BLUENOSE LEAGUE ... WHAT WILL THOSE MADCAP MARITIMERS THINK OF NEXT?

So some towns in Atlantic Canada have come up with the idea of enticing NHL teams to move their training camps there:

YARMOUTH — Pro baseball has the Grapefruit League, Florida’s famous
spring training destination, so why can’t the Maritimes have something similar
for professional hockey? Perhaps something called the Bluenose League, the
Southwest Shore Development Authority has suggested.

The New York Islanders will train in the southwestern corner of Nova Scotia for 10 days beginning next month, and the movers and shakers eventually want to have eight teams training in the Maritimes and play a series of exhibition games in Halifax (already a popular destination for pre-season hockey).

It's not an entirely bad idea, although given that it's Atlantic Canada, some will say it has massive boondoggle potential. The opinion here has always been that the "new NHL" should include an effort to reach out to smaller cities and parts of Canada that don't have the population or corporate base to support a NHL team. That means playing exhibition games -- or even in-season tournaments, as Mark Moore suggested in his book Saving The Game -- in non-NHL cities. And selling tickets at a reasonable price.

(For instance, at the Islanders camp, $75 will get you a seat for two intrasquad games plus exhibition games against the Acadia and St. Francis Xavier university teams. That's not bad, relatively speaking.)

Related:
Southwest explores NHL exhibition League (Halifax Herald)