nhl-jerseys

One point to your comment "I still have no patience for any Canadian who innately thinks their geography makes them more deserving of MLB Jerseys." - Its natural, and the same can be said about many US baseball fans. Try being a Jays fan watching the team in the "American" league. Regarding the Thrashers - bottom line is that sports fans in Atlanta have the Hawks, Braves, Falcons and college teams that place ahead of a Thrasher team that has struggled. I feel for the true fans, but you could get 5-10,000 fans in Kansas City or Portland if you wanted to move a team there. I have no problem moving the team to a community that where hockey will be #1, like the Packers are to Green Bay, and if that is Winnipeg or another US market then so be it. You can't blame it all on the owners, if the owners were so bad and the community (including the business groups) wanted to keep the team in Atlanta, someone would have bought Wholesale Jerseys for now, they been for sale for years. Fans are fickle, and loyalty is highest when a team is winning. Here in Vancouver, people tend to brag about the string of sellouts the Canucks have, but they forget about the salad days of the mid to late 90's when Rogers (then GM) Place was looking pretty bare on some nights. Tampa Bay is never part of the discussion of weak NFL Jerseys franchises for one simple reason: the team, despite some ups and downs, has consistently been a winner after some growing pains and has its name on the cup. If Florida, Phoenix, and Atlanta achieved similar levels of success, I doubt the prognosis would be so bleak for those teams. But here's the other perspective: Winnipeg lost its team in a no cap era when the Canadian dollar was weakened. The NHL did nothing to stem the bleeding, and certainly never did anything as drastic as buy and operate the team until a suitable buyer and arena deal could be reached. Phoenix, however, gets endless chances, while people in stronger markets (like Vancouver) get to subsidize the weaker teams with equalization payments. Ticket prices in weaker markets or 'non-traditional' hockey markets are far cheaper due to lack of demand. Bettman keeps discussing eventual league expansion, and the names that come up are places like Las Vegas and Kansas City. The league bends over backwards to satisfy the demands of NBC, who can barely be bothered to broadcast games (one time pre-empting an NHL playoff game because of the Preakness). The NHL Jerseys schedule for years clearly favoured eastern based teams in terms of travel.