The biggest challenge an expansion team or relocated team faces isn’t the first few years. Those are the years when the new team attracts a lot of interest simply because it’s a novelty — no matter how good or bad the team is.
The real challenge comes a few years later after the novelty wears off and the team is just an ordinary franchise in a professional sports league. The team will still maintain a strong fan base if it is improving and building itself into a championship contender, but the potential for a loss of interest is highest once the fans have experienced a dominant season (especially a championship) and the team must rebuild for several years. This is the most vulnerable period for a new team.
Under normal circumstances a new team will build itself into a championship contender AFTER the novelty of the new team wears off. So the franchise could potentially get a decade-long run where fans start following the team as a novelty, then stay with the team as its performance peaks. In the case of the Golden Knights, they became a good team so quickly that this period of strong fan interest may end up lasting only a few seasons before mediocrity sets in and the casual fans disappear.
A perfect example of this was the Colorado Avalanche. They didn’t enter the NHL as an expansion team. Instead, they relocated from Quebec City at a time when they were already one of the most dominant teams in the NHL. They won a Stanley Cup in their first season in Denver, won another one five years later, and remained a dominant team for the better part of a decade. They were a hot ticket through those years, for sure.
Once that dominant period ended their decline was rapid and alarming. Fans in Denver who never knew what it was like to see a losing team vanished as soon as the team’s performance declined when the great players from their championship teams aged and moved on. They missed the playoffs for the first time around 2008, and within several years they were in such financial distress that they were regularly mentioned — along with dismal franchises in weak hockey markets like Florida and Arizona — as a strong candidate for a sale and relocation. It has taken them years to recover financially.
I still believe the Knights are a unique situation. The fans strongly identified with the team from the beginning of the franchise. The winning helped but it wasn’t the whole story.
Such was not the case with Denver. They were going to see a winner. That team had a bunch of superstars headlined by all-world goalie Patrick Roy.
I think Seattle will be more like Columbus. Those cities don’t need something to rally around but they do need a winner. Abuse any fanbase with a bad team for long enough and people won’t show up. I don’t think any franchise would survive now with the horrible attendance Pittsburgh had in the early years.