The Arizona Coyotes will play their next season at Arizona State University’s small arena in Tempe. It’s discreet as a place, let’s say it’s the polite formula. Nothing to do with the Videotron Center.
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And Tempe certainly has no lesson to teach Quebec. Nor Glendale for that matter. And if the Coyotes can survive in the Arizona desert, I can’t think of any other place than the NBA Suns Arena in downtown Phoenix.
To get a better idea, know that Glendale and Tempe are 35 or 40 kilometers from Phoenix and 80 kilometers from each other. Scottsdale is even further away. No matter how much they say that the urban agglomeration has four million inhabitants, it costs a lot of gas to visit! Tempe has a population of 161,000.
That said, anyone who follows business and hockey has already figured out that Gary Bettman won’t give up and will try to find a solution so that American television and national advertising agencies can sell to Ford, GM, Costco and the others a market covering all of the United States. Already that Atlanta, the hub of the southeast, is not covered by the National League …
HOUSTON AND AFTER EXPANSION
I had the pleasure of visiting Houston. Like Austin. Nothing like a wrinkled motorcycle to smell the direction of the wind in the cities. Sophisticated city Austin already has its Formula 1 Grand Prix. Houston, city of oil and money, once had the World Association Eros with the Howe family. And before, Serge Savard and Guy Lapointe had the pleasure of playing there with the Apollos.
The Coyotes will no doubt pick up in Houston for the cash and to reinforce the situation of hockey in Texas where the Stars are very much alone in the fall and winter months when the Rangers and the Cowboys are going crazy.
So it’s hopeless for Quebec?
Disagree. Completely disagree. Quebec demonstrates that it is a city crazy about hockey. And by the way, the prices of games at the Remparts in the final are not that far from the price of a game with the Florida Panthers in December.
Things have evolved. It is not by moving that Quebec will have a chance to find its beloved Nordiques. It remains to be seen if an expansion is possible for the National League.
POSSIBLE EXPANSION
Everyone dwells on the magic number of 32 teams in the National League. There are 30 in the NBA and major league baseball. The NFL has 32 as well.
But there is a huge difference. The NBA has 29 teams in the United States and the Raptors in Toronto. Same thing in baseball. The Blue Jays and 29 teams in the United States. As for the NFL, its 32 teams are located in the USA.
The National Hockey League has seven clubs in Canada and only 25 in the United States. You just need to know how to read a geo-economic map of the country to realize that there are at least four or five markets left to develop. Kansas City is one. Atlanta, ironically or not, is a hot market. The colossal success of soccer confirms this.
However, the war in Ukraine will eventually end. We hope so. There is a limit to destroying a country. Hockey will therefore be able to continue to draw on the Scandinavian countries, Russia, Germany, Switzerland, not to mention the United States to feed its teams. And we saw it with Vegas and Seattle, the way of proceeding with the last expansions allowed the fans to really trip from the beginnings of the franchise.
I think Quebec will have another chance in the next four or five years.
And if you carefully read Martin Tremblay’s statement from Gestev and Quebecor yesterday, I hope you understood that it meant that Pierre Karl Péladeau is always up for it if someone gets the ball rolling.