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NHL Expansion

hockeylover said:
I don't think lack of competition can be blamed for the Leafs lack of success and I don't buy that having competition in the market will necessarily result in icing a better hockey team, that's all. I don't know that they'll try any harder than they are now. It'd be kinda funny if we got a 2nd Toronto team in 2016 and that was the year a Shanny-run team finally turned it around though. Maybe "they were forced to compete" will be the narrative.
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and if that was the case, the narrative would be bullshit.


Should the lack of in market competition be blamed for the Leafs lack of success? I honestly don't know, but it's a fairly interesting question. I do think they would conduct business a little differently if they were competing for market share with another hockey club though. I do believe the root cause in the Leafs lack of winning over the years to be ownership, and another club in market would have incestuous bullshit like Bogers ownership being far less likely.
 
I don't believe the root cause of the Leafs lack of success was ownership not being forced to compete, I believe they just don't know how - ie. Incompetence/bad decisions not lack of effort.

I do think they would conduct business a little differently if they were competing for market share with another hockey club though.
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Curious. How? If they put a team down in Mississauga tomorrow, what changes?
 
hockeylover said:
I don't believe the root cause of the Leafs lack of success was ownership not being forced to compete, I believe they just don't know how - ie. Incompetence/bad decisions not lack of effort.
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Bad decisions in business happen. Where MLSE has often been different is an issue we've complained about a lot on here. Accountability. If you accept the premise that in market competition would punish the Leafs financially for putting a shit product on the ice, you then have to accept that corporate level **** ups that lead to shit product on the ice would be punished harshly. An excellent example imo would be the Peddie/Quinn/JFJ saga. Quinn lost a corporate power play with Peddie, Peddie installs his guy into the GM chair. His guys doesn't produce better results and actually puts the club into maybe the worst position in the league for an impending salary cap (that almost everyone knew was coming). Does Peddie get punished for this? No, of course not, because on the business end, he's made his bosses gobs of coin. ****ing gobs. He rides off into the sunset years later, stating in an interview “I'm one of those rare CEOs who never got fired". In an environment where poor product on the ice is punished financially, he absolutely does get fired as his decision lead to hiring the architect of the clubs decline.

To expand that example for a moment. When JFJ goes to the board to pitch his plan to rebuild the club post lockout, and gets shot down because the board expects playoff revenue. If there's another club in town, and heaven forbid, a successful one, does the board get the **** out of the way? In a world where MLSE earnings aren't as sure as death and taxes, does the board defer to it's hockey people?



Curious. How? If they put a team down in Mississauga tomorrow, what changes?
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The entire decision making ethos of the business. You're basically asking the question "if the ownership group is no longer assured it's massive brand power, no longer assured it's high earnings, would they run their business any different?"
 
MindzEye said:
The entire decision making ethos of the business. You're basically asking the question "if the ownership group is no longer assured it's massive brand power, no longer assured it's high earnings, would they run their business any different?"
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Yeah, but how? They've invested 200 million back into their three teams, told them to put a shitload of money into an analytics department and have a guy they appear to trust going forward in Shanahan. So I guess I just don't understand what they do differently from what they're doing right now if there's another team in Toronto. Can you think of anything specifically?
 
hockeylover said:
Yeah, but how? They've invested 200 million back into their three teams, told them to put a shitload of money into an analytics department and have a guy they appear to trust going forward in Shanahan. So I guess I just don't understand what they do differently from what they're doing right now if there's another team in Toronto. Can you think of anything specifically?
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Specifically? Sure. All of that, but all the time. Never cheaping out on it, never losing sight of that being the right way to compete. You seem to be taking very recent events and treating them like that's the way we're definitely going to do business from now on. What happens when Shanny steps on TL's replacements toes in a few years? Does the new TL punt Shanny and put his guy in Shanny's chair? What's that guys view on analytics? Who is going to hold them accountable? What if TL's replacement inks more highly profitable agreements to build more condos, making him ****ing bulletproof with the board?

Competition ensures that you get punished for making shitty decisions. When you get punished for making shitty decisions, you tend to learn to make better decisions. MLSE has never been punished financially for bad decision making. Competition would change that.
 
Yeah, that last paragraph was basically my thinking.

MLSE is fat, bloated sluggish and complacent. There have been no real tangible consequences for their decades of failure -- in fact, if anything, they're more profitable than ever. They need their cages rattled and being excoriated in the papers as a national laughingstock hasn't been enough motivation. That they can just ignore.

Maybe another team better than their own (hardly a difficult task) right under their noses would be something they could ignore less easily. I don't know.
 
MindzEye said:
Specifically? Sure. All of that, but all the time. Never cheaping out on it, never losing sight of that being the right way to compete. You seem to be taking very recent events and treating them like that's the way we're definitely going to do business from now on. What happens when Shanny steps on TL's replacements toes in a few years? Does the new TL punt Shanny and put his guy in Shanny's chair? What's that guys view on analytics? Who is going to hold them accountable? What if TL's replacement inks more highly profitable agreements to build more condos, making him ****ing bulletproof with the board?

Competition ensures that you get punished for making shitty decisions. When you get punished for making shitty decisions, you tend to learn to make better decisions. MLSE has never been punished financially for bad decision making. Competition would change that.
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God, I hate Richard Peddie.

I'm really not buying the whole "competition" angle though. Even if there was another johnny-come-lately expansion NHL franchise in Toronto that quickly became more competitive than the Leafs, would that ever result in empty seats at the ACC? Would there ever be unsold private boxes as a result? Would the TV ratings and money be any less lucrative? I don't really think so.
 
MindzEye said:
In all seriousness though, Mississauga would clearly be the best choice for a "Toronto Lite" 2nd franchise location. Larger than Winnipeg, Quebec City, and Hamilton, easy highway access, soon to have properly integrated regional transit with Toronto, lots of real estate options for an arena.

Shit, put it in between Sauga and Brampton, and you'd have a local market larger than Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, & Ottawa....as well as San Jose, Nashville, Columbus, Detroit and a bunch of other US market.
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Agreed. Mississauga is the best choice.
 
MindzEye said:
Competition ensures that you get punished for making shitty decisions. When you get punished for making shitty decisions, you tend to learn to make better decisions. MLSE has never been punished financially for bad decision making. Competition would change that.
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Well, I guess I'm also not sure they'll ever really be punished financially either, even with a new team.
 
hockeylover said:
Well, I guess I'm also not sure they'll ever really be punished financially either, even with a new team.
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punished is a relative term of course. They'll never lose money, but the fan base would absolutely diminish given long enough periods of futility. Ratings would go down, and with it, the amount of money their worth in regional broadcasting contracts.

You think ownership wouldn't notice if the Leafs weren't maximizing revenue?
 
LeafGm said:
God, I hate Richard Peddie.

I'm really not buying the whole "competition" angle though. Even if there was another johnny-come-lately expansion NHL franchise in Toronto that quickly became more competitive than the Leafs, would that ever result in empty seats at the ACC? Would there ever be unsold private boxes as a result? Would the TV ratings and money be any less lucrative? I don't really think so.
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Basically you're saying that you don't think the Leafs would lose any fan base, regardless of the quality of the other club in town. I don't think that would be the case, I think there would potentially be a lot of fan base bleed if the other Toronto team was successful, and the Leafs were inept for a long period of time (like the period we're in right now, for example).
 
It's not even fanbase bleed. I think people underestimate both the number of people who are hockey fans but not Leaf fans in Toronto and the hunger for winning hockey in the market.

A new team would certainly service the first need and, at least relative to the Leafs performance the past 30-40 years, likely satisfy the second as well within a reasonable time frame.
 
Volcanologist said:
It's not even fanbase bleed. I think people underestimate both the number of people who are hockey fans but not Leaf fans in Toronto and the hunger for winning hockey in the market.

A new team would certainly service the first need and, at least relative to the Leafs performance the past 30-40 years, likely satisfy the second as well within a reasonable time frame.
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I've always maintained a 2nd Toronto team would be a huge success mainly for this reason, I don't think that's in dispute.

I just don't think the Leafs will suddenly figure out how to ice a winner just because there's another team down the street, that's all really. It seems like wishful thinking to me. There's a bunch of people who think this will mean affordable tickets too.
 
You would guarantee yourself three or four more home games as the Leaf fans would dominate the new team fans. Add that to your games in Ottawa and you are basically playing 47 home games a year.
 
MindzEye said:
Basically you're saying that you don't think the Leafs would lose any fan base, regardless of the quality of the other club in town. I don't think that would be the case, I think there would potentially be a lot of fan base bleed if the other Toronto team was successful, and the Leafs were inept for a long period of time (like the period we're in right now, for example).
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Not exactly. What I'm saying is that the market and demand in the GTA for the Leafs and NHL hockey in general is so large that even if you had another NHL team in the market siphoning off their fan base, it still wouldn't be enough to make any appreciable difference to MLSE's bottom line.

I mean, honestly---no matter how successful a new NHL team was, can you ever foresee unsold seats at the ACC? Or a dramatic lowering of their TV ratings? I just can't see it happening.
 
True although I think we have more fans in Florida than the Leafs do. The Panthers deliberated moved our xmas game there from Dec 31 so that the Panthers wouldn't have to end the calendar year being outnumbered fan wise 14000 -2000
 
TheCountofMonteCristo said:
True although I think we have more fans in Florida than the Leafs do. The Panthers deliberated moved our xmas game there from Dec 31 so that the Panthers wouldn't have to end the calendar year being outnumbered fan wise 14000 -2000
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Yeah, I have no doubt that there are plenty of Canadiens fans among the snowbirds as well. As soon as they moved the Florida teams into our division, it was extra home games for both our teams. Though I'm sure the actual "home" teams aren't complaining about the extra ticket sales in those games.
 
LeafGm said:
Yeah, I have no doubt that there are plenty of Canadiens fans among the snowbirds as well. As soon as they moved the Florida teams into our division, it was extra home games for both our teams. Though I'm sure the actual "home" teams aren't complaining about the extra ticket sales in those games.
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yep

it is a little less in Tampa as they have more of a fanbase but even in the playoffs last year, we probably had 6000 fans at the game.

Toronto and Montreal have home crowds in Ottawa, Buffalo, Florida, Tampa, Minnesota and often Long Island, out west Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver have large contingents with less in Winnipeg for now but that will change when the Jets original tickets holders no longer have to keep season's tickets
 
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