Yup! Hartford isn’t a hockey market | The Boneyard

Yup! Hartford isn’t a hockey market

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Forgot to post this yesterday.... God I hate Bettman!


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It would be better is there was a huge void in the ratings. This only confirms what Bettman thought all along. CT can be served by the existing franchises in NY and Boston.
 
The NHL won’t take the next step till Bettman retires and owners like Jacobs lose power in picking his replacement.
 
SubbaBub said:
It would be better is there was a huge void in the ratings. This only confirms what Bettman thought all along. CT can be served by the existing franchises in NY and Boston.
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Boston didn't play on Wednesday either. What were the overnights for Thursday and last night?
 
So...less than Phoenix.
 
zls44 said:
So...less than Phoenix.
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This is definitely caused by retirees/transplants from the North.

Phoenix is to Chicago/Milwaukee/Minneapolis what South Florida is to New York/Philly/Boston.
 
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Gary Bettman accomplished what he set out to accomplish. His goal (as well as people invested in the NHL) was to spread the game. Too bad it came at our cost. The North Stars were also sacrificed for the greater good. Devils would have been gone had they not had Martin Brodeur. Their fanbase is still amazingly puny. But much easier to give Minnesota another team than put another one where we are.

Now we have college hockey rosters littered with players around the country. Even Las Vegas was producing college hockey players before they got an NHL team.

I actually did like when the Whalers switched to navy blue, green and silver. That uniform was artwork.

The Greatest NHL® Uniforms face off in random head to head showdowns.
 
People watching hockey on tv doesn't translate to the amount of people that are willing to buy tickets and go to games. Look at the places that beat Hartford that also don't have a team or a team playing in the playoffs. Also, you have to combine Hartford with New Haven just to get into the top 10. Also, the majority of the people who live down there are either Rangers or Islanders fans, and they're not going go to every NHL game in Hartford. They didn't the last time.
 
Biggie1083 said:
People watching hockey on tv doesn't translate to the amount of people that are willing to buy tickets and go to games. Look at the places that beat Hartford that also don't have a team or a team playing in the playoffs. Also, you have to combine Hartford with New Haven just to get into the top 10. Also, the majority of the people who live down there are either Rangers or Islanders fans, and they're not going go to every NHL game in Hartford. They didn't the last time.
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If they didn't combine Hartford with New Haven, Hartford would be nowhere close to the top 10.
 
Reptar said:
If they didn't combine Hartford with New Haven, Hartford would be nowhere close to the top 10.
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But Hartford and New Haven are the same market so not really sure what point you're trying to make?

(But I agree the NHL isn't coming back)
 
Guapo said:
But Hartford and New Haven are the same market so not really sure what point you're trying to make?

(But I agree the NHL isn't coming back)
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I don't see how two cities that are almost 40 miles away from each other can be in the same tv market. That would be like saying Bridgeport and Danbury are in the same markets as New York City.
 
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Guapo said:
But Hartford and New Haven are the same market so not really sure what point you're trying to make?
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Whalers fans will post or say just about anything to justify their "Hartford is an NHL city" argument. You can't have an NHL team if you don't have a building that is up to league standards and last time I checked, the XL Center was nowhere close to being that. Not to mention Hartford is NOT even on the NHL's radar for future expansion.
 
Reptar said:
e Whalers fans will post or say just about anything to justify their "Hartford is an NHL city" argument. You can't have an NHL team if you don't have a building that is up to league standards and last time I checked, the XL Center was nowhere close to being that. Not to mention Hartford is NOT even on the NHL's radar for future expansion.
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I don't disagree.

Not really sure what you're arguing here or why you're so angry.
 
Guapo said:
Not really sure what you're arguing here or why you're so angry.
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Not angry, just frustrated. I'm a Hartford hockey fan and I know of other Hartford hockey "fans" who refuse to support what we have now just because it's not the NHL. Their loss.
 
Reptar said:
Not angry, just frustrated. I'm a Hartford hockey fan and I know of other Hartford hockey "fans" who refuse to support what we have now just because it's not the NHL. Their loss.
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Agreed, certainly when it comes to UConn hockey (I can't blame people for not caring about the AHL).

Anyway, I see you're pretty new here; I can assure you everyone posting in this forum supports UConn hockey, even if they also wax nostalgic about the Whalers sometimes too.
 
Guapo said:
Agreed, certainly when it comes to UConn hockey (I can't blame people for not caring about the AHL).

Anyway, I see you're pretty new here; I can assure you everyone posting in this forum supports UConn hockey, even if they also wax nostalgic about the Whalers sometimes too.
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I was actually referring to the Wolf Pack/AHL. They've been in that building every year since 1997 and UConn didn't show up to the party until 2014. Everyone is going to have their opinions regarding the Wolf pack and UConn but the Pack are Hartford hockey and have been for 21 years.
 
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Reptar said:
I was actually referring to the Wolf Pack/AHL. They've been in that building every year since 1997 and UConn didn't show up to the party until 2014. Everyone is going to have their opinions regarding the Wolf pack and UConn but the Pack are Hartford hockey and have been for 21 years.
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To each their own.

I love hockey and I applaud anyone's hockey fandom and I encourage people to get out and support all Hartford and Connecticut sports, hockey or not and college or not.
 
Guapo said:
To each their own.

I love hockey and I applaud anyone's hockey fandom and I encourage people to get out and support all Hartford and Connecticut sports, hockey or not and college or not.
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Agreed!
 
Biggie1083 said:
I don't see how two cities that are almost 40 miles away from each other can be in the same tv market. That would be like saying Bridgeport and Danbury are in the same markets as New York City.
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First, for the record, Danbury (55) and Bridgeport (62) are both further away from NYC than New Haven is from Hartford. But that isn't the main point, which is that Hartford and New Haven ARE in the same TV market and have been for many years. This is not something conveniently arranged by some pro-Whalers fan to benefit their argument.

That being said, Bettman wanted the Whalers to leave, as did Karmanos (remember the target he set of 8,000 season tickets to be sold by a certain date, otherwise he would have to move the team? Then the target was met and he still moved! ). The only way the team would have stayed is if Richard Gordon had either sold the team to someone else who pledged (contractually) to keep the team here for X years or he extracted the same contractual agreement from Karmanos. Of course, PK never would have entered such an agreement! As someone else said here on the BY, there's not a chance that the NHL will be in Hartford as long as Bettman is in charge. I'm normally an optimist, but this has about the same chance of happening as UConn has of Mark Emmert burying his personal vendetta against the university and becoming a Huskies fan!
 
Biggie1083 said:
I don't see how two cities that are almost 40 miles away from each other can be in the same tv market. That would be like saying Bridgeport and Danbury are in the same markets as New York City.
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Obviously never been outside Connecticut. 40 miles is nothing. The two areas are served by the same media stations. The Boston market goes from Cape Cod to Worcester and includes Southern New Hampshire. It’s named for the Biggest City. Hartford-New Haven is maned for the 2 largest. New York includes Fairfield County and half of New Jersey.
 
Biggie1083 said:
I don't see how two cities that are almost 40 miles away from each other can be in the same tv market. That would be like saying Bridgeport and Danbury are in the same markets as New York City.
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Amazing. And we wonder why facts don't matter politically.
 
I just don't see the people in New Haven supporting a NHL team in Hartford. They didn't when the Whalers were here and I just can't see that changing. It also doesn't help that Hartford and the state can't even agree on what to do with the XL Center. One day they want it to be kept the way it is now being used by the Wolf Pack, UConn, shows, and events. Then they next day they want to spend $300 million on making it a state of the art NHL ready arena. The day after that they want to just tear the whole thing down because "it's just a waste of money, and no one goes there." If the state would just sell the XL Center then they'd finally be able to collect property taxes on the building, while still making money from parking, and taxing the people that come into the city and the people that work in the arena. Right now they're paying for everything and collecting no property taxes, and that's one of the main reasons the building loses money. All the events that are held in the arena make money, but since the state has to pay for all of the maintenance and upgrades that need to be done every year, they lose money.
 
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Biggie1083 said:
I don't see how two cities that are almost 40 miles away from each other can be in the same tv market. That would be like saying Bridgeport and Danbury are in the same markets as New York City.
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Hartford's ABC station is New Haven. New Haven's CBS and NBC stations are in Rocky Hill and New Britain. For media purposes they are the same market.
 
Biggie1083 said:
I just don't see the people in New Haven supporting a NHL team in Hartford. They didn't when the Whalers were here and I just can't see that changing. It also doesn't help that Hartford and the state can't even agree on what to do with the XL Center. One day they want it to be kept the way it is now being used by the Wolf Pack, UConn, shows, and events. Then they next day they want to spend $300 million on making it a state of the art NHL ready arena. The day after that they want to just tear the whole thing down because "it's just a waste of money, and no one goes there." If the state would just sell the XL Center then they'd finally be able to collect property taxes on the building, while still making money from parking, and taxing the people that come into the city and the people that work in the arena. Right now they're paying for everything and collecting no property taxes, and that's one of the main reasons the building loses money. All the events that are held in the arena make money, but since the state has to pay for all of the maintenance and upgrades that need to be done every year, they lose money.
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Last time they tried to sell it nobody wanted to buy. It is going up for sale again so we’ll see. The only proposal to date is a sale/leaseback deal that is pretty one sided. The fundamental problem is that the building is at the end of its useful life and needs a major reinvestment to extend its life just like any facility would. And we are in a very different era than the one in which it was built.

So if you try to sell it, not sure it has much value since any buyer will want certain things either addressed before the sale, reflected in the price or get cash for the improvements as part of the deal.

The other issue is how many privately owned facilities of this type are there? Especially in mid tier cities. DCU (Worcester) Mass Mutual (Springfield) Times Union (Albany) Webster Bank (Bridgeport) and Dunkin Donuts Center (Providence) are all owned by some form of public entity. That would seem to indicate that seeking private ownership of this type of facility in this type of market is at best a questionable undertaking.
 
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Butch said:
If the team had been called the Connecticut Whalers, things would have been different. But even western Mass had Whalers fans.
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They did try that and still no one came. The Baldwins even got in trouble with the AHL for giving away thousands of tickets, faking their numbers, and counting tickets that were never even used. There were a few games where they said they had around 4000 people and there were barely 1000 in the building. The best example of that was the Whale Bowl. They said that they sold over 40,000 tickets and they announced the game had over 20,000 people, yet there was barely 15,000 people at the game.
 
Biggie1083 said:
They did try that and still no one came. The Baldwins even got in trouble with the AHL for giving away thousands of tickets, faking their numbers, and counting tickets that were never even used. There were a few games where they said they had around 4000 people and there were barely 1000 in the building. The best example of that was the Whale Bowl. They said that they sold over 40,000 tickets and they announced the game had over 20,000 people, yet there was barely 15,000 people at the game.
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The reason there weren’t as many at the Whale Bowl was bcuz it was -10. I know people that had about 20tickets collectively that didn’t go bcuz of the temps. It wasn’t a fair representation of interest as I’m sure there were many more that didn’t go after buying tickets
 
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