Can't wait till they PTO Grimaldi and everyone sh*ts their pants because he's 5'6

Am I off my rocker here, or did Draisaitl (or somebody anyway) not have a quote about the Avalanche coming at you in waves and giving you no time to breathe? Could've sworn I saw the quote but can't find it for the life of me.

I'm summoning for some offseason action.

SOMETHING NEEDS TO HAPPEN SOON

The Spirit of Hockey, hear my call

I clicked like, but I worry that Jim Nill is gonna make a dumb trade now because you've summoned him.

Joe Pavelski has requested a trade, the Pittsburgh Penguins are rumored to be his preferred destination

— NHL Rumor Bot (@bot_nhl) September 6, 2022

Wow insane

The islanders are going to sign chara to a PTO

They’re actually going to make him a coach, and he learned from The Book of Trotz

Not to worry. Jim Nill doesn't make dumb trades.

Or should I say, Jim Nill doesn't make any trades.

I frigging hate that page.

Bold of you to assume Lamoriello would do something

I’m just dying to see what happens with the remaining UFA’s/ RFA’s it’s going to be a wave of changes that’ll negate a lot of our previous fantasy plans lol

Knowing Gross hes gonna try and drag out the negotiations so that Sandin can get his 2.6mill. Meanwhile Dubas is staying firm at 1.4mill x 2 years (What Liligren got)

I got a feeling Sandin signs 1.8mill x 2 years by October 10

Didnt he sign in Europe

Now to my prediction

Prediction

Tyler Bozak, Brian Boyle or Brad Richardson PTO

Kerfoot trade

Because Arizona is a disaster franchise and a guideline on how not to run a team. Them and Florida suffer a secondary problem once you get past the part of actually having people to attend games - actually having the arena in a location people can access. Both Glendale and Sunrise are not in the population centers for Phoenix and Miami. Couple that with both teams spending a decade being poor and you're not going to sell tickets.

My post was to try and highlight how small Halifax is compared to a place where you'd put a major sports franchise. Do you think a NFL or MLB team would be able to survive in Dayton or Columbia? Both would be able to handle smaller scale teams but a major league team needs that population draw in order to have a chance to survive. If the team starts playing bad, people aren't going to show up, even in Canada. The statistics Yikes posted have two Canadian teams: the aforementioned Winnipeg and Ottawa - both with much larger populations. Winnipeg gets 83% capacity on average, and Ottawa suffers from the two reasons I listed earlier - bad arena location, bad team results.

Population isn't the defining thing to determine where a franchise goes, but it is the first hurdle you have to cross in order to be considered. Halifax doesn't cut it.

Also, regarding the 'Halifax sells tickets', the last full, non-pandemic season they played they averaged 8,149 attendence in an arena with a hockey capacity of 10,500. That's not enough. https://www.hockeydb.com/nhl-attendance/att_graph.php?tmi=5976

Can’t wait

In reality I do see Chara potentially coaching, having the talent obviously isn’t a qualifier for coaching, tho he’s obviously got it with his likely HOF resume. But he seems like a guy worth listening to as I believe chiclets said he’s one of the most empathetic and kind players in the game. I believe it’ll be more likely with his home nation but non the less, I think he’s seen enough decades of the game first hand to be able to competently dissect the game. Just comes to if he has “it”.

Once you pass a population area of 1,500,000 it doesn't really matter much, because you have enough people in your catchment area to see a game twice a season. That's when arena size, arena location and team performance matter more. Those five teams have either been playing poorly, have a bad arena location or play in a small arena.

Oh yeah, it also completely highlights the “recency bias” in us.

I mean I did not remember Arizona being at 14k - obviously that wasn’t the standard the NHL “desired” at the time but it’s way more desirable now. Also forgetting Buffalo was holding 17k they’ve fallen arguably the hardest without having actually to dissect the list and do actual math.

And it lays out as you stated, the biggest issue with most struggling teams is the location of the arena paired with a poor team. I had no desire except for free tickets to drive to Kanata watching the 2018 Sens lol and I live in the area. And there’s nothing to do paired with it in the area. Now that the Sens are interesting to watch, I’ve re gained that desire to see them as there’s players worth going to see live. Yet I will not get seasons tickets due to the just stupid time sink that is the travel to the Canadian Tire Centre. You could live 15-20min away and potentially kill an hour getting home if the game ends at 10pm. That’s almost 11pm on a work night. If you lived south/ east of Kanata, anything near 30-40 min pre game drive and you could realistically on a bad night spend 2+ hrs in a car for total travel time.

An even better example imo, the whole NYI debacle which saw a PLAYOFF TEAM, have the 2nd lowest attendance in the entire league (2019-20). It was not a bad team, it was the purely stupid arena situation.

And for the last two examples - both Ottawa and NYI would OFTEN see large influxes in attendance; Toronto, NYR, NJD, MTL. That would heavily boost their low average numbers. This is just speculation but I’m confident to safely state this last paragraph regarding OTT - TOR/MTL games and I’m going to assume a similar (probably lesser) situation with the NY teams.

Oh yeah, Ottawa definitely capitalize on Sens-Leafs/Habs games, those are auto sellouts, people from TO or the Quebec side will do the trip to watch

You also have to consider the league TV deal. Adding Halifax adds less than 10% of the media market size than true "major league markets" do. Yes there are going to be high ratings but even 30% of 300,000 households is not going to move the needle and increase the media deal.

Houston adds not just the city of Houston but increases markets in souther Texas (Austin, San Antonio, Galveston, Beaumont, and even into Louisiana). We're talking 10,000,000 people.

If we are talking about a non traditional market of 900,000 like Jacksonville, Florida it probably washes with Halifax and the attendance figures favor Halifax at that point. But in other bigger markets it's not even close.

It’s hard to tell if his knowledge of the game will translate into being a good coach. Some of the best players in the past didn’t go on to become good coaches. I guess we’ll see

I guess you missed the Odelius signing and Romanov trade !

That was 2 months ago

Yeah but I find the insight given on Chara as a person makes me see him being able to better translate it to teaching. I think a host in Ottawa (paraphrasing but I believe this is pretty accurate callback)(when Chara was there), recalled asking Chara to sign something and what not for his son - and said Chara actually came over for dinner to his house and gave the kid a great memory.

More or less, the words and stories about him as human who can relate to others and not be the larger than life (figuratively and literally lol) character/ superstar is something that holds water. Someone like St Louis who isn’t just a star, but knows the grind and the work ethic needed and not ego inflated. Has the ability to not only see the game but level with someone not on “his level” and respect that lesser person and not see them as “lesser”. That’s where a lot of great coaching lies.