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Will Balsillie Swallow Pride To Gain NHL EgoBoost?
Courtesy Winnipeg Free Press
From one of our long-time viewer supporters comes word of Jim Balsillie's latest statement found here http://makeitseven.ca/jb0930.html
Fans can expect one of two approaches by Balsillie in the future.
He can stay the course and provide more of the same bully-like tactics with the NHL. Whether it is to gain entry into this exclusive club or maybe totally rubbing them the wrong way with an upstart league of his own. KHL in Hamilton anyone?
Balsillie may be getting whispered tones from NHL people saying that they want him but he must "make nice" for the next 'X' months or years. A Sharks minority owner went public with his positive thoughts on Balsillie not that long ago and others most likely feel similar, especially those with teams ready to fold, run out of debt money or run out of NHL league cash advances or all-of-the-above.
The real issue for the NHL is that it looks like there are more troubled teams than there may be wealthy-businessmen-born-yesterday willing to buy them and keep them at present location. The long wait to sell the Coyotes, Panthers, Lightning and 27% of the Predators says one thing. But the financial 'caliber' of those incoming owners illustrates that barrel-bottom-scraping is at hand in the NHL.
Anyone expecting the NHL to tell Balsillie to categorically "take a hike" is OFFside. As long as Balsillie essentially pays penance, he and the NHL just might need each other when the NHL gets around to confronting the issues head on.
Hopefully, 'our' years of humbleness gets rewarded before Balsillie. The dedicated number of years that the Mark Chipman-David Thomson group has devoted to this cause might surprise some.
That confronted mutual need between the NHL and new owners and locations, looms larger and larger when you see two world class players (Kovalchuk and Lecavalier) that can't be afforded by their bleak teams.
With much of the Thrashers problems being very well documented on news services in the last month, here's a couple of good summaries of the issues in Tampa:
http://www.kuklaskorner.com/index.php/psh/comments/tampa_the_next_phoenix/
The message is clear: the downward spiral has almost completed its' journey!
Some NHL towns begate poor support for whatever reason, which doesn't attract the best and rich owners, which causes the team to "go cheap" on talent, which further cements the team's lack of on-ice success, which erodes the existing fanbase to AHL, if not ECHL, levels. Now two major US cities can't even afford to keep possibly the only star on each of their respective teams? Now maybe things aren't as dire for the Lightning as the Thrashers since they have more than many players as bright spots. But Atlanta's only major attraction is Kovalchuk with Savard and Hossa flying out of Georgia already. That would be 3 great players gone in just a few short seasons.
If these teams let these players go, then they will effectively wag the white flag to both their fanbases and to potential new owners.
That is Balsillie's main hope just as it is for Pierre Karl Peladeau, head of Quebecor, for Quebec City and of course for the Chipman/Thomson ownership for Winnipeg. Honourable mentions would have included owners for Las Vegas and Kansas City, but I challenge anyone to find a 2008 or 2009 quote from anyone that makes a similar bold step forward for those two cities as these three Canadian groups have for theirs. Jerry Bruckheimer last made overtures that he may have cooled to NHL ownership for Vegas, while only 'Boots' has been linked to potential NHL ownership in Kansas City.
The main hope for the NHL's return to Canada continues to grow. With every team that requires league life support and new owners in very "challenged" markets, it does boost relocation odds. Finding one owner for one troubled city may be doable even in this poor economy. But finding each next one gets much less likely. Having the time to devote to one team (Phoenix) is draining NHL head office collective energy. It simply was not set up to effectively broker it's own teams while trying to run a league during an Olympic year. Now when both Tampa Bay and Atlanta may be added to that critical condition list, it may turn into a sort of NHL "triage" where one team may be chosen to be saved but another may be "too far gone" and relocated much like emergency medicine makes heart-wrenching decisions routinely. (Please join us in donating to Haitian relief efforts at www.redcross.ca)
So every time a Nashville or Miami pops up in the news, the collective weight is added to an already overburdened camel's back. And usually that news tidbit is in the form of another layer of misinformation revealing a much worse financial state for the club in question.
Ironically, since the new CBA arrived, the trend seems to be for a group of teams, equivalent to one complete division, to never leave this critical condition list even if new owners, new players, new managements and even new arenas have been tried. Some teams have tried several or all of these changes multiple times.
One definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over expecting the outcome to change". There is one factor yet to be changed for several teams: its' city.
Two remaining fixes are yet to be attempted. Trying a new city like Winnipeg, Quebec City with a new rink and Southern Ontario with a new rink is the clear, quickest and easiest fix for at least three of these desperate teams. Other more reasonable US cities include Seattle, Portland, Houston and possibly Milwaukee.
And the last remaining option has the richer teams expanding revenue sharing transfers so wide and much larger in the next CBA that these 5 "anchors" can be propelled back up to the financial surface so as to become "viable" NHL markets. Whichever of these two options are chosen, some or most of the critical teams would then be "viable" for the very first time.
If you want to unload a hard bodycheck to any of the blog, charge down to the forum and take your best shot! www.mbmbforum.com
Chris
President, www.myNHLincludesWinnipeg.com
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