The Montreal Question: This is the biggest aspect of the tall of SHL expansion and I'm going to take a controversial stance, I'm not a huge fan of another SHL Team in Montreal. The reason is just that the game has grown to me and the halcyon days of professional hockey in Montreal were sixty or seventy years ago. I understand the allure of it but it's not nineteen seventy-four anymore. It's twenty-twenty and the game is global, the game is international. There are better, more interesting to put an SHL team then somewhere so cliche.

I'm not opposed to putting a team in Quebec, Montreal just feels worn out to me at this point. I think there are more interesting places to put a team.

Oh Canada: We have five Canadian Teams and Eleven American Teams. As much as I love the land of the Red, White, and Blue, I feel like we definitely need to add another Canadian Team in expansion. Maybe even two honestly. I don't  know that it needs to be an even split considering Canada's much smaller population the United States but five and eleven seems weighted too far in favor of the U.S

Size Matters (U.S Matters Edition):  

I think this is a really good way to look at expansion. What are the largest states in the United States that do not host an SHL Team?  That's Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, and New Jersey. I know there's been a lot of push back about the SHL having too many East Coast teams but I really like the idea of adding a New Jersey franchise. New Jersey needs more love in Sim Leagues in general and in New Jersey has a pretty rich hockey culture. They've certainly been more successful in professional hockey then Montreal has been recently at the very least.

I assume we can take Carolina out of the running because of the Kraken but it might be fun to have another team there. It's definitely a growing hockey market so it'd be fun to have a franchise there.

I also don't hate the idea of putting a team in Pennsylvania, my only thing is that I'm not sure I would want it in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh. I feel like those are to cliche even though Pittsburgh is also a place that doesn't get enough Sim League love for some reason.

Erie would be a cool place for an SHL team.  It's the fourth largest city in Pennsylvania and with a name like  Erie, I feel like there's a lot of cool branding opportunities there and a built-in rivalry with the Specters.

I also think if we're going to put a team in Ohio we have to call them The Cuyahoga River Fire because that's just a cool name and as a  Steelers fan I'm legally required to remind that their river caught on fire anytime I talk about them.

Size Matters (Canada Edition):  Ottawa is the largest city in Canada that we don't have a team in.  Ottawa also has a rich hockey history to some degree even though they haven't won a Stanley Cup in over a hundred years. I'm not huge on Ottawa as a hockey city other than the fact that it's very large. It doesn't really have anything that makes it pop for me.

Halifax would be really interesting. It's the thirteenth largest city in Canada and we don't have a team in the province of Nova Scotia either in the SHL or the SMJHL. The Scotiabank Centre in Halifax is also the largest ice hockey rink in Canada so that's a good shot in the favor. As is the fact that Halifax is an island. Halifax is really cool.

I'm totally on board with a team in Halifax. I think if I had any skill whatsoever, I would probably make a serious argument for putting a team in Halifax.
The only problem I could see with putting a team in Halifax is the travel but if we can have a team in Anchorage, we can make a team in Halifax work

Sidney Crosby is also from Halifax so that's worth talking about here as well

Another team that I would personally be a huge fan of is the Saskatoon Blues.  The story of the (although they technically didn't exist) Saskatoon Blues is amazing and it would be great to honor their history with an SHL team.

For those of you unaware of the real history of the Saskatoon Blues, It's amazing and here's  how it's described on Wikipedia:

Quote:
While the Blues had returned to respectability on the ice, they were struggling off it. Ralston Purina lost an estimated $1.8 million a year during its six-year ownership of the Blues. However, Dean took the losses philosophically, having taken over out of a sense of civic responsibility. In 1981, Dean retired. His successor, William Stiritz, wanted to refocus on the core pet food business, and had no interest in hockey. He saw the Blues as just another money-bleeding division, and put the team on the market. While there were a number of interested parties, none had enough cash to meet Ralston's asking price. On January 12, 1983, Batoni-Hunter Enterprises Ltd., led by WHA and Edmonton Oilers founder Bill Hunter, tendered an offer to buy the team. He intended to build a $43 million 18,000-seat arena in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, in time for the 1983-84 season. While the fans were stunned, the players were aware of this. As the Blues faced the Oilers on December 7, 1982; brochures were distributed saying "Saskatchewan in the NHL". These distractions would greatly affect their performance as they squeezed into the playoffs with a 25–40–15 record in the 1983 season, good enough for 65 points. This led to a Norris Division semi-finals exit against the Chicago Black Hawks. Following their playoff exit, Ralston authorized the deal to Hunter's renamed company Coliseum Holdings, Ltd. for $12 million on April 21.[7] Emile Francis would call it quits on May 2, leaving for the Hartford Whalers to become president and general manager. The Blues then fired 60 percent of their employees. The remaining staff included the accounting department, scouting staff, and coach Barclay Plager. They waited for an authorization by 75% of the NHL Board of Governors for the sale and transfer of the club. However, the NHL Board of Governors rejected the deal by a 15–3 vote on May 18, feeling that Saskatoon was not big enough or financially stable enough to support an NHL team.[8][9]

Ralston then filed a $60 million anti-trust lawsuit in U.S. District Court, claiming that the NHL broke federal antitrust laws and breached the duty of good faith and fair dealing by voting to reject the sale and transfer of the Blues to Hunter's group. They also requested that the court allow them to give up the team and bar the NHL from interfering with the sale of the team. On June 3, Ralston announced that it had no interest in running the team anymore. Because they were not required to participate in the 1983 NHL Entry Draft, they did not send a representative, which led the Blues to forfeiting their picks. The day after the draft, the NHL filed a $78 million counter-suit against Ralston, accusing Ralston of "damaging the league by willfully, wantonly and maliciously collapsing its St. Louis Blues hockey operation." The NHL also said that Ralston broke a league rule that an owner had to give two years' notice before dissolving a franchise.[10] Ralston called the counter-suit "ridiculous" and gave the NHL an ultimatum: if the NHL would not accept Hunter's offer by June 14, Ralston would dissolve the team and sell its players and assets to other teams.[11] The Board of Governors rejected the offer and "terminated" the team on June 13, one day before Ralston's supposed deadline. It then took control of the franchise and began searching for a new owner. League president John Ziegler said they would try to keep the team in St. Louis. However, had the league not found a new owner by August 6, it would dissolve the team and hold a dispersal draft for the players. On July 27, 1983, ten days before the deadline, the NHL approved a bid from businessman Harry Ornest and a group of St. Louis-based investors for the team and the arena. Ornest had made plans to buy the team as early as March, but built up his efforts in late June to have enough money. Ornest immediately reverted the name of the team's home venue to the St. Louis Arena.[12] To date, this is the closest that an NHL team has come to folding since the Cleveland Barons merged with the Minnesota North Stars after the 1977–78 season.

Of course, you might be saying to yourself if the NHL Thought the Blues wouldn't work in Saskatoon,  why do you think an SHL team would work there? Well, This all happened in the early nineteen-eighties and hockey has grown a lot in popularity since then. Also with the advent of the internet and Television Rights being what they are now, There's not as much of a risk of the team going under as there was in the nineteen-eighties.


Brantford:  This is a city that I feel very strongly about getting an SHL Team and I'm not sure that it's for a smart reason. Literally the only reason to put an SHL team in Brantford, Ontario, Canada is because of Wayne Gretzky. I don't even know what the team would be called, I'm also pretty sure that Brantford isn't large enough to host an actual SHL team but for some strange reason I really want to put an SHL team in Brantford. I don't know. I just think it'd be cool if people were like "Why the hell is there a team in Brantford" and then you explain to them that that's where Wayne Gretzky is from.

That reminds me of another place I want to talk about.

Toews Lake, Manitoba, Canada:  This is just a cool place for a hockey team. Again using Wikipedia which is responsible for the majority of this article honestly.

Quote:Toews Lake is a lake approximately ninety-five kilometers north of Flin Flon, Manitoba. It is located near the provincial border of Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
The lake is approximately 2.4 km (1.5 mi) long and 1.6 km (1.0 mi) wide.[1] It was named after ice hockey player and Winnipeg native Jonathan Toews in 2010 following his successes in the 2009-10 NHL season and in the 2010 Winter Olympics, where he helped win a gold medal for Canada, the Stanley Cup for the Chicago Blackhawks, and received the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player in the 2010 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Greg Selinger, Premier of Manitoba, presented Toews with a certificate regarding the newly named lake and the hockey star's name,[2] with the words, "We thought we'd name a lake after him, 'cause Manitoba has 100,000 lakes