Stanley Cup game sets record low

[mleach]

Carolina? Please! I'm over it, yet there still are some people here in greater Hartford who hope and pray the NHL would come back here. Unless we build a brand new arena, it's not gonna happen. A ton of work has just been done on the Hartford Civic Center. There's now a 21-story luxury apartment building attached to the complex. We're trying to untangle the mess that is Madison Square Garden and their association with the HCC. Plus, the AHL Hartford Wolfpack, a New York Rangers affiliate, will be sticking around for a few more seasons. As for TV, only a handful of Wolfpack games ever get on. Lastly, the Wolfpack get very little TV coverage now. CBS channel 3 and WTIC-AM 1080, both of Hartford, seem to only care about U-Conn and their basketball or fooball programs.

If you think that is funny, there are those in the Norfolk/Virginia Beach area ( OK..Hampton Roads ) who STILL think their area will be home to an NHL team in the future even though the NHL said no years ago when that area tried to get an expansion team. Of course that was ten years ago but still it is not going to happen. Actually I can't see Virginia ever getting a major league team even though the Norfolk market could support at least one ( Buffalo, Jacksonville, Memphis, and New Orleans' TV markets are smaller than Norfolk's and those cities have teams ). Way too much in terms of politics ( the gay marriage mess last year did NOT help ) and Virginia's Independent cities fighting each other( like Virginia Beach bitching about Norfolk could be getting the then Charlotte Hornets NBA team ) plus with the exception of Fairfax's George Mason's University, I don't think any arena in Virginia has naming rights. Not even the three in Hampton Roads or the one in Richmond. I believe the NHL saw the writing on the wall back then.

WEST Virginia has a better chance of getting a major league team than Virginia.

 

[KML0224]

Maybe so, but the big difference here is that Hartford HAD an NHL team already. Plus, like Hartford now, that area also has an AHL franchise (Norfolk Admirals).

 

[ixnay]

Ok, mleach, Scope in Norfolk, Hampton Coliseum... what's the third arena in Hampton Roads and where?

ixnay

 

[mleach]

Ok, mleach, Scope in Norfolk, Hampton Coliseum... what's the third arena in Hampton Roads and where?

ixnay

Hampton Roads' third arena is the Ted Constant Convocation Center in Norfolk at Old Dominion University

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Constant_Convocation_Center

 

[bk77]

I could be wrong about this but unless the laws were recently changed the commomwealth of Virginia does NOT allow naming rights on indoor arenas in which state money in involved in the building of them. Fairfax's Patriot Center at George Mason University I believe was built with all private money. If that rule is still in place, then right there would kill any chances of Virginia ever getting a team of its own and as of this writing Virginia is the largest state in the US without a major league franchise to call its own.

Several years back when George Shinn was in the process of taking the then-Charlotte Hornets NBA franchise out of Charlotte, his first pick for relocation was actually Norfolk. If I remember correctly not only did the NBA not have a problem with that pic, but I believe the money was already in place to build a 20,000 seat arena to replace the very out-dated Norfolk Scope as I remember hearing that Virginia had money set aside to bring major league sports there with a goal to bring baseball to Northern Virginia ( DC got the Expos of course ) and a possible NHL or NBA franchise to Hampton Roads. Seemed like everything was in place, even the naming rights as a deal was made to call this arena the "Smithfield Foods Center". But ( again if I remember correctly, been awhile since I read about this ), in order to get the naming rights approved, Virginia would have approve a bill or something to allow the use of naming rights and in typical Virginia fashion, that would take time. Either way time was not on Norfolk's side. Shinn could not wait and decided to take his team to a city that had an arena already in place, that being New Orleans even though New Orleans even before Katrina was a poorer city than Norfolk and their TV market was smaller as well. Had it been possible to build Norfolk's new arena without the help from Virginia, who knows? Rather than the New Orleans Hornets, it would have been either the Norfolk ( Or Virginia ) Hornets.

 

[JeeperOne]

Hi everyone:

Also, this is further proof that the NHL should have never left ESPN, which blows away Versus in terms of homes.

ESPN? Don't need them. Heck....FSN itself can do a pretty good job of blowing Versus away. And FSN is only a bunch of smaller REGIONAL outlets to boot.

Cheers