One 'skate' to drop amid the obfuscation from Balsillie and Bettman

There is more than one way to thin-slice what someone says in a court filing. As soon as the word of what Gary Bettman said in court filings hit the newswires yesterday, one knee-jerk reaction was, "Here we go. Head-fake 'em with the talk about Winnipeg and the idiots go for it." Bettman didn't necessarily say he wanted the Phoenix Coyotes to move to Winnipeg; he just hates the idea less than them moving to Southern Ontario, since it would mean giving in to Jim Balsillie.

Now that the throat has been cleared of snarky phlegm, there is a historical precedent people should think about amid the legal hockey tape holding together the remnants of the Coyotes franchise. If applied, it could represent a win-win for both Emperor Gary and BlackBerry boy. Balsillie would get a hockey team. Bettman would have so much hand that it would be coming out of his gloves!

The precedent involves a U.S. city which just lost a major pro sports team — Seattle — and a team located in Southern Ontario.

Of course, this is just one ass-talker's personal theory, not to be taken literally. It derives from:

• A desire to see a second NHL team in Southern Ontario, although its catchment area is very vague;
• Animus/grudging admiration for Gary Bettman;
• A knowledge of the legal pinholes Jim Balsillie must pass through to enter the kingdom of hoser heaven, owning a NHL team.

As some of you know, the Seattle Mariners baseball team "were created as a result of a lawsuit." (Wikipedia.) The city had a team, the Seattle Pilots, which existed for only one season, 1969, before they were bought and relocated to Milwaukee. All three levels of government sued the American League for breach of contract and eventually, the league set things right by offering them an expansion franchise to begin play in 1977.

The Toronto Blue Jays also came into being during that round of expansion, since a baseball league requires an even number of teams. For those who don't remember or find this as dry as a great-uncle's funeral, shortly before that time Labatt's had almost succeeded in purchasing the San Francisco Giants and moving them to Toronto. An 11th-hour effort by business and political leaders in San Fran, including late Mayor George Moscone, kept the Giants from moving.

The thought of three levels of government, the city of Hamilton, the province of Ontario and the government of Canada, suing the NHL might be a little far-fetched, even if Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a professed hockey nut who's not above being litigious. We're probably too docile to take that step.

All three levels of government certainly have self-interest. The city council wants to revitalize the rapidly deteriorating downtown core in the Hammer. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's Liberal government, as others have already noted, would like to take back some once solidly-red ridings in the 905 area code that have gone NDP in the biggest union town in Canada. Attaching a hockey team to any big federal-provincial infrastructure project, such as the expanded light-rail system Southern Ontario is begging for, would make it an easier sell. (As an aside, you do realize that by 2025, you're going to be nostalgic for the days when gas for your car was only $1.30 a litre?)

There is a scenario which could come into play as this winds it way through the court system. The NHL, as baseball did, could turn around and offer Balsillie an expansion team. It would be a face-save and a sop to Canadian patriotism, plus it is probably inevitable that the NHL will have to put a second team in the Toronto area, since it is one of the 10 largest metropolitan areas in North America and the largest where hockey is a major sport (where it ranks in size is debatable, see the comments from Jason Cormier). Two of the larger three, New York and L.A., have more than one hockey team. Chicago also has a thriving AHL franchise.

It would allow both to get what they want. Balsillie gets a team, albeit an expansion outfit instead of the Coyotes, who are presently a good young team that's close to being a contender. He gets time to build an arena that is more accessible to fans in the Kitchener-Waterloo region and in Toronto. This addresses any concern about a team playing out of Copps Coliseum siphoning off ticket buyers from the Buffalo Sabres, who always seem to have one skate on the banana peel which is Western New York's economy:

"The Sabres are always in a very precarious financial position, given Buffalo's shrinking size and awful economy. The Sabres (company name Niagara Frontier Hockey, L.P.) depend on the roughly 15 percent of their business that comes from the Niagara Peninsula, all the way up the Golden Horseshoe to Hamilton. Never mind that after almost 40 years most of the Canadians who attend Sabres games do not root for Buffalo; the main thing is that they’re helping to fill the HSBC Arena."
— Jeff Z. Klein, The New York Times

Meantime, Bettman and deputy commissioner Bill Daly will still have "hand," to borrow George Costanza's term, in the relationship. It reduces the possibility of Bettman having to present the Stanley Cup to one of Balsillie's employees in the near future.

Bettman, et al., certainly want to expand the NHL from 30 to 32 teams, even during a recession.

The Hollywood producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, a noted "celebrity puckhead," (From The Rink) is apparently interested in owning a team in Las Vegas (David Shoalts, globesports.com). Please also keep in mind that another fish Bettman would like to fry is to provide a tenant for the Sprint Center in Kansas City, which is operated by L.A. Kings owner Phillip Anschutz's company.

It could become a three-minus-one: The NHL adds Kansas City, Las Vegas and thethe Golden Horseshoe Hammerheads, while subtracting Phoenix. It could also be four-minus-two, if the Sabres' situation in Western New York becomes untenable if the local economy continues to crater; relocation to a more western city such as Winnipeg or Seattle could be on the table. (Klein, a Sabres fan, makes a good point that people should stand up to defend "a true hockey city" such as Buffalo, but he lays on a little thick by pointing out that many hockey people make their home there. They moved to avoid paying Canadian taxes.)

No one knows how an Arizona bankruptcy court might mind. The best we get before Tuesday is an educated guess. However, people should at least be open to the scenario where Balsillie gets his team through expansion, although this would be a few years down the road, so try not take it too literally.

A 32-team NHL with four divisions even works out in terms of scheduling. Each team plays six games vs. each divisional foe (42 games), three vs. inter-divisional opponents (24 games) and one against each inter-conference team (16 games) to make up an 82-game schedule. For argument's sake, here are possible alignments that try to maintain existing rivalries:

• Adams Division: Boston, Buffalo, Florida, Tampa Bay, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton
  
  
• Patrick Division: Atlanta, Carolina, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New Jersey, N.Y. Islanders, N.Y. Rangers, Washington
  
  
• Norris Division: Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Detroit, Minnesota, Nashville, St. Louis, Kansas City
  
  
• Smythe Division: Anaheim, Calgary, Colorado, Edmonton, Los Angeles, San Jose, Vancouver, Las Vegas
  

Obviously, the NHL would probably copy the NFL and divvy up 32 teams into eight divisions of four. But the fantasy has gone this far ...

Anyway, this is not a prediction on how it might shake out, but an acknowledgement of a possible compromise. Balsillie is not going to give up. Bettman, like one of those Southern expansion teams playing the neutral zone trap back in the '90s, could just be trying to prolong the inevitable.

It's better to look at this way than to jump to conclusions about what a paid liar like Bettman says in a court filing. Sure, he might prefer the Phoenix Coyotes to move to Winnipeg instead of Southern Ontario. Taken another way, that could be on par with a man saying he'd rather be kicked in the rear end than in the groin.

NHL: Kelly point man on second T.O. team

One of the most interesting aspects of this week's report (David Shoalts, The Globe and Mail) that a group of businessmen is looking to bring a second NHL team to the Toronto area (myself, Sporting Madness) was the involvement of NHL vice president Bill Daly and NHLPA executive director Paul Kelly (pictured).

These rumours have been swirling for quite some time and were at the level of informal discussions between NHL governors back in October, but now they've progressed to formal meetings with two of the most important men in the league. Only Daly theoretically has any control over where a team might wind up. Kelly's involvement may prove even more crucial.

The key to this entire discussion is the economics. There's a good reason that the Leafs are far and away the most valuable team on Forbes' list, weighing in at $448 million. They're $37 million ahead of the next closest franchise, the New York Rangers, despite most of their revenues being in depressed Canadian currency and their costs being in U.S. dollars. Southern Ontario has an incredible population of hockey obsessives and the Leafs have a near-stranglehold over the market. They can charge whatever they like for tickets, merchandise and the rest, and you can bet that people will still queue up to pay it. A good deal of fans from Hamilton and St. Catharines make the pilgrimage down to Buffalo, but that's partly due to the lack of tickets available in Toronto.

However, some things are more important to the NHL than economics in the Gary Bettman era. Consider how Jim Balsillie's huge overbid to buy the Nashville Predators was turned down in favour of a smaller local offer that involved such men of integrity as Boots del Biaggio (Allan Maki, The Globe and Mail). There's a great deal of prestige at stake here; Bettman's legacy rests on trying to sell hockey in the United States, and moving a team back to Canada will undermine that, even if it makes solid business sense.

That's where Kelly comes in. The NHL and NHLPA are said to be partners under the current collective bargaining agreement, a vast change from how things have happened in the past (The Puck Stops Here). Yes, Alan Eagleson had plenty of influence on the business side of the league, but most of that wasn't from his role as head of the players' union and that didn't really work out too well for the players. Kelly has already demonstrated a willingness to comment on decisions that heretofore would have been the exclusive province of the league, such as European expansion and television deals (Sports Business Daily).

Because the players' fortunes are now directly tied to the league's revenues, he has a duty to lobby the NHL to make sensible business decisions. He also has a considerable amount of influence to use; the NHL will assuredly need the players onside in the current economic struggles, and you can bet that the NHLPA isn't overly happy that the league is propping up Phoenix.

The key difference between this later proposal and the earlier attempts at a team in Kitchener or Hamilton is the geography, which I detail in a couple of Google Maps here. This proposal would bring a team to Vaughan, which is north of Toronto's downtown. Hamilton and Kitchener are south of Toronto and closer to Buffalo, so a team in either area would have a sizable impact on the amount of people willing to cross the border to watch the Sabres.

The Leafs are in better financial shape than the Sabres and will still prosper with a second team in Toronto; their history and legions of fans will ensure that they can still charge the highest prices in town and arrange the best corporate sponsorships and television contracts. Thus, from the point of view of either the league as a whole or the players' association, this proposal would considerably strengthen one club (whichever of the troubled franchises moves into the GTA) without appreciably weakening any of the other franchises. That makes tremendous economic sense for all parties involved, and that gives Kelly and the players considerable motivation to convince Bettman that the health of the league is more important than saving face.

There's still a long way to go before this could happen. A new arena would be needed, and that's never a simple process, especially when a team is still a far-off prospect. The question of how much the new team would have to pay in territorial rights is also one that doesn't have a clear answer yet, and that could make a big difference. We don't even know if MLSE would give up their monopoly for any amount of money, and that may be the most important question, as Stephen Brunt points out.

However, there are a lot of people interested in this idea, including former Leaf Kevin Maguire, who's heading up the Vaughan group (Shoalts). Not all the owners are happy with Bettman's recent moves, and you can bet they won't be willing to prop up money-losing teams like Phoenix indefinitely when hugely lucrative markets like the GTA await.

This is where the support of Kelly and the NHLPA could be crucial; an alliance between the players and some of the owners might be enough to force Bettman to allow this and reduce MLSE's complaints to save his own neck. We also haven't seen the full impact of the economic crisis on the NHL yet, and the lack of playoff sellouts in some crucial markets (Greg Wyshynski, Puck Daddy) may be a troubling sign. If times get bad enough, Bettman may be forced to choose to save the league instead of his reputation, and pressure from Kelly may play a role in convincing him of the eventual necessity of this move. It won't happen instantly, but this makes far too much financial sense for it to be dismissed forever.

(Kelly photo from Puck The Media.)