An idea...

First!

For the last six years, I've had an idea that a city like Seattle can support an NHL franchise. About 4 years ago I dabbled in some online research of population and demographic, I compared it to other cities with and without NHL teams. All signs pointing to yes...but I knew this was very rudementry and not very scientific.

So I then started consuming other articles on the sustainability of the NHL and what their core fan demographic is like. I found that NHL fans tend to be wealthier and more educted than fans of the other big professional sports. Hmmm...that sounds like Seattle as well. For the last 3 years I would engage in conversations about it...read random articles, opinions and viewpoints.

Sometime in July of 2010, I decided to go full on and research the viability of an NHL franchise in Seattle....scratch that, I think my research will be a framework looking at sustainability of NHL in any city in the United States. Note I did say United States...not North America. I am firmly cognasant that hockey in the US and hockey in Canada are two different beasts. As much as I would love to see US fans get just as passionate about hockey as Canadians, it simply isn't the case. This will be one of my principles.

So in the coming months and maybe years, I just want to throw out some of my research to see if we can get some interesting debate and discussion on this topic. I am going to explore things like, Stadium Economics, Salary Cap, TV contracts, City Demographics and host of other topics that I don't even know about yet...

Let me know how I am doing, be a participant, I have a day job and will need your help to find interesting things for me. Call me out on things and give me feedback. I hope I can keep a weekly cadence of blog posts but we will see how it goes. I expect to learn a lot in this process and hope you come along as well.