One thing about the "small market" business.

The NYT featured an article a few years back about how the sport determined the market, based upon popularity of it, not specifically city size.

For example, San Antonio TX, supports an NBA team, yet much larger cites (like Vancouver, St Louis, Kansas City, Austin, San Diego, etc.) have not, can not, will not.

What was interesting, is he pointed out that Ice Hockey in Canada was so popular, that you could conceivably (based strictly on ticket sales at price) go down to around 500,000 and still potentially support a team (this would easily include Hamilton, London etc., -no, not Halifax, or Moncton both too small, and poor - based upon trading area, for example)

Winnipeg, pretty much does it with around 750,000.

Point being, a city of around 1.2 million in Canada is not for hockey "small market"..

Houston has 5 million, and NHL hockey would likely fold.