NHL's Treatment Of Hamilton Hurt ALL Expansion

The other day, I watched a 21-year old video tape I had made of the last game of the 1987 Canada Cup in which Wayne Gretzky played with Mario Lemieux.

The series' (which is yet unissued on dvd) last game was the famous 6-5 Canada win over the USSR in which Lemieux scored in the last two minutes.

Watching this final game which was staged at the Hamilton Copps Colosseum should extinguish any doubt that Hamilton can support an NHL team successfully long-term.

Hamilton's arena seating is small by current NHL standards at just over 17,000 but with a promised $50 million on the table to upgrade the facility, there is no doubt that the franchise will be a winner. 

It was even speculated in a recent Toronto Sun article that a Hamilton franchise could be valued as high as third among all NHL franchises behind only Toronto, and the New York Rangers.

At one time during the first period, fans hold up signs proclaiming Hamilton as a bonafide NHL professional city.  After all, the arena was constructed with a long-term NHL franchise in mind.

Three years later it seemed that Hamilton's dreams were about to come true.  The NHL was expanding again by two teams and indicated that one of them would be a Canadian location.  Hamilton, with its already-built NHL-size arena and successful staging of major events like the Canada Cup final was clearly the front-runner.

But the bidders lost their in-the-pocket franchise by daring to question the terms of their admission to the NHL before they had secured it and the franchise slipped into the arms of an underdog Ottawa group which became the present Ottawa Senators.  And despite having the best unused arena in all of Canada, the NHL never came calling again.

This shoddy treatment of Hamilton along with other events still affects NHL expansion to this day and not just in Canada.  It set a bad precedent and a warning to other cities contemplating building major sports facilities.

Other events in a similar vein that hurt the building of new sports facilities include the shifting of NFL franchises from Baltimore, Houston, Oakland, St. Louis and Cleveland; the end of the Montreal Expos in MLB; the relocation of Hartford, Winnipeg, and Quebec in the NHL; and the relocation of Vancouver and most recently Seattle in the NBA.

But the Hamilton situation stands out.  Here was a city that had the market for hockey and built a proper major-league size arena and still after two decades has nothing to show for it.  Hamilton's arena now makes its money mostly through non-sports events like rock concerts.

Future NHL expansion and relocation ignored Hamilton (with the exception of Minnesota, Anaheim, and Denver) in favour of the present money-losing franchises.

Hamilton's situation hurt the building of major-league sports facilities.

Would you spend money to build a major-league arena only to be repeatedly snubbed and ignored?

Would you spend money on building a new stadium when owners jump to new cities even when they are currently getting good deals?

Winnipeg's new arena was built specifically for the AHL (though the "Manitoba Mythbusters" continue to insist that an NHL franchise can be successful there).  Why should they build an NHL size arena to lure a franchise when they see fate of Hamilton's unused one?  Instead they built an arena to suit their own needs.

Similarly, the fate of Hamilton will make any investors in Quebec and other cities think twice before committing themselves to a major sports facility without the surety of a tenant. 

Hartford, which wants the Whalers back within five years and is willing to build a proper NHL arena, wisely had talks with Gary Bettman before committing itself to any project.

The only city following the Hamilton's path is Kansas City which has built a new arena without securing a tenant in either the NHL or NBA. 

It would seem that the arenas in Hamilton and Kansas City are the answer to the NHL's problems.  They provide outlets to shift two of their money-losing franchises to cities where there may be hope of success. 

But Gary Bettman blocked the potential transfer of Nashville to Hamilton.  The NHL has also hung territorial compensation issues over its head.

The acid test of whether a city is willing to support a sports franchise long-term is the building of a proper facility.  But the fate of Hamilton will serve as a warning and a bad precedent to any city contemplating such projects without getting prior commitment from a sports league.