His NHL Includes Winnipeg
2010 State of the League Address: Turning Point For Manitoban NHL Fans

Before the Stanley Cup final series begins NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman traditionally holds court with the media in his State of the League address. Over the past number of years, Gary Bettman has dropped Winnipeg’s name. So often in fact, that yours truly opined days earlier to several fans that they should ensure they watch or listen to Gary Bettman on May 28, 2010.

Read the address and question & answer session here: http://slapshot.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/commissioner-gary-bettmans-state-of-the-n-h-l-news-conference/

What in fact was offered was the usual litany of issues the NHL faces. Of course, Bettman surely knew that the post-address media scrum would be calling for yet another Coyotes’ update. In the surprise of the year, Bettman admitted that should the Coyotes be forced to move, the NHL would move it back to Winnipeg. To further emphasize his point, Bettman publicly named the prospective Winnipeg ownership group as Mark Chipman and David Thomson. Bettman went on to say, “the interest is clear and bona fide, it's gratifying. The process by which they've been engaged with us is as good a process as they could be involved in."

Bettman downplayed any second team for the Greater Toronto Area, while opting for a return to Winnipeg and Quebec City first. "I'd like to try and fix something that I wish might not have happened in the first place," Bettman said, referring to the loss of the Jets and Nordiques respectively. "Not unlike what we did in Minnesota."

The key Bettman quote was that if the City of Glendale failed to agree to cover a substantial portion of the Coyotes’ potential losses for the upcoming season, the NHL had a solid backup plan. "We would have been forced to move it, there has been a lot of speculation about Winnipeg. Winnipeg did make a bonafide offer, but we never concluded a deal."

“Winnipeg did make a bonafide offer.” Let that sink in for a moment . . .

Synomyns for “bona fide” include actual, authentic, authoritative, card-carrying, credible, for real, genuine, good-faith, honest, kosher, legitimate, natural, official, original, pure, real, rightful, straight, true, true to life, unquestionable, valid, veritable, with good faith.

Gary Bettman usually speaks using qualifiers that allows him to later side-step his own words. After two months of getting past the excitement of hearing such statements from the top of the NHL, we have found no way to interpret this statement with blind or implied qualifiers. To suggest that Winnipeg made a bona fide offer means not only that the offer itself was for real, but all the aspects of housing a franchise within the MTS Centre are either no longer roadblocks in the NHL’s mindset or they never were roadblocks in the first place.

In effect, these six words from Gary Bettman has offered the ultimate mythbusting tool on behalf of Winnipeg’s return to the NHL. From 1996 until the MTS Centre opened in November 2004, we dare not even dream that this endorsement take place in fear of opening old wounds. And since 2005’s salary cap and revenue sharing program was ushered in, we dared to dream for such a day. Just a week before the speech, no one could ever predict that the NHL would effectively welcome Winnipeg’s return so publicly on such a large stage before the Finals begin.

On May 28, 2010, Manitoba’s return to the NHL officially changed from “if” to “when”. Only the current owners of the Manitoba Moose, Atlanta Thrashers and Phoenix Coyotes know how long it will be until we hear the Guess Who’s “Back to Bannatyne!” When the news does finally break, Portage and Main will never be the same!

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Chris
President, www.myNHLincludesWinnipeg.com
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PS> We can't wait for Conan's return to late night television almost as much as a certain NHL team's return! Glad to find another Hollywood celebrity to throw their support behind our cause!