Quote:
Originally Posted by GreatTallNorth2
No one in the UK complains that Swansea and Hull have teams. In fact, the opposite is true. The entire basis the league is built upon is the fact that ANY football club can reach the premiership. Rivalries are based upon the club, not the city. It's a far better system than the North American system where teams like the Maple Leafs can suck year after year and maintain their big league status. If the NHL employed the same system, any city could have an NHL team if the right team was built. It's far more exciting to see teams move up and down than see the same teams year after year.
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As much as we would all love to have a domestic Canadian Hockey League, in reality it would just never work all that well. Unless you had multiple teams in Toronto and Montreal and a hard salary cap, the CHL would be dominated by a few big money/big market teams who could afford the top-tier players while teams in Regina, Halifax and such would be playing with basically AHL level players. Unfortunately the strong salary cap which would make the CHL viable (like the CFL) it would allow the American NHL teams to out bid Canadian teams for the top players and turn the CHL into a lower level league.
Without a strong salary cap, the CHL would turn into the EPL. I hate to burst everyones's bubble, but the EPL
sucks as a league because it is a league of two classes. Just like a CHL where a couple of teams with all the money would dominate year-in-and-year out the EPL is dominated by a only a handfull of teams. The rest of the league knows they have no chance in hell of winning the league and they play simply to avoid relegation. 3/4 of the EPL are in the "We-are-just-happy-to-be-here" group and serve as nothing more than practice fodder for the rich, powerful teams.
In the last 20 years Manchester United has won the EPL 12 times, Man City once, Chelsa three times and Arsenal 3 times. The only time a non Top Four team has won the EPL in 20 years was Blackburn in 1995. The only fans that like the way the EPL is set up are the fans in lower-tier cities that are so happy to see their team play the Man U's of the world, that they really don't care that their team is going to loose. However, there is a growing movement in Europe for the establishment of a Super League where the top teams play for all the glory and riches and leave their domestic leagues to their second-tier cities and teams. Fans of Man U are getting tired of spending their money watching their home team playing the likes of Norwich, Swansea and Hull, when what they really want is Man U. playing comparable teams such as Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Juventus on a regular basis.
A CHL would be the same. The big money markets of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver would dominate with Calgary, Winnipeg, Edmonton and Ottawa winning the occasional title, and Saskatoon, Regina, Halifax, Saint John, London, Victoria......etc just trying to stay out of the bottom. With the CHL competing against the NHL for top-tier players (don't assume top Canadian players are going to stay in Canada), the CHL would quickly become a league where a few top teams would be playing NHL caliber hockey and a lot of the teams playing AHL/KHL level hockey.
In essence we have already achieved the North American version of a Super League. Only the top-tier cities and teams in Canada and the US and get to play in the NHL and both countries have minor league teams for the second-tier cities.