Brilliant Ideas Sullied By Madness

Recently, NHLPA executive director Paul Kelly gave an interview with the Palm Beach Post (wait...huh?) and one thing he said stood out so much, TSN decided to carry it as one of their main stories.

In it, he says something that I stand firmly behind and support, and then blows that support up with the clarifying statement. Quoting from the TSN article:

In an interview with the Palm Beach Post, Kelly listed a number of cities
that are "anxious" to get a team, including Seattle, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Kansas
City, Las Vegas and Houston.

"The six Canadian franchises do so well, they pack the buildings, get great
TV, great revenue streams. If you put another team up there, be it in Nova
Scotia or Hamilton, it would be more of the same."

This sounds good - we've got a handful of cities that are really hurting in the support category and could be looking to get out of town. Reinvigorating the Canadian market is also a brilliant idea as they will fill up an arena at will and the Canadian dollar is on par with the U.S. dollar (scarily so).

Except that the article leads off by saying that these cities are all interested in expansion opportunities.

NO! NO! NO! NO! Bad NHL!

You continue to learn nothing from past mistakes and seek to overwrite them by making more bad mistakes. Yes, revenues keep going up magically - mainly by bilking the fans that want to come to games.

They seem to think these revenues will continue to keep coming whereas instead we're just going to see the fans in cities where they do love and care about hockey continue to get it stuck to them for ticket monies and the hemorraging markets will keep trying to cut deals to fans to make it affordable while still eating a huge financial loss.

I know the Players Association wants expansion, it's more voices to add to yell at Bettman - that much I support. What it'll do to the game, however, I do not support. If anything, the NHL needs contraction.