Sporting Madness

The NHL to Hamilton situation continues to get stranger by the day. Yesterday, a new group came forward with their own plan for a team in Toronto [ The Canadian Press via The Globe and Mail ], which involves a 30,000-seat arena at Downsview Park (with Olympic-sized swimming pool!), a percentage of the profits going to charity and possibly the stupidest name ever proposed for an NHL franchise, the Toronto Legacy. MLS and WNBA clubs laugh at that name. Even the Oklahoma Thunder snicker at that name. Anyway, add them to the list of prospective owners for a GTA franchise. Of course, that list also includes Balsillie and his Hamilton plans as well as the group led by former Leaf Kevin Maguire , who are trying to bring a team to Vaughan . Even more interesting, though, was today's revelation that Toronto Argonauts owners Howard Sokolowski and David Cynamon are apparently interested in buying the Coyotes and leaving them in Phoenix [ Paul Waldie , The Globe and Mail ]. Here's the...

Continuing in the vein of my first and second posts on this week's conference call about the official application to relocate the Phoenix Coyotes to Hamilton, I figured it would be worth taking a look at some of the other aspects of the situation. One element that's particularly interested me is if it makes any difference that the proposed new site would be in Canada, so that's the focus of today's post. Obviously, there are some major differences to be found in operating a professional sports franchise in the United States or in Canada. The biggest one is the currency. One of the main reasons that the Winnipeg Jets (who became the Coyotes) and Quebec Nordiques (who became the Colorado Avalanche) left for the U.S. in the 1990s was thanks to a slump in the Canadian economy and a correlated decline in the Canadian dollar. There were other issues in both cities, including arena capacity and capabilities, corporate support and television cash, but the dollar's weaknes...

Very interesting stuff here from The Globe and Mail . Apparently, a group led by Paul Pellegrini and Andrew Lopez has lined up $1 billion in financing and scheduled a news conference for Friday to discuss application for an expansion franchise, a potential arena site and a name. I wonder if this group is at all related to the one that provoked the earlier Vaughan rumours I covered back in April ? If Vaughan is indeed the plan, that would make a lot of sense. Vaughan is a better site than Hamilton in my mind; it wouldn't affect the Sabres as much, and there are more people within close range of the arena. Plus, an expansion franchise (especially one with this amount of cash) would allow Gary Bettman and co. to cut Jim Balsillie off at the knees and maintain their control of where franchises are placed. Furthermore, a generous payment could stifle any potential objections from the Leafs and Sabres and prevent what could be a nasty antitrust fight in court. If these guys are seri...

Photo: Former CFL commissioner Tom Wright authored the Balsillie group's official relocation application. From daylife.com . Thanks to Brenna Flynn of Jim Balsillie 's media relations team, I was invited to take part in a media conference call this afternoon on the Balsillie group's official application to the NHL(filed yesterday) to relocate the Phoenix Coyotes. It was a highly informative discussion featuring many of the usual suspects who have been covering the story, including Kevin McGran of the Toronto Star , Ken Peters of the Hamilton Spectator and friend of this blog Norm James of A-Channel London. I've got plenty of material to discuss from the call, so I'll spread it out over several posts. First up, a piece on the man who wrote the relocation application, former CFL commissioner Tom Wright . It was perhaps an unusual situation for Wright to be speaking in favour of moving a franchise. Only three years ago, he was still the CFL commissioner and proba...

Well, the Jim Balsillie story continues to develop. The most interesting news since my last post is that of Gary Bettman 's apocalyptic reaction yesterday [ James Mirtle , From the Rink ]. I'll have more analysis on this one later, but for now, I figured I'd start the day with an appropriate song. Here is my version of "The Ballad of Jim and Gary" (apologies to The Beatles ): Standing on the plane down to Phoenix, Trying to get the team refinanced. The man in the back said, "Jim Balsillie's back". I said "Hell no! Just give us a chance." Jim, you know it ain't easy, You know how hard it can be. But the way things are going You're gonna crucify me. At first, things with Jim went so well, In Pittsburgh, we thought he'd be fine. But then the press called to say, "He wants to move away," So I told him he had to refrain. Jim, you know it ain't easy, You know how hard it can be. But the way things are going You're ...

The perfect storm continues to build and a second NHL team in Southern Ontario comes closer by the day. Back in October, this was only informal discussions among NHL governors; late April saw NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly engage in protracted meetings with interested parties about a team in Vaughan . I predicted a while back over at Out of Left Field that NHLPA executive director Paul Kelly would have to be heavily involved for this to have any chance, and lo and behold, the players' association jumped in full force [ Tim Wharnsby on the side of this relocation. The next crucial element was a team in significant trouble; enter the Phoenix Coyotes, a team heavily in debt, apparently run by the league [ Greg Wyshynski , Puck Daddy ] and entering bankruptcy protection [ Craig Harris , The Arizona Republic ]. All that remained to be found was a prospective owner rich enough to buy the team, throw enough cash into the black hole to keep them operating in Phoenix until he coul...

Much has been made [ David Shoalts , The Globe and Mail ] of this afternoon's upcoming Game I tilt between Alexander Ovechkin 's Washington Capitals and Sidney Crosby 's Pittsburgh Penguins as a ready-made marketer's dream for the NHL. Hopes are high, and many seem to feel that this kind of matchup between two of the league's brightest stars could be a breakthrough moment for hockey in the U.S. There are some aspects that favour that idea, as both stars toil in reasonably large media markets where there isn't much else going on at the moment; both cities have atrocious baseball teams and Washington's NBA team didn't make the playoffs, while Pittsburgh lacks an NBA team completely and Pennsylvania's lone NBA team was just eliminated [ Howard Beck , The New York Times ]. If this series is going to draw in the viewers, though, it will have to start with a strong first game. Fortunately for the NHL, they've been able to get this game off of the obs...

(Photo from The Red Line ) Gary Bettman's most recent interview with Ron MacLean, which just aired on CBC's pre-game show, clearly is deserving of its own place in history on the Unintentional Comedy Scale . I recommend at least a 78: better than the Super Bowl Shuffle but not quite up there with Bill Clinton's denial . Credit to MacLean for going after Bettman with both barrels blazing, instead of throwing the softballs usually delivered at the commissioner's public appearances (often by broadcasters from his league's own network ) or by callers to his radio show . A key topic of conversation was sports business columnist extraordinaire Rick Westhead's piece in the Toronto Star yesterday, which revealed that the six Canadian teams (20 per cent of the league, if you're keeping track) account for a staggeringly disproportionate 31 per cent of the league's gate receipts. This provoked incredible hilarity, as Bettman tried to bash the piece as sensationa...

With everything on the line, the Montreal Canadiens recovered from their dismal play in the last couple of games to beat the Boston Bruins 5-0 in Game Seven of their first-round series and move on to the Eastern semifinals. After taking an early 3-1 series lead, Montreal looked terrible in a 5-1 thrashing in Game Five and not much better in a 5-4 loss in Game Six Saturday, where they gave up four third-period goals. Tonight, they played cool and composed and proved that they were clearly the better team. They also showed that they can play tough defensively, blocking 23 shots, dishing out 38 hits and killing off all six penalties they took. It was a particularly good performance from some of the Canadiens who had struggled lately. Rookie goalie Carey Price was back to his normal unflappable self, with the Globe 's Tim Wharnsby describing his performance as the "best hockey" he'd played to date. Mark Streit, normally an offensive defenceman who has played up front in...