some reason, Phoenix doesn’t seem to be able to support an NHL team. Maybe there are too many snow birds and not enough longer term support. Maybe another owner could come up with an answer.
I read that too. I also read that the NHL might want to realign again to put Colorado, Utah and Vegas in the same division. That makes sense in that those three teams will be in a cluster of their own. Of course that then opens up the pandora’s box of how to realign the other teams. Here is one article that I found on the subject:
I think something will happen, either as that article lays in out, or more of a west-east set up. The No-So set up is better, which means the NHL have an opportunity to screw it up.
The Red Wings were in the Western Conference until a decade ago and the league finally listened to the team’s complaints about travel costs, time spent on travel and late games for the Detroit area fans.
there are 2 teams of developers trying to get a NHL team to atlanta suburbs
It’s deja vu all over again. Maybe Atlanta can create yet another team and, in 6-8 years, have it move to Quebec City or Halifax.
Not unlike when the Atlanta Thrashers became the Winnipeg Jets (after the original Winnipeg Jets became the Phoenix Coyotes, who became the Arizona Coyotes and now are becoming something else). The Atlanta Flames became the Calgary Flames, moving 2,300 miles.
I am going on memory here, but I read an article a while back which discussed how the Thrashers were essentially treated as an afterthought in the ownership group which also included the Atlanta Hawks and the arena. It also discussed how hockey could succeed in Atlanta with a committed owner long with a better arena situation.
Here are two articles that I found on the subject:
And, in the second article, the questions about how the NHL will do in Winnipeg the second time around are not playing out well now, with season ticket sales having gone down a lot. The ownership there has pretty much admitted it took the fans there for granted and now has to rebuild was was lost.
Winnipeg surprises me because they have an excellent team (2nd or 3rd in the west), but their attendance is 30th or 31st. Don’t recall if any team other than Arizona is below them. Their metro population is below 1 million, so maybe they are pulling in what they can. Not at all familiar with the Winnipeg economic situation. I suspect even a Canadian team could have money issues if they don’t get the attendance, ads and TV deals. I watch the Wings’ games, and they are running ads almost constantly though the game, using bottom crawls, bifurcated screen during the game when the action stops, electronic ads imposed on the boards (which is interesting when an ice level camera shot is used and the ads one sees are the actual board ads). Even the helmets and jerseys have an ad.
I continue to be amazed how NHL ticket prices have soared. Before the announcement on their move, even the Coyotes’ tickets were $110 and up. Colorado is $70-90 for what I consider the cheap seats, which are $70-90C in Winnipeg.
The Athletic had a good article, but that is behind a paywall:
Here is one article that followed it:
I read the Sun article and comments. Wow. There are some unhappy people there.
“No amount of finger pointing at the business community, the individual fans, the dangerous downtown after dark, the expensive tickets and concessions or even the owners themselves is going to change that.”
from the second link
how can it be dangerous downtown when they have no guns?
Who gives a shit? That has nothing to do with this topic.
As I said on the old board, the topic could be childhood cancer and Weenut would see guns as the solution.
yes it does as they are needing season tickets holders and the ticket holders aren’t feeling safe downtown after dark. I just threw in the guns to rile you up