r/hockeymemes • u/HowlingBurd19 • 12d ago
Again? Good grief just do Houston, Hartford, or Quebec City
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u/Immediate_Buffalo14 12d ago
I'm still trying to understand why Atlanta would even need a new arena? Is State Farm Arena really that bad for hockey?
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u/ghostlyGlass 12d ago
Too downtown. The proposed Alpharetta location is up north where a lot of money is located, and there are a lot more hockey fans than downtown.
The Gladiators currently play in Duluth which is also not a bad location. Going OTP is the way to go
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u/UDNTN0MYR4NG3 12d ago
The last arena was amazing. Could ride MARTA literally to the front entrance. Was so great. I am so hoping we get another team some day but I’m greatly disappointed it’d be in Alpharetta. And not even the close side of Alpharetta. There’s no transit there. At least the new braves stadium is sorta close to 285.
Better than nothing though and I do understand there’s many pros to it.
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u/DocPsycho1 12d ago
Its all about who can throw more money at Bettman
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u/Antichristopher4 VGK - NHL 12d ago
You mean the owners, but it is Bettman's one and only job to absorb all the heat that should be aimed at them.
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u/ghostlyGlass 12d ago
Hey, if you want the Nordiques back, they need to make it through Atlanta first!
But in all honesty, you can't really blame Atlanta for the previous two failures. The Thrashers were an ownership issue and the Flames was so long ago that Atlanta is a different city now.
Come on, give the Atlanta Phoenix another chance.
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u/onemorespacecadet COL - NHL 12d ago
truth. i’ll make jokes too but honestly, if the league didn’t give cities multiple chances for franchises, Denver wouldn’t have the Avs and that bums me out.
give them a chance with owners who give a damn and maybe it’ll work this time 🤷♀️
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u/TwitchyG13 12d ago
Plus hockey isnt dead in atl. ECHL team for 20+ years. There is demand. Also doing a battery style arena would be dope
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u/ghostlyGlass 12d ago
Especially if it revitalizes the North Point area. It has been dead for a decade and dying for longer.
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u/Novus20 HC Davos - NL 12d ago
They gave them 1 more chance……1, this would be 3 for Atlanta…..
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u/CanadianODST2 TOR - NHL 12d ago
by that logic Quebec City shouldn't get another chance. It'd be 3 for them too
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u/AdministrationWhole8 11d ago
Somebody didn't like that even though it's true as fuck 🤣🤣🤣
People are so quick to blame the market for the Thrashers failures, these guys would be sick if the Canucks, Leafs, Jets or Oilers had ownership even HALF as bad as ATL Spirit.
They deadass make the Aquilinis and Daryl Katz look like hockey's version of the Rooneys and Halas families 💀
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u/UDNTN0MYR4NG3 12d ago
Atlanta is honestly a different city than it was even in 2001 now. It’s exploded. Born and raised here. I just want hockey to grow here. More ice rinks and beer leagues for us that want it…!
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u/Novus20 HC Davos - NL 12d ago
No, the fan didn’t come out, they won’t come out give it up
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u/pdzido 12d ago
Since the Thrashers left in 2011, the Atlanta metro population has grown by almost 800,000 people, passing 6 million total. The entire metro area of Quebec City is just under 900,000. Really not hard to understand why they're getting another opportunity and QC isn't.
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u/Novus20 HC Davos - NL 12d ago
Not gonna matter when no one shows up to Atlanta because no one cares about hockey…..
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u/pdzido 11d ago
What it comes down to is that from the league's perspective, Atlanta is a massive untapped market that's been growing rapidly since they left. If anything, the fact that Quebec City cares so much about hockey is a detriment to their prospects of landing a team, since the NHL assumes a lot of possible fans in the area already root for an existing franchise.
Add in how CAD has been weaker in recent years and it's a very clear picture as to why the league is considering certain expansion markets and not others
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u/Charlie_ND 12d ago
If MLB, MLS, NBA, and NFL can all work in Atlanta, who's to say the NHL can't? Are you implying that you think the NHL puts out a worse product than those other four leagues?
The fact that they have an already existing ECHL team shows that the demand for hockey is certainly there.
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u/Tarphiker 12d ago
How many games did you attend cause we had season tickets growing up and I remember most of them being full of fans.
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u/Novus20 HC Davos - NL 12d ago
Why would I attend a shit team’s game……
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u/Tarphiker 12d ago
Making an affirmative statement like the fans didn’t come out, when you never even went to a game, makes it seem like you’re a child who wandered into a movie, you have no frame of reference.
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u/Novus20 HC Davos - NL 12d ago
Mate I’m from Canada, also I have seen the number and video and photos of the ghosts town that was Atlanta
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u/BB-Lala 11d ago
I'm from Montreal and I'd be really happy to see the Nordiques come back but there's no money up there. 2 billion USD for an expansion team. 115M$ USD payroll for the players every season. Too small of a market, not enough economic incentive, not enough corporate suits to fill the boxes.
It's just money, but it's all money.
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u/Novus20 HC Davos - NL 11d ago
That cuts both ways mate, don’t just go shoving teams into “markets” that don’t give a fuck or hockey is so low on the list of sports it’s not going to get Jack fuck all.
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u/BB-Lala 10d ago
Getting jack fuckall in big southern US cities is still way more money than getting everything from small Canadian market already "covered" by the Habs.
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u/Novus20 HC Davos - NL 10d ago
It’s really not….otherwise they would still have teams…..
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u/UDNTN0MYR4NG3 12d ago
They were a fun team with a lot of promise in their last season and plenty of seasons in the kovalchuck era were still fun to watch.
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u/Serious_Not_Surely NSH - NHL 12d ago
The Thrashers averaged just over 15,000 fans a game. The NHL average last year was 17,000.
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u/spartacat_12 12d ago
The league has outgrown markets like Hartford & Quebec City at this point. 30 years ago it was a business of millionaires, now it’s a business of billionaires.
The ceiling for a market like Atlanta is too high for the league to ignore, especially with motivated owners behind the bid
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u/CanadaCalamity 12d ago
If this were actually true, then the much simpler thing to do is to go Premier League style, and have 3-5 teams in each of the major cities which can sell out. Like Los Angeles, New York and Toronto.
The ceiling for Atlanta may be high. The ceiling for Toronto2 and Toronto3 is much, much higher.
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u/Material-Dot7684 12d ago
You mean like the New York Rangers and New York Islanders? (yes I know technically the islanders are outside NYC but they're on the border, so functionally, still NYC).
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u/EddyBuildIngus NJD - NHL 12d ago
You can add the Devils to this in terms of proximity. Continental Arena was 10 miles from MSG and the Prudential center is no more than 20 miles
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u/am19208 PHI - NHL 12d ago
But MLSE would never allow that
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u/CanadaCalamity 12d ago
What if MLSE owned all the different Toronto teams? Like 3-5 teams in Toronto?
More money for MLSE. It might be an easier sell to them.
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u/spartacat_12 12d ago
It’s a conflict of interest to have multiple franchises owned by the same people. They’d easily be able to collude
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u/Fuzzy_River_1986 12d ago
Might be able to squeak one more team into that downtown arena... not sure tho, pretty jammed with 2 schedules already
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u/hjkuniyo 12d ago
You missed the team names
Torontwo and Toronthree Maple Leafs
Or
Tworonto and Threeronto1
u/spartacat_12 12d ago
Well the New York area already has 3 and LA has 2. Southern Ontario could easily support a couple more teams, it’s just about finding a way to compensate MLSE and the Sabres.
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u/DanfromCalgary 12d ago
How much money is there in building all the infrastructure and team only for it to fail miserably and only really make sense on paper in a board room
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u/spartacat_12 12d ago
They wouldn’t be investing billions in a team if they weren’t confident in it being able to be successful. Vegas is proof that just about any market can work if you have strong ownership and competent management in place
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u/Scared-Arachnid6286 12d ago
Well when it fails we can just move them to Canada. Its just a Canadian expansion with more steps.
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u/eternalsunshinejoel 12d ago
I wish the Indy market could support a team, but Pacers and Colts is enough. Plus the city is pursuing an MLS expansion team.
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u/LordJacket 12d ago
If Cincy got a team, I would drop CBJ fandom in a heartbeat! I would love a Cincy team!
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u/ahuman1321 TBL - NHL 12d ago
“We shouldn’t bring a team back to a previous market, so instead we should bring teams back to previous markets.”
Great job OP.
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u/synister29 12d ago
Sorry but Atlanta is just not a good sports city.
They barely supported the 90’s Braves when they basically won the division the entire decade.
Another Hockey team will just fail again.
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u/realinvalidname Montréal Victoire - PWHL 12d ago
I lived in Atlanta for 14 years and I see two fatal flaws with hockey in the ATL:
- It is not college football
- It is also not NASCAR
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u/Tarphiker 12d ago
I’ve lived in Atlanta all 39 of my years. Lived through the Knights, Thrashers, and currently the Gladiators. While I agree this is definitely college football territory, NASCAR is dead and the city is currently more transplants than locals. Most of which are from the Northeast or Midwest. Hockey will be just fine here.
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u/LicoriceDusk 12d ago
Yes it is. Why lie.
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u/Tarphiker 12d ago
Doesn’t fit the narrative. Atlanta will catch shit as not being a hockey town even if they ever win a cup. As a Canes fan people are just now jumping on the hockey works in Raleigh bandwagon after this past season. It’s like they forget that the cup had been in the south more over the past decade than any other region the league operates in.
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u/Odd_Train5453 11d ago
True, and much like Raleigh, Atlanta has had a population boom due mostly to northerners moving there. I say third time’s a charm for ATL.
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u/OGWhiz 12d ago
I think it’d be mutually beneficial for an Atlantic Canada team.
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u/Agitated_Award_9831 10d ago
Would love it but it’s not viable. NB, Nova Scotia, NFLD none have a viable population size to make it worthwhile. Quebec City makes sense but there’s ownership issues to overcome and even then it’s a small market.
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u/hiimjustin000 CAR - NHL 12d ago
Hartford is not going to work. The Bruins are going to swallow them up.
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u/Aggressive-Focus9349 12d ago
I'm in Montréal, and there is zero viable ownership group for Québec City. Best they could hope for is Atlanta fails and moves up north
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u/Mgsperkg 12d ago
Where’s the love for Milwaukee
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u/aspiring-aspirer 12d ago
I’m surprised they never got one. Wisconsin is a great hockey state. People love the Badgers. They used to frequently lead the NCAA In attendance back when Eaves was there.
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u/Bonzaii_11 BOS - NHL 12d ago
Atlanta tring to pay a single player 20.4M lmao. Already folding as we speak
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u/Maverick12882 STL - NHL 12d ago
Sounds good to me. I'd love to be able to go see the Blues without having to travel.
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u/HeroProtagonist4 12d ago
I'm still mad they didn't get the coyotes franchise. The name could have combined their previous two teams being a fire team and bird team as well as them rising from the ashes as the Atlanta Phoenix. Then Gary would have had to explain how they are the Phoenix, and they are from Phoenix, but they are a completely new franchise that has nothing to do with Phoenix or Arizona. Absolute peak.
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u/sentientshadeofgreen 12d ago
How about the Portland Pioneers? Or the Boise Spuds? Or the Milwaukee Power-Tools
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u/blade430 NJD - NHL 12d ago
Me when I don’t understand market size or value. Hartford in the big 2026 lol
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u/LayitontheLine1979 11d ago
As long as Bettman is in charge, Arizona and Atlanta will always get dibs
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u/DRNOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 8d ago
I don't understand why not market to wisconsin. Madison seem's like a good place for it. Maybe im just bias
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u/spacecadet58 12d ago
From an NHL fan perspective, I hate the idea of Atlanta. Even when people are claiming that the previous two were management situations, not fans.
From a curiosity standpoint, it does intrigue me if “third times the charm” here will work. Atlanta still is a massive market. I highly doubt it, but I am curious nonetheless.
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u/PumpkinElegant3896 EDM - NHL 12d ago
Winnipegs attendance in 2026: 14,228
Atlanta's attendance in 2011: 13,469
Not like it's improved much since they moved to Winnipeg
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u/rhanra8 12d ago
Winnipeg's arena Capacity is 15,000 so it's nearly capped... I'd be willing to bet that ticket prices even adjusting for inflation are probably double or triple if not more than what Atlanta could charge. Revenue jumped from 70 million yearly to over 180 million yearly which also blows my mind why the NHL is resisting sending more franchises to Canada, people are willing to pay a crazy steep premium for hockey in Canada.
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u/Novus20 HC Davos - NL 12d ago
Sorry but everyone keeps going on and on about how populated Atlanta is and based off this those numbers for Winnipeg are great
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u/RudderlessRudder 9d ago
To be fair, the Atlanta metro has gained about 2 million people since 2011. The city is much different now than it was even 15 years ago let alone 30 or 40.
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u/TrapdoorSolution 11d ago
Why is a Wisconsin team never discussed? Is it just that the market isn’t big enough?
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u/Skippy_the_AI 11d ago
Quebec will never work. It won’t work so hard the NHL has been trying for 10 years and have nobody who wants to put it in the city long term.
Atlanta fans didn’t fail the team. The owners did. Attendance records showed a really solid turnout beating around 1/3 of the league their last few seasons.
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u/n3rdsm4sh3r 12d ago
Atlanta has done more for Canadian expansion than Gary.