My long shot bet is a small market team doesn’t survive covid and is relocated to Quebec in the next year or so.

It won't be Arizona.

They bleed tens of millions a year, have not had any significant victories since they became part of the NHL, and are still standing after combine violations.

It absolutely baffles me how they survive season after season despite the fact the writing has been on the wall that they are not a viable market for decades.


Personally I would not mind a team relocating (selfish of me I know) so the divisions can be shuffled.

I know it is done for a cost-cutting measure but I still feel it is very unfair that teams in the Metropolitan conference have such little travel time compared to everyone else.

When there is an 82 game season and four round playoff format in place it is an unfair advantage.

idk man that metro division is pretty tough im not sure travel duration is much of an advantage ^^


the yotes are like bettmans project they fail and fail but its like his careeer goal to make them work lol
like the easy decision would be relocate and not lose money every season but instead he insists the team stays put and loses money draining other teams profit margins

This post was edited by dragoneth on Nov 24 2020 09:27am

The way I see it owners have most of the leverage. Some of them are actually better off not operating at all and can afford to lose a season. Whereas players will flat out not get paid.

But the prospect of losing a season when a key TV contract is up can be doomsday for future revenue. So the clock is ticking on both sides to get a deal done. Right now owners are very clearly trying to extract concessions and waiting for the players to fold.

Players are going to have to make concessions. I dont see any other way. Revenue is wayyyy down as is.

True

Though, if I were the players, I'd just say fuck em for trying to change what they agreed on just not too long ago. You're an NHL player, you make enough money. Losing millions sucks for the year, but grinding another season in a compacted 40 something games wouldn't be worth it to me. At least it makes the owners and league think twice in the future, and not assume they'll have leverage when it comes to pay. Plus, any recent contracts they signed for this year isn't much and backloaded to next year and so on anyway. So they can save that half assed cash and lose more together as a whole and have only themselves to blame lol

Given the past few CBAs the threat of lost revenues hasn't exactly panned out. 1 lockout every decade lol

Extremely accurate. They are looking at a potential 1-2b tv deal per year revenue with the growth of the sport and the recent tv deals for other sports. They cant cancel the season, If They do, they will only hurt their revenue.

For the players they will have to conceed a little bit more and quite frankly i can see a team moving to quebec due to how much they are in the red but i also see bettman doing all in his power to avoid a franchise moving to quebec

i'd be willing to bet a pretty penny that he does everything he can to put a team in KC or Houston over anywhere canada, unfortunately.

NHL and NHLPA agree to CBA framework, so we’ll get a season after all.

Mid Jan, or maybe most likely Feb 1 season start

This post was edited by StayPositive on Dec 7 2020 11:20pm