| Authored by Jacob Maxson - 5th October, 2006 - 3:32 am
 Hockey is Canada’s sport. It always has been and it always will be. A handful of northern states such as Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Dakota, Massachusetts and Maine embrace the passionate hockey culture, but it’s just on loan from their brothers up north.
So this brings up the question; why are only 6 of the 30 teams in the NHL located north of the Border? Why does a country that places hockey about 5th on its list of favorite sports have 80% of the teams?
The answer to that question is the obvious realization that the U.S population dwarfs that of Canada. The United States has approximately 300 million people, while Canada is in the range of 30 million.
People are money; money leads to temptation, owners love people. This formula resulted in moving an adored team from Winnipeg Manitoba, population 500,000, to the middle of the Arizona desert, population 4 million. Hockey in the middle of the desert is a bit ironic, but in its defense a substantial portion of Arizonans are transplants from the Northern U.S. Winters can grow long and tiresome in places like northern Minnesota, resulting in thousands of “snowbirds” flocking to the warm desert.
This being said, it’s time to bring hockey back to Winnipeg. This great city deserves a team. At the time, moving the Jets to Phoenix was probably the best thing to do; though now that Winnipeg has roughly 700,000 people in the metro area, it is fully capable of supporting an NHL team.
Winnipeg would undoubtedly still be classified as a small market team with this population; but it’s all relative when you think of it in terms of fan base.
For example, the Raleigh, North Carolina metro-area, home of the Carolina Hurricanes, has a population roughly twice the size of Winnipeg, nearing 1,500,000. But it’s safe to assume that only a small percentage of that population would classify themselves as “serious hockey fans.” For arguments sake, let’s say 500,000 thousand people there “love” hockey (and I think this is a very generous estimation).
Winnipeg’s “serious” hockey fan base would rival, if not exceed, that of the Carolina Panthers.
Not only would the majority of local residents enthusiastically support the team, but so would a lot of other Canadians. I believe that Canadian citizens are more likely to support NHL teams from Canada than they are from the U.S., thus contributing to a team’s market success.
Maybe I am being unreasonable and aberrant in this belief, but if it were the San Jose Sharks vs. Vancouver Canucks playing in a playoff series, who would everyone in Manitoba and Ontario be routing for?
Now that the strike-era is passed, the future is looking bright once again for the NHL. It’s time to reward those who have stayed loyal to the sport through hard times; like the citizens of Winnipeg. My only request is that the owners come up with a decent team name. Don’t settle for the first thing that comes into your head like they did in Minnesota in 2000. The Wild! What is a Wild? Is it furry? Does it sleep in a tree? I’ve never seen one, have you? How a front office could agree that using an adjective as your team’s name will never cease to amaze me. |
