Option 2

I think any expansion franchise should consider location that has an in-world viability. There are a lot of jokes/ideas about putting teams in Europe, on the moon, or in the absolute middle of nowhere. But these kind of "wouldn't it be funny if?" concepts always wear out their welcome quickly and struggle to maintain relevance after a few seasons.

This thinking also applies to the branding, where joke mascots/nicknames are easily floated but lack long term version. The best real world example was the Macon Whoopee franchise, which even had a reasonable local whooping crane reference, but still didn't generate impact beyond the initial "hah, that's funny." It is nice when a name has strong local context and history, though there's also a balance of getting too obscure. Classic team names are often pretty basic and maybe they benefit more from age than coherence, but I'm all for a generic name as well.

The biggest hurdle I'm seeing in current SHL expansion is that some of the best targets already have J teams. I would support moving/rebranding those teams into the SHL and creating new J teams in smaller markets.