Why the NHL should shock the world and add a second division – and promotion/relegation

I have a theory that, I think, would turn the National Hockey League, overnight, into a super competitive major league sport in the US, level with Major League Baseball in terms of interest and finances.

And every time I mention it, eyes roll.

Yeah, like yours are now. Stop that.

My theory is the NHL should expand wildly, with an initial 12 new teams, followed by 8 more in year two, and two more in year three.

And, that all of those teams should land in a newly formed Second Division, with teams being promoted from and relegated to that division at the end of the third year of its existence via a playoff system between the worst two teams in the NHL proper and the best two teams in div two.

This model would transform the NHL, and North American sports as a whole, in a variety of positive ways.

1) 22 NEW TV MARKETS

Expanding the league to a two tier system would bring in new markets currently under-served – or unserved – by the status quo. as well as several new rivalries. Imagine you suddenly had teams in the following markets.

Top NHL-Div Two Ready Markets (based on population size and hockey culture)

The above set-up would be a strong addition to the pro sports scene in a lot of under-served regions, would instantly create real home and away rivalries, and allow smaller markets that arent on the expansion radar to earn their way there over several years.

As an example, if the NFL’s Green Bay Packers didn’t exist, there’s no chance the NFL would have Green Bay, Wisconsin on its radar for future growth – and yet, nobody would seriously consider removing them from the league now that they’ve grown to what they are. Green Bay is a rarity, a lucky happening that came out of history rather than greed, but now it’s part of the furniture

No, of course Halifax isn’t a city that screams to be in the NHL, but a second division existing would allow them to live at that level, with the fans always looking forward to the time when maybe they can work their way up, and that alone will quickly grow a market to the point where, one day, it could get there.

2. A MASSIVE CASH INFLUX TO EXISTING OWNERS

Imagine if the NHL div two actually happened, and every billionaire in the US and Canada (and many more besides) were suddenly able to start a team if they plonked down their dough. How much would that cost an individual franchisor?

Here’s what a team costs in the current gated community set-up:

Imagine if the NHL not only jumped in with the next expansion, but the next dozen, all in one hit. All of the money currently waiting for a chance to buy into the other leagues would instantly be NHL-bound, and would be shared by the current owners.

Its estimated an expansion team will bring around a billion dollars to the league currently, so obviously that’s going to drop if you brought in 12 – BUT you’d have no trouble finding 40% of that billion-dollar estimate.

Back of a cocktail napkin math:

$400m per new franchise x 12 franchises / 32 team owners = $150m per existing team.

That’s not small change. That’s all profit, in return for the chance that, if you run your team badly for long enough, you might get relegated.

Which would suck, sure. But the upside of expansion is instant.

3) NO MORE TANKING

The popular thinking is that US sports owners like being part of a small gated community in which their investment can never fall in value because they’ll always be in their league, no matter what, BUT the chance you can climb up and earn your way in is also an interesting option.

Buy a team for $3 billion, or spend $400m on a second division team and then put the rest into the asset and earn your way upwards, thereby saving $2.6 billion?

With promotion and relegation a factor at season’s end, you’ll never have another team tank a single game, because to do so would be to invite a drop in status and value. In short, every season is important.

Instead of the vaguely communist reality that a player draft is designed to reward the worst teams and give them a chance to come back to the average through prospect selection, and that the current system is broken enough that a lottery was installed to stop teams intentionally sucking ass for a better draft pick, you’d have a new system that says “if you’re bad, you’ll go down until you get good again.”

As a sports fan in the Vancouver market, I both recognize the likelihood my local team would suffer here and understand that’s a necessity to stoke change in how badly they are run.

4) MORE PLAYOFFS, MORE LIVE OR DIE GAMES

Imagine the Boston Red Sox and Chicago White Sox had to play off against the Sugarland Space Cowboys and the Durham Bulls for a spot in the following year’s MLB season.

Do you think that series would rate? I contend it would be as big as the World Series.

With promotion and relegation, both the top half of the league AND THE BOTTOM HALF are interesting to the end, and when the season is over and the playoffs begin, there’d be as much interest in who goes down/up as there would be in who won the league.

Sports ownership is very different in North America than it is in Europe.

On the continent, almost every sports league is based on the ‘pyramid’ format, where an elite first division sits above a second, third, and so on, sometimes going down tens more levels, all the way to the amateur leagues, and at the end of every season, the top teams are promoted up a level and the worst sent down.

This promotion/relegation format allows for good owners and operators of sports teams – even tiny ones – to carry the ambition that they may, eventually, work their way up to the top, if they apply smart thinking and good business and a bit of luck to the way they operate.

In England, Luton Town FC went from the relative obscurity of the 5th tier non-league national conference to the dizzying heights of the UK Premier League in just nine seasons. More recently, over the last two seasons, they’ve managed to slip back to the 3rd tier.

That bounce, that volatility, that potential to come from nowhere and rise to the pinnacle of sports, is everything to a sports fan in Europe, and the chance of going up – or dropping down – makes every game important, right to the end of the season.

In the US, however, pro sports are a gated community. Sure, you have ‘the minor leagues’, but all they really are is a youth development training system that pretends to be competitive while hoping fans will buy a hot dog with their beer. The best run minor league team, in some sports, doesn’t get to choose who plays for them, or how long they stay on the field, and has precisely zero chance of earning their way to higher levels. You get what you get if you support the Toledo Mudhens or the Mt Vernon Bangers or the El Paso Locomotive FC or the Medicine Hat Tigers.

But the chance to go from a dusty minor league park to the majors is a thing of beauty. It keeps fans coming back because, maybe next year… while non-promoteable sports teams are deliberately losing for a draft pick.

5) LONGER CAREERS

There are a load of pro athletes who, at the end of their pro season, are cut even though they can still play to a high level. If you’re an NHL centre and your legs are starting to slow, maybe you hang in for a season or two as 3rd or 4th line player, or even a backup, but your chance to show people you can still cut it at the top level is greatly reduced by lack of options.

Where are you gonna go? The WHL? The Russian leagues? ..Why not div two?

Right now in the NHL there’s a line of thinking that there’s not enough talent to justify an expansion team, but that’s only because the talent pool is decimated every off-season when veteran guys “Phil Kessel” and don’t get their contracts picked up.

Imagine you had another twelve teams where those guys could go, stay in shape, stay competitive, maybe even work on their game and, when the need comes for a right handed shooting defenseman in the upper levels, there were options in div two to choose from.

This would also stretch the potential careers of borderline 4th liners who may develop late if given more time in front of hard hitting guys rather than be spun out to the Netherlands at age 28.

BUT WOULD AN EXISTING OWNER VOTE FOR THIS?

YES. In fact, they already do.

The vast majority of new owners in the UK Premier League over the past twenty years have been American sports team owners who make that purchase KNOWING they could be relegated and lose a chunk of their investment’s value.

Actually, most of them know that but not all – Chelsea’s owner Todd Boehly was notoriously asked about the chance his team could be relegated from the Premier League right after he bought it, and had to have relegation as a concept explained to him by a journalist.

Boehly aside, even at levels beneath the Premier League, US owners are okay with the chance of relegation. Tom Brady bought into Birmingham FC and immediately suffered a relegation, but this year (with some investment) he’s gone back the other way, along with the US/Canadian acting pair Ryan Reynolds and Rob McIllhenny, who infamously bought Wrexham out of the 5th tier over the last three seasons and documented it on TV.

BUT WAIT, WHAT WILL THAT DO TO THE DRAFT?

End it. And that’s a fine thing.

In European football, teams have deep talent evaluation and development systems that induct kids at age 14 or less, and they sign those kids to contracts when they hit 16 with academy programs that run essentially as college programs. They loan their developing kids out to teams in lower divisions to get them blooded, they stock their own U18 and U21 teams with them, and eventually they break through.

This DEVELOPS THE GAME at the grassroots level, rather than asking parents to develop their kids themselves with highly paid coaches and by sending their kids to Prince George for a season at a time at age 16 and hoping they’re in good hands.

Let the pro teams establish their own academies, sign kids and deveop their assets, and never have another draft hold-out to deal with ever again.

BUT WE ALREADY HAVE THE MINORS

Keep the minors! But let them be an incubator from which great new organizations rise.

Let the best minor league teams work their way up the ladder.

Indeed, at some point this system would promote a division three, and four, with all the organizations within those building great new markets, players, coaches, fanbases, and executives.

There are independent minor leagues in baseball right now, let’s see them rise in hockey.

WHY THE NHL?

Because being the first to up-end the system like this would give them a massive first mover advantage on new markets, would instantly suck up all the ‘rich team owner money’ that’s waiting on the sidelines for the next expansion team, and catapult the league past the ailing major league baseball setup, that’s constantly tinkering with rules and minor league framework in an effort to stay relevant, at a time where player salaries have risen so hard that teams are raising prices 30%+ to pay for it.

When sports begin to become luxury enterprises in places like Vegas with tourists in the seats rather than fans, and with $40 of every ticket going directly to one star (whats up Shohei), you’re over the lip of your growth timeline and starting your way back down the other side.

In short: How do you find growth in a market that can’t grow, other than by squeezing fans, and how long can you do that before the backlash begins.

The Oakland Athletics are finding that out now, playing out of a temporary stadium in a temporary home town, while blocking fans from replying to their social media posts.

The gate will be blown open by someone. The NHL has a chance to kill the expansion hopes of every other league for ten years by sucking every expansion dollar out of the system.

If they’re brave enough, it’ll be a seachange in sports.

All hail the Milwaukee Cheeseheads, NHL div two champions of 2030.

RIP the div two Vancouver Canucks.