Tampa Bay Lightning

[Mr. TM]

The Tampa Bay Lightning, a team that won the Stanley Cup in recent memory, now cannot afford to pay their players. This week, they defaulted on their payments to the players and had to get a loan from the NHL, a move that Gary Bettman has kept very quiet.

I don't need to bring up the failures in the NHL in southern cities in the United States, because that has been the same talk for years. But this is Tampa Bay, a team that has been doing relatively well for teams in the South East, selling 12,000 tickets a game.

If Tampa Bay cannot afford to pay players, does the team need assistance, does the NHL need to provide more money from other teams to the poorer teams? Should Tampa Bay Lightning become the Hamilton Lightning?

 

[INDYjon22]

That is very interesting to learn, TM. I will never call myself someone who knows a whole lot about hockey. I used to be a fairly big fan but have lost interest in recent years. That being said this raises some serious eyebrows to what the future holds for Tampa Bay. I like them and remember their, pretty much unheard of, run to a championship a couple years ago. No one though a team from Florida could be a threat, or at least I did not.

On point however. I really hope they solve this. I think the smart thing would be to have the other teams or the NHL help finance Tampa Bay until they can get back on their feet. However, I think the more likely scenario is that they change ownership and move cities. Odds are that after this season or maybe even during it the team will be sold and if it is I fully expect it to move elsewhere or possible even abolished though I don't know what the regulation for that is.

 

[Thriller Ant]

You would think that some kind of revenue sharing program could help here. The NHL has been improving every year since they returned from the lock-out, but they are in no way out of the danger zone. The teams with more money probably won't be huge fans of revenue sharing, but the league needs to act as a unit in order to continue moving in the right direction. The NHL's popularity is coming back and even though moving a team to Canada would produce a new, excited market, the short-term goal is to keep teams afloat. Revenue sharing could help achieve that goal.