The South Shall Rise

It's stated before by the old hats of the NHL, the northern fans especially, that hockey does not belong in the south. After back to back Stanley Cups from the Southeast division, one hopes that tone is finally changing. It's going to take a lot to get longtime fans of classic teams to appreciate hockey down here and even longer for the true fan bases to develop for these teams. Sure, some have some pretty good showings night in and out, but how many of them bandwagon and how many of them don't even live here?

Case in point, the Florida Panthers' attendance often goes up in the winter months due to the snowbirds coming down and taking in a hockey game. Now they might often root for opposing teams like Montreal or Toronto, but they still fill up the arena.

But now that Tampa Bay and Carolina have respectively won the Stanley Cup, the division and southern hockey in general has a real growing interest. Some teams like Atlanta still have a long way to go to building that fanbase, even though they have been playing some great hockey this year. Others like St. Louis out west and LA have fallen into disrepair and need to rebuild what little loyalty they had after miserable seasons.

The old adage that hockey has to be played where it's cold has some merit. One notices that the ice is often not as crisp and tends to melt quicker in the southern climates. But some of the nicer buildings in the NHL exist down here, where up north you might find atrocities like Mellon Arena, Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, and the dreadful Continental Airlines Center to name a few.

But a team is more than a building or ice, the players coming out of some of these teams are incredibly dynamic. The Southeast division alone houses talent like Ilya Kovalchuk, Alex Ovechkin, Martin St. Louis, Olli Jokinen, and Eric Staal. Having that much young but powerful talent in one division is impressive enough. Out west, Anaheim, another team struggling to make it big with fans but playing great hockey, has forged the ultimate defensive tandem in Scott Niedermayer and Chris Pronger, while developing a strong youth core as well.

In fact, of the 5 teams in the Southeast division, only Atlanta has not been all the way to the Stanley Cup finals, meaning 4 of them have been Eastern Conference champions in the short history of the division. I think that says a lot about what these teams can do.

Others will argue that more northern teams should be demanded, like giving back to Hartford or Winnipeg or some such. These are areas that the NHL had to move on from because the teams failed, the fan base failed, whatever it may have been. In fact, Atlanta was the only team to ever leave the south and head north for a Canadian team, the Calgary Flames. That kind of situation is not likely to ever happen again. Some teams like the Phoenix Coyotes are in trouble but I don't see any of them folding anytime soon.

The truth though, is that the south should not have to defend itself from the north. The sometimes civil war between the fans is unnecessary. Hockey can be justified anywhere a rink and a sheet of ice can be erected and fans can be drawn. There may be a little more hospitality down here than up north, but they all play the same game and it's great to have them all.

See you at the red line.