Chargers shouldn't look for a welcome wagon in L.A.

LA Times ^ | January 11, 2017 | Bill Plaschke

[Alberta's Child]

I would rather see a team move from the southern U.S. to Saskatoon. The NHL doesn't need another expansion team unless they're willing to start the process of dividing the league into tiers like European soccer leagues.

Saskatoon will probably never get an NHL team until the Canadian dollar is stronger anyway.

[Alberta's Child]

One big advantage for cities like Raleigh and Nashville where hockey may as well be played by aliens is that many players absolutely love to live there.

[Alberta's Child]

I agree, but the owners in Buffalo and Toronto have been very reluctant to allow a new competitor in that area.

[Alberta's Child]

The interesting thing is that Gretzky's trade was a business move, not a hockey move. A few yeas earlier, team owner Peter Pocklington was trying to sell off a portion of the team through an IPO, making it publicly traded. This is where his personal-services contract with Wayne Gretzky became an impediment -- because he couldn't list Gretzky as an asset of the Oilers unless he was under contract with the team instead of under contract with Pocklington. As a result of this change, Gretzky's new contract was more favorable to the player and gave him an opportunity to leave as a free agent much sooner than under the old one.

Pocklington was basically forced to trade him because he couldn't risk losing him in free agency and getting nothing in return. It was the same thing that drove the Oilers to trade all of their other big stars of that era -- including Mark Messier, Jari Kurri, Grant Fuhr, Glenn Anderson, and Kevin Lowe.

[GOPsterinMA]

Yep. Pretty good ROI.

[TBP]

Attendance the last few years in Brooklyn was good.

Ebbets Field was badly located and old. O’Malley would happily have stayed if he had a new ballpark in Brooklyn. He wanted a site at Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues — the site where the Barclays Center is now. Instead, all Robert Moses was willing to consider was a site in Flushing Meadow (Queens.) As O’Malley said, “Then they wouldn’t be the BROOKLYN Dodgers, would they?”

Every year from 1945 on, the Brooklyn Dodgers drew over a million fans, which was the attendance gold standard in that era. (It’s kind of like drawing three million now.) The fans were supporting Dem Bums.

Brooklyn got screwed, and it took part of the borough’s soul. The Dodgers, and the old Brooklyn Eagle, were pretty much the soul of Brooklyn.

O’Malley is hated for the move — not without reason — but it’s as much Robert Moses’s fault as it is O’Malley’s.