Permanently Fixing the NHL

I was reading Bill Simmons' mailbag from today, and a reader asked him if he'd do a mailbag dedicated to people complaining about the NHL lockout. Simmons answered the question by saying in Canada they are really panicking, and then he sarcastically added that the NHL only has seven Canadian teams. It didn't click until after I finished reading his column, but I thought, "He might be on to something here. If the NHL was more Canadian than American, then lockouts would rarely happen." Here goes my crazily brilliant plan to fix the NHL that in no way would ever happen in real life (but if it did a season would never be lost to a lockout).

Right now there are seven teams NHL teams located in Canada, and they are the Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs, Vancouver Canucks, Winnipeg Jets, Ottawa Senators, Calgary Flames, and Edmonton Oilers. Since there are 30 NHL teams, that means that Canada makes up just under 25% of the league. This doesn't make any sense considering the fact that hockey is the football of Canada. If the NHL was more Canadian than American, any labor dispute would have to be settled before the season because the league would be wildly popular, as it is now in Canada. I think the NHL should be completely revamped. Instead of being 23-7 in favor of the US, it should be 16-14 in favor of Canada. If there were 16 teams in Canada, the NHL would be ran by a Canadian commissioner, and a Canadian commissioner would never allow a season to be lost to a lockout.

A Canadian commissioner would do wonders for the NHL because he would realize the importance of playing hockey over cancelling it to get the best deal. Just like Roger Goodell knew he couldn't cancel any NFL games last season which resulted in a deal being done in time for a couple preseason games and a full season to be played as scheduled. The popularity of the NFL worked against Goodell and the owners, and the players knew it. A similar situation would happen if there were more hockey teams in Canada than the US. Nothing tops hockey in Canada, which would only make the clamor louder for a deal to be done fast. You thought the replacement ref situation was bad? Try dealing with angry Canadians that are told there won't be any hockey every night because the owners are getting greedy, and hockey would be played every night in Canada with 16 Canadian teams.

The tricky part would be finding a way to put 16 teams in Canada. One way would be to double up in major cities. Six of the seven current NHL teams in Canada are located in the largest six cities in Canada, which is obviously isn't a coincidence. These six cities should have two teams per city much like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago do in some of the other big four sports leagues. This would automatically give Canada 12 teams with doubles in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, Calgary, and Edmonton. You add Winnipeg and that makes 13. This means leaves only three new cities to enter the league. The three cities I would go with are: Quebec, Hamilton, and Saskatoon. These three cities would be the ideal choices because they are already have NHL-sized arenas. Quebec and Hamilton also have decent size metropolitan areas in the 720,000-765,000 range (similar size to Winnipeg) while Saskatoon is very small at just over 260,000. Saskatoon, however, owns the largest arena of the three and could be the Green Bay of the NHL. OK, so maybe bringing up the number of Canadian teams to 16 wasn't hard after all.

Cutting down the number of US teams, however, would be very hard because US cities are more populated than most Canadian cities. Obviously, you'd have to keep the four US members of the original six hockey teams, which are the New York Rangers, Boston Bruins, Detroit Red Wings, and Chicago Blackhawks. The next two logical teams to keep would be the Buffalo Sabres and Minnesota Wild because of their close proximity to Canada. Two more teams to keep would be the Los Angeles Kings and Dallas Stars because Los Angeles and Dallas are such large cities. The Pittsburgh Penguins, Philadelphia Flyers, and New Jersey Devils would be wise to keep as well due to them being perennial powerhouses. This makes 11 teams that I would keep for sure. Most of the remaining teams are in warm climates, which doesn't make sense in a hockey league, in my opinion. One team that isn't in a warm climate is the Colorado Avalanche, and so I'd keep them. Another team I'd choose to keep is the Washington Capitals because apparently it's mandatory to have a sports team in the capital. I would not choose another current NHL team to keep. Instead, I would choose to put an expansion team in Seattle because I find Seattle to be more of a hockey city than places like Tampa, Phoenix, Anaheim, and San Jose. It is also much closer to Canada than any remaining NHL city in the US.

This new NHL would make much more money that the current league because it is more accessible to the people that truly love hockey, Canadians. Combine more money coming in from Canada with the 14 US teams in which the majority are large cities, and maybe the NHL wouldn't be trailing the NFL, MLB, and NBA in revenue each year. There certainly wouldn't be a lockout every five years either if Canada controlled the league. This idea may be crazy, wild, and insane, but it'd work. Remember, I said this is a way to permanently fix the NHL, and a permanent fix requires an elaborate plan and lots of changes. If you want a quick fix, then I'd start with firing commissioner Gary Bettman.

References

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8435690/welcome-elaborate-chat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_in_Canada
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_indoor_arenas_in_Canada
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Hockey_League