I possess a cursory knowledge of NHL expansion. Sometimes, this gets me in trouble, or at least comes close. An example: I was reminded last week that the Flames emigrated to Calgary from Atlanta. At some point in my life, I knew this, but that’s irrelevant. I did not know it entering last week. It would not surprise me if at some point on this website, I referred to the Flames as though they were native to Alberta, or if someone else—most likely NIT Stu, who makes a frequent habit of bemoaning southbound NHL carpetbagging—mentioned the Flames in this light and I failed to catch it.
So, while I may have known this once, I find myself asking again:
How did hockey end up in Florida anyway?
Florida’s dominance of Canada throughout the last thirty years of hockey is well-documented. If the Panthers close out this series, the Stanley Cup will have made its home among the orange groves four times since it last sniffed a Canadian maple. Even Finals appearances will hardly favor the northerners, with seven Canadian conference titles and six by the Floridians. Thanks to the Panthers’ recent surge, they and the Lightning have nearly both eclipsed the combined last two generations of accomplishments by Canadian teams. The Flames, Oilers, Canucks, Senators, Canadiens, Jets, and—of course—the Toronto Maple Leafs? Not on par with Florida. This, despite the Floridians only beginning play in the autumns of 1992 and 1993, sandwiching the spring of ’93 in which Montreal won Canada its last cup.
This is unnatural and causes no small degree of consternation among the hockey-aware public. (Especially the portion that is only mildly hockey-aware. The more hockey-aware you are, the more you seem to understand that franchises operate independently, and not by nationality. Thankfully, The Barking Crow is not quite hockey-aware enough to internalize this. We keep forgetting the Flames are from Atlanta!) But, it’s how it is. So, how did it come to be?
As late as 1991, the NHL was a 21-team league. Sports were growing in America, though, a trend maybe best embodied by ESPN’s meteoric rise. Nationally broadcast Sunday Night Football was new to televisions. It was around this time that NASCAR sought to make itself national, expanding its destinations beyond the Sun Belt and the traditional South. In parallel action, the NHL focused its sights on warmer climes. Between 1991 and 2000, nine new teams entered the NHL, six in Californian or southern locales. During that same timeframe, four franchises relocated in a southward direction. The full expansion and relocation list:
- 1991: San Jose Sharks
- 1992: Ottawa Senators, Tampa Bay Lightning
- 1993: Florida Panthers, Mighty Ducks of Anaheim
- 1993: Dallas Stars (formerly the Minnesota North Stars)
- 1995: Colorado Avalanche (formerly the Quebec Nordiques)
- 1996: Phoenix Coyotes (formerly the Winnipeg Jets)
- 1997: Carolina Hurricanes (formerly the Hartford Whalers)
- 1998: Nashville Predators
- 1999: Atlanta Thrashers
- 2000: Columbus Blue Jackets, Minnesota Wild
Why was the South the focus? Why did Florida specifically pick up two teams? Most simply, that’s where the people were. In the spring of 1991, before the Sharks began play, only half of the twenty largest metropolitan areas in the United States had an NHL franchise. In the fall of 2000, when the Wild began play, that number was down to four, with all four within an afternoon’s drive of a team in another city. The NHL didn’t come to Florida because it was Florida. It came to Florida because there were people in Florida and there wasn’t hockey.
But why did it come to Florida in two places at the same time? This is where it gets interesting. Per reporting at the time, the NHL was excited about its new owners: Wayne Huizenga, the magnate behind Blockbuster Video’s rapid expansion, and Michael Eisner, at the time the chairman of Disney. From the New York Times writeup:
“I am thrilled,” said Gary Bettman, the new commissioner of the N.H.L. “Having Blockbuster and Disney is fabulous for the league, fabulous for hockey fans.”
The writeup goes on to discuss the NHL’s then-impending return to network television, from which it had been absent for nearly twenty years. But with Disney not yet owning ABC, this was not necessarily about TV. This was, if the implication’s correct that the NHL specifically courted Disney and Blockbuster, about Hollywood. Gary Bettman saw The Mighty Ducks and went and created some real-life Mighty Ducks. Then, he went and got the Blockbuster guy, because…Blockbuster was that big a part of Hollywood?
This is probably all a stretch, a biased interpretation drawn to the better story. The simplest reason Miami got a team was because it was the third or fourth-biggest American market without one. But it is at least possible that Miami got a hockey team because the NHL liked a recent hockey movie, and Blockbuster was a big deal in the film industry, and Blockbuster’s CEO happened to live in South Florida. It is possible the Florida Panthers exist because of Blockbuster.
Miscellany
- You can contort yourself to an extent, saying the Nuggets were banged up or faced a bad matchup or simply blew it against the Timberwolves, but at some level it’s undeniable: The Celtics are a lot better than the rest of the NBA. Are the Celtics great? Is the NBA down? It gets subjective from there, but taken at face value, these Finals imply that the gap between the best and the second-best NBA team is historically large. It’s hard to find reasons not to take this at face value.
- Northwestern reassigned athletic director Derrick Gragg to a new role today, moving the 2021 hire to what sounds to be a strategic advisory role one year after locker room scandals rocked the school’s football and baseball programs. The incidents in question in the Pat Fitzgerald situation all happened before Gragg came to Evanston from Tulsa, which adds a layer of curiosity to this, especially with Northwestern coming off a stunningly successful year in football and men’s basketball. That’s a complicated ecosystem right now, though, and Northwestern’s always going to be uniquely challenging because of how different it is from the rest of the Big Ten.
- Terrence Shannon Jr. was found not guilty of all charges in his rape case. As always with criminal trials, there’s the “beyond reasonable doubt” caveat, but this certainly changes the tone of his college basketball season in retrospect.
