Thursday, April 9, 2009 06:11 PM
Second T.O. team long overdue
Eric Duhatschek
I was trying to remember the first time I jumped on a soapbox to promote the idea a second NHL team in Toronto; it had to be 20 years ago anyway, around the time I started writing columns for The Hockey News. It was always a subject Toronto-based pen-pushers skirted around, because of the perception of bias. Out in Calgary, it didn't matter – you could look at the thing objectively; and realize how much sense it made on every level.
For starters, that Oakville-to-Oshawa corridor is badly under-served in terms of professional ice hockey consumption (no Leaf or Marlie jokes here please). Around 20,000 people can cram into the Air Canada Centre 41 times a year for regular-season games; a tiny fraction of the population that would attend if a ticket was actually available. Make twice as many tickets available and it would still be only a drop in the bucket, in terms of how many you could actually sell.
Indeed, if the Los Angeles area can qualify for two teams, and the New York City area three, then surely Toronto could support two as well. For all the fans that live and die with the Leafs, there is enough of an anti-Leaf element in the marketplace to support whatever second team – expansion or the relocation of an existing franchise – that the NHL might put into Toronto.
Beyond that, the Maple Leaf brand is bullet-proof. Even if the new team succeeded on the ice as the Leafs' failures continued, there would always be a percentage of fans that would support what the late Leaf publicist Stan Obodiac called the most famous hockey team in the world. Sports loyalties are like that – passed on from generation to generation. Sometimes, the charm of attending Cubs games in Chicago or Red Sox games in Boston (until they started winning championships again) was that hope-springs-eternal ethic, the idea that miracles can occur in professional sport (and you only need to watch the Tampa Rays this fall to understand how long odds can occasionally be overcome).
The New York Islanders won four championships in the early 1980s; it didn't hurt the Rangers a bit. The New Jersey Devils were a powerhouse for a decade from the mid-1990s on; the only games that they would consistently sell out were when the Rangers made the trek through the tunnel to play as visitors to the Meadowlands.
Moreover, putting a second team in Toronto would only enhance the pressure on the Leafs to finally get it right. Someone need only ask the current general manager Cliff Fletcher about his days with the Calgary Flames – and how the presence of the Wayne Gretzky-led Edmonton Oilers up the highway created a level of urgency to build a championship-calibre team of their own. Competition is a good thing – and whether a second Toronto-based team played out of the ACC or built its own arena somewhere in the vast metropolitan area, it would develop an immediate and natural rivalry with the rebuilding Leafs. In some ways, putting an expansion team in there – and charging Jim Balsillie say $700-million (U.S.) of his Blackberry profits for the privilege – would create an intriguing competition over who could get it right first. The Leafs, who are in the early stages of a rebuilding program? Or a new franchise, forced to build from the ground up?
In fact, there are really only two questions relating to a second NHL team in Toronto (again, no jokes please): One, What took them so long to ponder the idea? And two, how soon can they get around to implementing it?
