Ultimately, this is a tree falling in the forest kind of story, if nobody is there to see it and it doesn't affect anybody then it didn't really happen at all. It's not going to move the meter at all because it's not a popular team and it's not a popular sport and it won't affect anybody who is a hockey fan. However, that doesn't make it any less wrong. No city deserves to lose a team, no fan deserves to have their team taken away from them. Regardless of the sport or the city. This isn't a Winnipeg vs Atlanta debate or who loves the sport more or how many fans didn't go to the games. The issue is that the fans who did go and spent their hard earned money and their valuable time investing in the team shouldn't have to lose the one thing they spent all that time and money on in the first place. I know that I am in the minority here, I know there are 10 times more people in this town who aren't fans than people who are, and if there aren't enough people like me out there to make this team profitable then I can understand that. However, it royally pisses me off to see so many people out there (the owners, the commissioner, the media, Canadians in general) say that fans here don't deserve a team. I AM ONE OF THOSE FANS, I am one of those people you're talking about, when they say Atlanta doesn't deserve a team they're talking about me personally. That personally insults me, and my response to all those who say those things is to "EAT A F$&%ING DICK!" I personally know plenty of people who spent way more money than they could afford on a team that treated them with nothing but contempt, only to finally get tired of dealing with the headache, and now we're having that "disloyalty" thrown back in our face as the reason this team is leaving!
The owners, the inappropriately named Atlanta Spirit Group, are like that silly spoof of a cable TV executive from the Direct TV commercials. They honestly expect us, the paying consumer, to "take their disposable income, and dispose of it to us" like the commercial says! It doesn't work that way, they think they can just trot a hockey team out on a rink and people will just line up and plop their money down to watch it. Hockey isn't a commodity, it isn't electricity or water or food, we don't have to spend money on it every month to survive, it's an elementary principle of sales that if you want us to buy what you're selling you have to give us a reason to want it. Just because they spend a lot of money on salaries and make trades for a lot players does not mean you're making an effort to win, and just because you have a commercial on local TV and you have a player or two make the rounds on local radio does not mean you're actively marketing your team.
This sale isn't about fan support, it isn't about returning a team to a traditional hockey market. It's about two things, A) the cash-strapped owners' last ditch effort to liquidate an asset (Thrashers) in a desperate attempt to hold onto to the only asset they ever wanted in the first place (Hawks) before they're so broke they have to sell them too (it's too late, they're gonna have to anyway), and B) the NHL's shameless money grab of a $60 million relocation fee to help offset the annual losses of the league-owned Phoenix Coyotes. From their perspective, why would they sell the Coyotes now when the city of Glendale will pay them $25 million to cover losses and they can extort $60 million from an owner who wants to buy another team, and they can still come back and sell the Coyotes later? The attendance and fan support excuse is bullshit! If pro sports teams were moved because of attendance, then every team in every league would've moved at least once already. The truth is, the NHL is selling out Atlanta, and they know they can get away with it because the market is too small to fight back and the narrow minded sycophants in the hockey media won't stand up for us!
