Columbus supposedly lost $25 million last season, and $15 million in each of the 2 seasons before that. They may very well be the next team on the move unless they get butts in seats. To do that, they’ll either have to get draw visiting fans (which would help with a move to the East) or be more competitive (probably not happening this season).
who knows, maybe the jim tressell thing will help break the college sports stranglehold on Columbus.
Great..now when i turn on 680 the fan at night i won’t be annoyed with Dan Kamal and the Thrashers game.. just.. let .. it .. go..
The only people here whining about this are the sports morning guys one is from Boston.. the other from Cleveland.. the other from New Jersey.. hint hint hint..
The market would rather watch re-run games of UGA versus Auburn football.. stop trying to jam a square peg into a round hole.. And drafting Evander Kane was too little too late.. and if the DUMBASS owners were smart they would have taking Buff and Vander to V103 and tried to appeal to the Urban market.. okay ..fuck that try to appeal to black people that hey.. come see this shit.. we got two black players.. one of which will knock the shit outta people.. Never did that..
You have to think that going 14 seasons without winning a single playoff game might have somthing to do with it.
I am not entirely convinced that Atlanta couldn’t support a hockey team, but when the hockey team is consistently, unremittingly shitty, what do you expect, anyway? Why does Nashville have decent attendance, despite being not only a southern city but much smaller than Atlanta? Because the Predators market well and serve their customers helpings of good hockey, that’s why.
[/insert Toronto Maple Leafs joke here] 
I haven’t been paying that much attention to the situation in Atlanta over the past few years, but the opinion I seem to be reading the most often isn’t so much that the team has sucked…though they have, this year’s group, at least, could perhaps have done better…but that management/ownership sucked and basically prevented the team from succeeding. Letting star players go in order to operate at the cap floor, drafting poorly because little money was spent on scouting, not marketing the team to the local audience, etc. There seems to be a feeling that the team wasn’t given a chance, both by their owners and by the league (and really, compared to the effort put into resuscitating the corpse of the Coyotes, how much did anyone try and fix the situation in Atlanta?)
As much as I hate the Leafs, consider them as a comparison. The Leafs are FAMOUSLY terrible, ludicrously bad.
But during the same years Atlanta has been stinking up the NHL, Toronto made the playoffs five times, including one trip to the conference finals, and won 32 playoff games.
Atlanta made the playoffs once and got swept.
That’s the delta between a* bad *team and the Atlanta Thrashers.
That’s what’s baffling to most people. On the surface, it’s explicable that the NHL threw in the towel on the Thrashers, but is spending zillions of dollars propping up a franchise in Phoenix that is obviously doomed; it’s the pro sports version of Weekend at Bernie’s.
But the fact is that the NHL is staying in Phoenix because they’ve convinced the city of Glendale to pump zillions of dollars into the team; they are in effect getting free money from Glendale’s beleaguered taxpayers. Every man, woman and child in the City of Glendale will end up giving the NHL hundreds and hundreds of dollars to prop up the sad comedy that is the Phoenix Coyotes. The city government is basically screwed; they’re in hock for hockey, and if the Coyotes leave they’ll be left holding the bag for a huge and completely worthless arena.
The City of Atlanta, on the other hand, quite rightly told the NHL to fund their own damned business problems.
As is the case with the other major pro sports leagues, a bot of the business decisions have nothing to do with fans, and everything to do with taking money from taxpayers. Much of the leagues’ efforts are directed towards blackmailing cities into building them new stadiums with sweetheart leases so they can make huge chunks of money from sales without paying the true cost of their own facility. Almost every new stadium built is built with hundreds of millions of dollars of the taxpayer’s money, and if the local governments don’t cough up, the team moves.
Atlanta wouldn’t cought up so the NHL pulled the trigger. Glendale did, so the NHL will keep the Coyotes there to demonstrate what happens when you pay the protection money and what happens when you don’t.
Under a proposal approved by the NHLPA, the Jets will be moving to the Western Conference next year. The Red Wings and Blue Jackets will be moving to the Eastern Conference.
The plan still has to be approved by the NHL Board of Governors, but that is considered to be a formality.