Are you a hockey fan who abhors the stale, corporate culture at Toronto Maple Leafs games and wishes tickets were widely available to the general public? Are you a hockey fan excited by the prospect of attending a game as long as it doesn’t do significant damage to your disposable income? Are you a hockey fan who cares passionately about the well-being of the game?
If you answered “yes” to these questions, then you should be strongly in favour of the NHL’s proposed addition of a second franchise in southern Ontario. Here’s why:
The Leafs wouldn’t suffer at all
It’s obvious that there are more than enough rabid hockey fans to support two teams in the GTA. Our lovable losers currently hold the NHL’s highest average ticket revenue, as well as the longest consecutive sellout streak (as if that weren’t enough, the Leafs claim to have sold out every single game from 1946 to 1999). With such a rabid fan base, the Leafs continue to sell out every game, playoffs be damned. A second team in the area gives the average fan a chance to score a ticket once in a while, providing the Leafs with a little healthy competition—and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Think of the prospects for a classic new rivalry
It’s undeniable that sports thrive on big-time rivalries, and it’s really hard to get excited about the snooze-worthy Montreal Canadiens, and the underachieving Ottawa Senators. A team in Hamilton, or even Mississauga, would inject life back into the game by giving Torontonians something to argue about. Better yet, put the teams in the same division. When their baseball teams do well enough, New York gets to have a subway series, why can’t we have one every few weeks? It would get the city buzzing and provide endless front-page material for the Toronto Sun.
The NHL needs more teams in Canada
While we can’t blame the NHL for trying to expand its boundaries, it’s clear Americans don’t love hockey the way we do—and maybe it’s got something to do with the ice and snow we have in Canada. With the strong Canadian dollar, the six Canadian teams are the most profitable franchises in the league. It’s an outrage that we lost two teams in the ’90s to American markets, especially when you consider that the hopeless Phoenix Coyotes (formerly the Winnipeg Jets) are losing $30 million a season. If the league wants to compete against the other major sports in North America, the NHL needs to return to its Canadian roots. Toronto is the perfect place to start.
We need to stop Gary Bettman from ruining our game
After Stephen Brunt called Bettman’s tenure as NHL Commissioner “an unequivocal failure” in a Globe and Mail column earlier this year, he launched into a long-awaited diatribe Bettman sorely deserved. Take the Winnipeg-Phoenix debacle and add the NHL’s moribund franchises in Atlanta, Tampa Bay, and Sunrise, Florida—they’re all Bettman’s fault. Long the champion of American expansion (even to cities where the only ice is in the drinks), Bettman blocked a proposed move to Hamilton by the Nashville Predators, whose disgruntled owner was offered a handsome sum for the team by the founder of Research In Motion, southern Ontario native/U of T alum Jim Balsillie.
Balsillie’s decision to sell season tickets for the new Hamilton team before he had even signed the papers was a tad premature, costing him majority ownership. But both Wayne Gretzky and Premier Dalton McGuinty publicly supported the move, and it seems all but two parties are in favour of the prospect of a second hockey team in the GTA: the owners of the Leafs and Gary Bettman.
We need to stop them. Now who’s with us?
