I see it more as an expanded hometown mentality. In most cases, you root for your home team. (unless you happen to be from somewhere else. For instance, if you're from New York, and living in Vancouver, its ok to root for NY over Van.) If your home team is out, you root for the team you identify with more. Most Canadians see hockey as our game, and therefore wish to root for a Canadian team. Which is largely symbolic as the teams are all made up of mostly Canadian and Nordic players, despite their hometown.
Hamilton is where Balsillie lives, so some are expecting him to move them closer to home. Likely ticket sales would exceed sales in Nashville as well. Hell, they could move them to Winnipeg and even in their tiny arena they would still sell more tickets than in Nashville.
Either way, he can't move the team until at least after next season, and he has to pay a penalty to the city if he moves before the contract is up.