Tag Archives: MTS Centre

Is Cheveldayoff Waiting for the Future? Or Should the Future Be Now?

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment
Blake Wheeler 264x300 Is Cheveldayoff Waiting for the Future? Or Should the Future Be Now?

Blake Wheeler heads to the net.

TAMPA — Watching the Winnipeg Jets get shut out in Montreal on Sunday afternoon should have been the last straw for those Winnipeg Jets fans who would actually like to see their team in the playoffs this spring.

Patience is wonderful. All Jets fans understand that the plan from the start of this season was to build slowly and surely through the draft, develop the players in the system and see where the concept would lead.

Unfortunately, the Jets brass also said it expected to make the playoffs this year. That was the goal: Make the playoffs in 2012.

Sadly, if the Jets don’t get a scorer or two between now and the trade deadline on Feb. 27, it’s unlikely that part of the bargaining will be kept.

We’ll say it one more time: The Winnipeg Jets can’t score goals. Period. Sunday afternoon at the Bell Centre in Montreal, the Montreal Canadiens shut out the Jets 3-0. Winnipeg hard chances to score, they simply couldn’t finish.

As a result, the Jets finished a four-game post-all-star-break road trip by scoring three goals in regulation time in four games to finish the trip 2-2-0. Carey Price made 23 saves to get the shutout on Sunday while Thomas Plekanec led the Habs with a goal and an assist. It’s not like the Habs had been setting the NHL world on fire. They’d lost three straight going in and were dead last in the East.

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Captain Andrew Ladd has 16 goals, but he hasn't scored in his last seven games and has one in his last 10.

The 24-24-6 Jets are still in 10th place in the Eastern Conference, six points behind eighth-place Toronto and five back of the Florida Panthers, the first place team in the Southeast Division.

All is not lost. At least, not yet. But at some point, this Jets team will have to figure out a way to score some goals. Consider this:

1) The Jets are the lowest scoring team in the NHL’s Eastern Conference, averaging just 2.38 goals per game. The Islanders are averaging 2.43 goals per game while the Buffalo Sabres are averaging 2.41 goals per game.

2) Since the all-star break, the Jets have won 2-1 in a shootout (Philadelphia), 2-1 in overtime (Tampa), lost 2-1 in regulation (Florida) and lost 3-0 (Montreal). They have three goals in regulation and four if you add in 10 minutes of overtime.

3) The team;’s leading scorer, Blake Wheeler, has 10 goals and 35 points and is 77th in scoring in the NHL. The team’s leading goal-scorer, the concussed Evander Kane, has 18 goals and is tied for 39th in the NHL. Andrew Ladd has 16 goals, but he hasn’t scored one goal in the past seven and has only one in the last 10.

4) The Jets, as a team, are minus-21. That’s 24th in team plus-minus in the NHL.

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The Jets need Evander Kane to come back and score.

5) Since the New Year, the Jets are 5-10-1. They have scored 22 goals in regulation time in those 16 games. they have been shut out four times and are 3-3-0 in 2-1 games. All three of their wins have come in extra time.

Defensively the Jets have been solid. No one can argue that the Winnipegs play hard. Ondrej Pavelec and Chris Mason have both been outstanding in goal, as well. But unless this team can start to score more than one goal a game on a consistent basis, it won’t go anywhere this season — even with a stretch of eight straight games at home coming up at the end of this month.

It might be time for GM Kevin Cheveldayoff to think about doing something to find a scorer. If nothing else, maybe he could add a tough guy so Blake Wheeler, just about the only guy on the team who actually goes to the net, doesn’t have to drop his gloves with the likes of P.K. Subban and defend his team’s honor from the penalty box.

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Big Win Tuesday. Now, Will the Jets Make a Move?

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment
138025484 slide 300x248 Big Win Tuesday. Now, Will the Jets Make a Move?

Ondrej Pavelec makes another huge save.

TAMPA — Tuesday night in Philadelphia, the Winnipeg Jets won a huge hockey game.

In fact, when Bryan Little scored the shootout winner, it was more than just a win in the 51st game of a long season. It might have been the most important win of 2012.

For 65 minutes on Tuesday, the Winnipeg Jets went toe-to-toe one more time with the Philadelphia Flyers at the Wells Fargo Centre and for the third time this season the Winnipegs emerged victorious. Chris Thorburn scored his first goal of the year in regulation time (and it was a goal scorer’s goal); Little fired the only goal of the shootout; Blake Wheeler played 23 minutes, had five shots on goal and was an absolute beast; and Ondrej Pavelec made 27 saves as the Jets beat the Flyers for the third consecutive time.

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Blake Wheeler playing like a beast.

“That was a big two points for us,” Jets head coach Claude Noel said after the game. “We were wearing down in the third period, but we found a way to win the game.”

It’s true. A Jets team without Dustin Byfuglien, Alexander Burmistov and Evander Kane did wear down in the third period, but they played well enough defensively to hang in long enough and get the bonus point in a shootout. For the first two periods, however, the Jets actually outplayed the Flyers in Philly and they definitely deserved that extra point.

However, they still can’t score. The Jets have scored only 21 goals in 13-plus (counting overtime) games in 2012, but if they continue to check as well as they did against the Flyers on Tuesday, they’ll win a lot more games than they lose.

So here’s the deal with the trade deadline just three weeks away: as they head into Tampa tonight, the Jets are 23rd overall in goals scored at 2.47 per game. The team’s leading scorer, Blake Wheeler, has nine goals and 33 points. He is 87th in scoring in the NHL. The team’s leading goal scorer, Evander Kane, has 18 and is tied for 29th in the NHL but was in the midst of a 10-game goal scoring drought when he suffered a concussion and was lost indefinitely.

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Evander Kane's return will help.

The Jets have scored 126 goals in 51 games this season. Within the Eastern Conference, only the Islanders (120 in 49) and Sabres (120 in 51) have scored fewer. Of course, while the Jets have 126 total, they scored nine in one game against Philadelphia. The Jets are actually one game away from being the lowest-scoring team in the Eastern Conference. As a group the Jets are also a minus-18.

In the month of January, the Jets went 4-8-1. To date, the Jets are 23-22-6 on the season. Last season, as the Atlanta Thrashers, they were 23-19-9 after 51 games. In 13-plus games (counting two overtimes) this month, the Jets have scored a meagre 21 goals.

Now, to be fair, they played part of the month without Kane, Zach Bogosian and Alex Burmistrov and they played the entire month without their all-star, Dustin Byfuglien. At the start of the season, everyone knew this team was thin, but January has proven that little nugget beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Now it’s February and it starts tonight here in Tampa. It has become quite clear that the Jets need scoring help. This is not a team that takes nights off. It’s work ethic is pretty much beyond reproach. Still, the people who run this team know it can’t score. And it becomes especially weak up front when certain players — like Byfuglien, Kane and Burmistrov — go down with injuries.

So as the 2012 trade deadline looms (Feb. 27), what should Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff and his brain trust do? Does he move his veteran grinders and build for the future? Or does he deal prospects and draft picks, try to find a scorer and take a run at the playoffs?

Right now, the Jets could use three things:

1. A scorer, obviously, but that’s not an easy thing to acquire. For example, if Ryan Getzlaff or Bobby Ryan are actually available in Anaheim, who could the Jets trade to get them? Who would interest a team like the Ducks? Making trades are an art AND a science and big ones don’t just happen over a glass of cognac at the all-star break. We are not naive enough to believe these trades are made easily. You have to give to get and the asking price just might be too much.

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Designated Fighter Chris Thorburn.

2. A tough guy. The Jets don’t always open up enough space for the guys who can put the puck in the net. They’re also at a point where they need Chris Thorburn and Mark Stuart to fight for them. Yes, yes, we all want fighting eliminated from hockey, blah, blah, blah, but the fact is, fighting has not been eliminated and the Jets don’t have a guy who can stop a player like Shawn Thornton of the Bruins from running their goalies and pounding the crap out of defensemen they need in the lineup. They also need a guy who can drop the gloves on the road, win a fight without getting hurt, not hurt the team’s skill level by being in the box for five minutes and give the club a pick-me-up.

3. Depth. Two injuries and this team can’t recover. The Pittsburgh Penguins have the personnel to stay in the hunt without Sidney Crosby and Kris Letang. The Jets lose Dustin Byfuglien and Zach Bogosian and it’s downhill all the way.

When the team arrived in Winnipeg at the start of the 2011-12 season, Cheveldayoff and company made it clear that the new organization would be patient. They would not do anything rash and would build with youth and draft picks. After all, they have 3-5 years of sold-out buildings and they know their fans will also be patient and wait for them to build a legitimate contender.

Trouble is, they’ve talked all year about making the playoffs. The two aren’t necessarily exclusive, but…

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For the Jets, It’s Time to Run the Month.

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment
Ondrej Pavelec 2 239x300 For the Jets, Its Time to Run the Month.

Goalie Ondrej Pavelec

The Winnipeg Jets began the homestand on Nov. 29. They had 13 of 15 games at home and they needed to grab at least 20 of 26 possible points.

It was a simple assignment, but it come without a certain degree of difficulty.

This team needed to make some noise. After all, come January, the Jets will play 12 of 16 away from MTS Centre and if they don’t make some hay in December, they could end up a long way from the playoffs come the middle of February. In fact, from Jan. 4 until Feb. 14, the Jets play 15 of 21 on the road. It’s win now and then try to keep the ship together.

So far, so good. The Jets have played 10 games this month and the team is 7-2-1 (7-3-1 since Nov. 29), 7-1-1 at home. The only loss at MTS Centre was that 1-0 mystery against Washington.

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Captain Andrew Ladd

Otherwise, the Jets have played tremendously and now they have a chance to guarantee 20 points this month. They already have 15 of a possible 18 in December and tonight they get the Sidney-Crosby-less Pittsburgh Penguins at home.

So how did the Jets go from 9-11-4 to 16-13-5 so quickly? Five reasons:

1. Ondrej Pavelec: The Jets goaltender has had three tremendous games and two pretty good ones during the stretch. In a 3-2 shootout loss to the Islanders, Pavelec stole the point. Other than the ugly 7-1 loss in Detroit, which was nothing more than a blip on the screen, Pavelec has made the Jets a better team. It was Brian Burke who said, “We call it the Stanley Cup playoffs because we can’t call it goalie.” You could paraphrase that and say. “We call it the Winnipeg Jets 2011-12 season because we can’t call it goalie.” The Jets have moved from 12th to ninth because their goaltender has stolen at least three games and at least seven points.

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Evander Kans scores one of his 15

2. All hands on deck. The Jets leading scorer, Evander Kane, has 15 goals and 10 assists and is 54th in scoring in the NHL. However, it doesn’t matter. Regardless of the game, it seems that somebody always steps up. If it’s not Bryan Little, it’s Andrew Ladd or it’s Blake Wheeler. The Jets have a potential superstar in Kane, but he’s not there yet. Right now this team is scoring by committee and for the time being, at least, it’s working.

3. The Jets survived the loss of Tobias Enstrom. When he was injured, Enstrom was playing 25-32 minutes a game. He was not only a workhorse, he was the steadiest influence on the team. When he went down, the Jets were a 12th place team. When he came back they were 11th, but had gained three points on the teams in the Top 8. It could have been a lot worse and with him back, the Jets have a full compliment of NHL-level defensemen.

4. Claude Noel. He is a journalist’s dream, an eccentric, insightful, talkative head coach who is NOT afraid to say what’s on his mind. His post-game stream-of-conscious news conferences are becoming the highlight of every game. He has

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Claude Noel

made, what appear to be some strange moves at times, but it’s impossible to criticize any of them. The Jets started the season as a 12th place team heading directly toward 12th place. Today they are a ninth place team on the verge of getting into a position to make the playoffs — provided they survive January. Noel has had a great deal to do with that.

5. The crowd at MTS Centre. No wonder these Jets don’t play as well on the road. The home crowd in Winnipeg is a phenomenon. The 15,004 who show up inside the tiny boutique arena in downtown Winnipeg (and make no mistake, every seat is taken) start screaming before the game and don’t stop until their beloved Jets salute from centre ice after the final buzzer. Long-time Alberta journalist Bruce Penton compared it to a British soccer crowd. “They don’t get tired,” he said. “It’s just relentless.” And despite that lousy little excuse after a 5-1 season–opening loss to the Montreal Canadiens, the Jets have warmed to the crowd. They love it. They live for it. If there can actually be a “seventh man” he/she lives in Winnipeg.

These Jets are by no means a playoff-bound team. But so far, they have grabbed a hold of this December homestand and skated with it. A win over the Penguins on Friday night and they could be locked into a playoff spot with two more home games next week.

Then, in January, we’ll really get to see what they have in the tank.

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An Invitation to Jets Fans

Posted on October 15, 2011 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment

My 28-year-old daughter, Betsy, who lives in Orlando, posted this on her Facebook page early Friday evening:

“So Winnipeggers, tickets to the Jets vs. Lightning game in Tampa start at $4.95. Who’s coming with me, Oct, 29th???!!!”

Actually, since Betsy posted her invitation, cheaper seats have appeared on Stub Hub. As of Saturday morning, there was a pair available to the Jets-Lightning game for $4 each. Another pair for $4.50 each. There was even an instant download for a group of eight for $7 each. In other words, you’d have eight tickets downloaded in your hands for $56. That’s nuts.

Here are some of the ladies who have committed:

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Magic fans off to see the Jets.

Just as an aside, I’d go anywhere with them and in this case, I’ve even been given permission.

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Betsy and Becky getting ready to watch the Jets -- for, like, free.

Later in the evening, Betsy added this to her post: “I’ll be buying tickets on Sunday. So I’ll buy as many as we need, I’ll probably go a little more expensive and closer to the action….. Might be $9 lol.”

LOL is right. If you bought a scalper’s ticket to the Jets opener in Winnipeg last Sunday, you probably paid considerably more than it would cost to buy a plane ticket to Orlando, spend a few days at Disney World, rent a car, drive the hour to the St. Pete Times Forum in Tampa, watch the Jets there for $4 and then fly home.

In fact, on Thursday, Oct. 20, the Lightning play the New York Islanders in Tampa. Tickets on Stub Hub start at $3 lol. Think about that. You can watch two of the greatest young players in the game — John Tavares and Steven Stamkos — play against each other for $3. What? Is it 1970?

The NHL can say what it likes about the Sun Belt experiment, but Stub Hub doesn’t lie. People in the southern markets don’t care about hockey and when you can get a regular season ticket on the secondary market for $4.95 (and it doesn’t matter who the opponent is), it’s time to start moving these teams to Halifax, Quebec City, Kitchener, Regina and even the Kootenays. Or hell, even Kansas City where they have a great new rink, or Omaha where they have a solid college team a good junior club.

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Betsy and her RCS Jets hoodie.

If you’re in a position to watch a great team like the Tampa Bay Lightning — Stamkos, Vincent Lecavalier, Marty St. Louis, Victor Hedman — for $4.95, then you live in a city that hates hockey, will never like hockey and won’t miss it when it’s gone. Because if you don’t like this Tampa Bay Lightning team right now, you obviously hate the game.

Meanwhile, Betsy will look great at the game in her Winnipeg Jets hoodie, purchased right here in Winnipeg from our friends at River City Sports.

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Crowd Loves Everything. Jets Win Pre-Season Opener 6-1

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Despite the controversy that has followed Dustin Byfuglien to Winnipeg and the big defenseman’s resulting newspaper mug shots, captain Andrew Ladd is still the face of the franchise.

And despite the fact Byfuglien got into a fight on his first shift and assisted on Winnipeg’s first two goals, Ladd had no problem with the big guy’s role as Winnipeg’s early fan-favorite.

Crowd Loves Everything. Jets Win Pre Season Opener 6 1

Jets captain Andrew Ladd

Tuesday night, as the new Winnipeg Jets opened their first pre-season schedule with a thrilling 6-1 victory over the Columbus Blue Jackets, every seat was filled, the crowd went crazy every chance it got and Byfuglien announced his presence with authority.

“There was a lot of excitement tonight,” said Ladd who scored Winnipeg’s final goal in Pre-Season Game 1. “It’s the first time we’ve had a chance to fill up the building. It’s exactly what we were looking forward to.”

It certainly didn’t long for the 15,004 in attendance to start the “Go Jets Go!” chant. And the young Jets seemed to ride the enthusiasm of the crowd early in the game.

On the first shift, Byfuglien laid out two Blue Jackets with big hits and then he and Columbus’ Cody Bass engaged in pushing match that almost looked a lot like a fight. At the same time, Winnipeg’s Mark Stuart and Columbus’s Dane Byers engaged in a real fight. All four went to the penalty bench for five minutes each.

The first Jets goal was scored by defenseman Paul Postma on a wrister from the point. Byfuglien and Ladd drew the assists.

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Mark Scheifele

No. 1 draft pick Mark Scheifele, a guy who was expected to be sent back to the OHL’s Barrie Colts before the start of the season, banged home a loose puck at 16:50 of the first period – Byfuglien picked up another assist — to make it 2-0 and the Jets just got better as the night went on as Goalies Ondrej Pevelec (two periods) and David Aebischer (third period) combined to make 26 saves.

Postma added three assists, finished with four points and was named third star. Byfuglien had two assists and was selected as the second star Scheifele had two goals and two assists and was the game’s first star.

“If he (Scheifele) continues to show promise, what can you say?” said head coach Claude Noel when asked about the 18-year-old’s chances to make the team. “He was really good.”

So was the crowd.

“The crowd was like a seventh man out there,” said former Calgary Hitman Postma. “It’s great to just give them lots to cheer about.”

If that was the goal, then it was Mission Accomplished.

“It’s nice to be at the point where we’re back at the rink and playing,” Ladd said. “The best way for us to show the fans in Winnipeg what kind of team we are is to go 110 per cent all the time. We have to go as hard as we can on every shift and not stop ‘till we get off the ice.”

That certainly summed up the Jets effort last night. It might have been a mere pre-season game, a practice if you will, but it meant something to the fans and it obviously meant something to the Jets.

“I thought the crowd would die down after the first period,” said Noel. “But it didn’t. It was great. It just kept going. Buff stepped over a couple of guys right away. The players got into the game and had plenty of energy. It was good stuff. That’s what drives athletes in sports. It was great to be part of it.”

Last season, this Jets team was the Atlanta Thrashers, a club that got off to a terrific start and then folded its tent down the stretch. Ladd now understands that a lot of the Thrashers early-season success last year had to do with the fact that not many teams had much respect for a young club that was 35-34-13 a year earlier.

“We flew a under the radar for the first little while last year,” Ladd conceded. “We were an up-and-coming, exciting hockey team that some teams didn’t respect that much early in the season. That has to be different and I think it will be. I think we learned a lot last year. We’re still a young team but we have speed and size and I think we’ll be good. I like this team.”

Earlier on Tuesday, the Jets received word that Byfuglien had been charged with four counts of boating while under the influence of drugs or alcohol, refusing to provide a blood or urine sample, failing to display proper lights and failing to provide enough flotation devices for himself and three passengers, all the result of an incident that took place on Lake Minnetonka on Aug. 31.

There had been concerns about Byfuglien’s weight and fitness level, but any worries were put to rest on Tuesday night.

“Buff’s weight and his fitness are things we’ve talked about since we were in Chicago,” said Ladd who has played with Byfuglien, on and off, since 2007. “He’s the driving force behind our D so we all believe he’ll be ready to go.”

Ladd and the rest of the Jets found out about Byfuglien last night. He hit, he fought and he set up goals. He picked up a double roughing penalty in a spat with the Jackets’ Derek Dorsett at the end of the first period and he

In all, Mark Scheifele was the scoring star and the big surprise, but Dustin Byfuglien was the best player on the ice for every reason – good, bad, right and wrong.

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Atlanta to Winnipeg? Sounds Like February 2010.

Posted on December 19, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Bill Daly, the vice-president of the National Hockey League, is an interesting guy. Whip-smart and with a sound handle on the business side of hockey, Daly was always at the forefront of the “Save or Don’t Save the Phoenix Coyotes” argument. And for him, there was never any doubt. If you listened closely, there was never even a waver in his voice. He said from Day 1, the league was going to do everything humanly possible to keep the Coyotes in Phoenix, and it did.

That’s why his comments this week regarding the future of the Atlanta Thrashers were somewhat stunning. He made it clear that he hoped all would go well in the Thrashers’ efforts to find a new investor in order to maintain a franchise in Georgia, but he didn’t say it with quite the same conviction he did when he said the league would do everything possible to save the Coyotes.

This time, Daly essentially alluded to a clear fact of capital, saying that in the United States, the market will determine the future. Whether it’s a business or a hockey franchise, Daly made it known that if the market couldn’t carry the Thrashers, the Thrashers might have to be carried to another market.

We wrote on the 92-CITI-FM website in February of 2010 that a team was on the verge of heading to Winnipeg and that the team would be the Atlanta Thrashers, not the Phoenix Coyotes.

It’s not going to happen for the start of the 2011-12 season, not a chance, but as Daly suggested this week, the Thrashers future in Atlanta isn’t quite as guaranteed as the Coyotes future was in Phoenix/Glendale.

Those with their hands on the pulse of the NHL still believe that the Atlanta Thrashers will end up in Winnipeg for the 2013-14 season — or sooner and it will be the Thrashers for a handful of reasons:

1) The Thrashers are 28th on the NHL’s list of announced attendance (don’t believe a word of announced attendances), behind the Islanders and Coyotes. The league knows they play in a college football town and the league also knows the attendance isn’t going to get any better.

2) The team’s owner has worked very hard for more than two years to find a business partner and he has not enticed one person who was interested in buying a chunk of the franchise and keeping it in Atlanta.

3) The Thrashers play in the NHL’s Eastern Conference and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has two problems with his East-West split — the Detroit Red Wings and the Columbus Blue Jackets. Both teams are located in the Eastern time zone and yet they play in the West. Detroit, being an Original 6 team, has first dibs on a spot in the Eastern Conference, and Bettman would be happy moving an existing, yet struggling Eastern team to the West so he can move the Wings to the East. Atlanta to Winnipeg (just like the Islanders or maybe Florida to Kansas City) works.

4) An NHL franchise in Atlanta has failed before. The Flames crashed in the late 70s and were eventually moved to Calgary. Moving a second failed franchise in the same market is not as horrible an optic as moving Winnipeg to Phoenix and then Phoenix back to Winnipeg.

5) Bettman wants to appease the new, suddenly militant NHLPA which now has former MLBPA boss Donald Fehr as its executive director. Fehr hates salary caps and will quite happily take his players out on strike if there is one tiny, little thing he doesn’t like. Fehr loves labour strife and he’ll create strife were it doesn’t really exist. So in order to try and save his “cap-based-on-revenue” concept, Bettman needs to keep revenues high and the cap moving up every year. That means he must get out of struggling markets soon and while he did everything he could to save Phoenix because of his legacy, his ego, the optics of the situation and the promises he made to the community, he won’t be quite as enthused about saving a franchise that has none of those concerns.

We will know this year if (first) and when Winnipeg will get a new NHL franchise.

I wrote in February of 2010 that it would be the Atlanta Thrashers. I still believe that today.

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Finally, A Mainstream Media Outlet Picks Up What Winnipeggers Have Known for Months.

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment

We’ve been talking about it for months, the people of Winnipeg have been talking about it for months and the mainstream media has been saying, “Absolutely Untrue.”

Well, what started as a rumour in February has now been validated by the mainstream media. Not in Winnipeg, of course, but in Phoenix.

Could the Jets be coming back? Even Scott Brown, the director of communications for True North Sports and Entertainment, won’t deny it in the following story from Mike Sunnucks of the highly-regarded Phoenix Business Journal…

Monday, March 29, 2010, 10:11am MST

NHL talking to billionaire David Thomson about Phoenix Coyotes sale

Phoenix Business Journal – by Mike Sunnucks

The National Hockey League is working on a backup plan with Toronto billionaire David Thomson and Winnepeg-based True North Sports and Entertainment that could send the Phoenix Coyotes back to Canada if a deal with Ice Edge Holdings or Jerry Reinsdorf to keep the team in Arizona falls through.

Two sources with knowledge of the Coyotes finances and ownership said a deal between Thomson and the NHL has been completed in principle and could have the Coyotes back in Winnipeg next season if necessary. Thomson, also considered a possible buyer of the Atlanta Thrashers, is a partner in True North and chairman of Thomson Reuters. True North owns the Manitoba Moose of the American Hockey League and MTS Centre in Winnipeg, which seats 15,100.

The sources said, however, the NHL still wants to work out a deal to keep the Coyotes in the Phoenix market. The league bought the Coyotes, still in Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, for $140 million in October fending off a $242 million bid by Research in Motion CEO Jim Balsillie, who wanted to move the team to Hamilton, Ontario.

League officials said during bankruptcy proceedings last year that if a deal could not be finalized by June 2010 it would be open to a sale that would involve a move from the team’s home in Glendale.

Scott Brown, communications director for True North Sports and the Manitoba Moose (who play in Winnipeg), declined comment.

“Due to the possible impact on both the Coyotes and our own AHL product here in Manitoba, we’ve actually been hesitant to engage in any discussion publicly about the situation in Phoenix as far back as last summer when rumors began to surface of the team’s possible departure. It is our understanding the NHL is working very hard to keep the team where it is in Phoenix,” Brown said.

Glendale city spokeswoman Julie Frisoni also declined comment as did NHL spokesman Kerry McGovern.

The NHL and Glendale are still working with Ice Edge Holdings to keep the team in Arizona with some games to be played in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, but there have been reports of financing challenges.

Ice Edge COO Daryl Jones said he optimistic about financing the Coyotes sale. “Ice Edge feels very comfortable with their financing. Our banks are very interested in this deal,” Jones said. He told a Toronto radio station recently, however, he wanted Glendale to move faster in getting a lease deal.

Glendale officials also have been talking to Chicago Bulls and White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf and his business partner John Kaites, who previously made a bid for the Coyotes.

The Coyotes have qualified for the NHL playoffs for the first time since 2002 and are seeing a late-season boost in attendance.

The Coyotes moved to Phoenix in 1996 from Winnipeg, where they played as the Winnipeg Jets. The franchise has lost more than $300 million since moving to the Valley and were put into Chapter 11 bankruptcy by former owner Jerry Moyes last year.

Check out more here: http://phoenix.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2010/03/29/daily2.html

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Sitting In the Middle of a Full House in St. Paul is A Lot Different than Sitting in Florida, Tampa or Phoenix — Or Even Denver.

Posted on November 7, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

ST. PAUL, Minn. — It’s a gorgeous night in the Twin Towns and the “Team of 18,000″ is getting ready to sing State of Hockey here at the Xcel Energy Centre. It’s the Minnesota Wild, a day before Shane Hnidy’s 34th birthday, against the Dallas Stars, with Minnesota’s beloved Mike Modano, not only in the lineup but starting the game and playing on the No. 1 line, at age 39.

It’s been a shaky start to the 2009-2010 season for the Wild. Minnesota’s team heads into tonight’s game at 5-10-0 (1-7-0 on the road) and while the record hasn’t negatively affected the team’s attendance this season, it has been a grind on the staff.

“It’s tough,” said the Wild’s VP of communications Bill Robertson earlier tonight. “It’s a tough economy, it’s tough to sell tickets. We still sell every seat, but we’re not overflowing with standing room like we usually are and it’s tougher to sell corporate suites than it used to be.

“On the upside, merchandise sales are way up because of fans have really taken to our third jersey.”

It’s hard to listen to a guy — even a great guy like Billy Rob — worry about the fans in Minnesota after you’ve already seen games in Florida, Tampa and Nashville this season and have interviewed Doug Moss, the president of the Phoenix Coyotes (check out www.hotdoghockey.com for that interview). Those are markets with big trouble. There is no trouble at all in St. Paul.

However, no one ever would have believed that there could be trouble in Denver, the home of the Colorado Avalanche, and it appears now that there is.

Wednesday night, for a game against Phoenix, the Avalanche drew a franchise-low 11,012 (remember, that’s the announced crowd) ticket buyers. This season, the Avs have averaged just 14,759 through its first five home games and that once again means, “Who cares if MTS Centre has only 15,001 seats?” Not even the red-hot Colorado Avalanche average 15,000 per game these days.

(Oops, Cal Clutterbuck just scored a shorthanded goal from our pal Shane Hnidy.)

With an average of 14,759 per game, the Avalanche stand 25th in the NHL in per-game attendance ahead of only Florida, Tampa Bay, Nashville, the New York Islanders and Phoenix.

Meanwhile, after watching the Atlanta Thrashers play on TV this week,  in front of a crowd that appeared to include the players’ parents and no one else, it’s hard to imagine the Thrashers have the nerve to say they average more per game than the Avs or even the Winnipeg South Blues.

Meanwhile, there will soon be an ownership change in South Florida. According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Alan Cohen’s days as majority owner of the Panthers are coming to an end, as two partners in his ownership group are expected to take control of the team.

Two Boca Raton businessmen, Panthers Vice-Chairman Cliff Viner and Managing Director Stu Siegel, will buy most of Cohen’s 43 per cent of the team and become co-managing partners.

According to the Sun-Sentinel, “Panthers fans are desperate for change. The team has not made the playoffs since 2000, the longest playoff drought in the NHL, and has undergone numerous coaching and general manager changes and traded away some of its best players, including Roberto Luongo, Olli Jokinen and Jay Bouwmeester.”

But here’s the kicker, the paper added: “The ownership change is not expected to resolve the team’s financial struggles. The team’s parent company, Sunrise Sports & Entertainment, is seeking Broward County’s help to restructure its debt on the county-owned BankAtlantic Center.”

It’s a mess on Long Island, Phoenix is a disaster (only 5,585 this past Monday at jobing.com Arena), Tampa Bay and Nashville are hurting, the Columbus Chamber of Commerce has conceded that the Blue Jackets don’t have much life left and now Florida needs government help from a government that isn’t flush.

We all know Gary Bettman doesn’t want to admit it, but the NHL is in big, big trouble.

* * *

KELLY SAYS “BULL-CACA.” THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA DOESN’T RESPOND IN ANGER. WONDER WHY?

Friday morning, during an interview with Tom McGouran, Kathy Kennedy and The Coach, on 92-CITI-FM, Blue Bombers coach Mike Kelly poked the local mainstream media with a stick. Again.

Kelly, laughing all the way, said, “You guys have the only media outlet that isn’t bull-caca.”

He then added, “I don’t think I can be fined $2,000 by the league for saying ‘bull-caca.” Can I? ”

He was assured by McGouran that it was unlikely he’d be fined. In fact, McGouran agreed with him.

“Can’t be fined for telling the truth,” McGouran laughed.

That’s true to an extent. Kelly could still be fined because he told the truth the first time and was fined.

Then again, he had no bone to pick with CITI, a spot on the dial where the interviewers ask good, solid questions without being rude and obnoxious.

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Could We Be Going From the Death of Eaton’s to the Rebirth of the Winnipeg Jets?

Posted on June 12, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

On a recent Winnipeg Goldeyes telecast on Shaw TV, Winnipeg mayor Sam Katz hinted that a deal to bring the Jets (or a reasonable facsimile) back to Winnipeg could be secured if a number “of very complicated things fell into place.”

“It’s certainly not impossible,” Katz said. “It’s not something that would happen overnight. I would say in the next two-to-five years, perhaps. It would involve the MTS Centre and certainly the Chipmans (Winnipeg’s wealthy Chipman family) would have to be involved, although I don’t think they would necessarily be the major shareholders in the club.

“It would be a very complicated deal. First of all, an NHL team would have to be made available and I think that’s coming. If that happens, there is a chance something could be arranged to bring an NHL team to Winnipeg. I really believe that.”

For months (maybe years) there has been a belief among certain Winnipeg business people that the money is already in place to bring an NHL team back to the ‘Peg. That’s not crazy talk from semi-delusional 35-year-old unemployed males who live in their mothers’ basements. There has also been a more recent belief that if someone, anyone (even Jim Balsillie) can break down the NHL’s cartel, there is a good chance half-a-dozen teams in failing markets could become available.

This week, if Balsillie gets a favourable ruling from Phoenix Judge Redfield T. Baum, there is a very good chance he’ll be able to purchase the Phoenix Coyotes and move the team to Hamilton, Ont. If that happens, other teams will soon become available to the highest bidders. You can almost see the Islanders moving to Kansas City as we speak.

The Chipmans, as wealthy as they are, have made it clear they won’t be bringing a team to Winnipeg all by themselves. Just too much coin. But with some help, they have the building (a building that’s way too small, just ask the Columbus Blue Jackets, but that’s for another day), that could play host to an NHL team. The team would lose money, but it certainly would have considerable fan support.

In order to get the help they need, the Chipmans have already reached beyond the Perimeter Highway. One of the current investors in True North Sports and Entertainment, the parent company of the MTS Centre and the Manitoba Moose, is the Toronto/Stamford, Conn.-based Thomson family.

The Thomsons, owners of Thomson Reuters, Thomson Financial, Thomson Legal, Thomson Scientific, et. al, have a stake in True North today. The family owned the old Eaton’s site in Winnipeg where the MTS Centre now stands and have been investors in the company since the early days.

The key person in this alleged NHL ownership group is David Thomson, who runs the multi-billion dollar Thomson business conglomerate from the head office in Stamford, Conn.

Lately, there has been talk that the Thomsons will soon take over the major shareholder position in True North from the Chipmans.

If that’s true, and there is still some question that it is, the NHL will be in Winnipeg in two-to-five years, just as Mayor Katz suggested on our Shaw telecast last week.

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The Hockey World Gets Crazier Every Day

Posted on June 1, 2009 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment

When it comes to the NHL, it’s hard to imagine that things could be crazier. From making up rules as they go along to their futile attempts to hide the coming financial disaster from the public, every NHL day is a wild and crazy day.

So without further adieu, let’s dig deeper into the mess that IS Gary Bettman’s National Hockey League:

1) It has been said by lawyers who are more attuned to the issue than me, that if Bettman loses his case against the re-location of the Phoenix Coyotes, then the dominoes will begin to fall.

In fact, Bettman speaks the truth when he says he really has nothing personal against Jim Balsillie, the man trying to move the Coyotes to Hamilton. Bettman’s real beef is with anybody who would force the league to move one of its shaky franchises (and believe me, there are many), thus allowing other franchises to do the same.

Case in point: The Columbus Blue Jackets.

We often use Nashville, Atlanta, Florida, Tampa and the Islanders as examples of teams that would love to re-locate if only the league would allow them to move. 

Friday, however, a major story on the front page of the Columbus Dispatch made it very clear that the Blue Jackets have serious financial problems.

Who knew? In fact, because the Jackets regularly announce crowds between 14,000 and 17,000 per night at Nationwide Arena, no one assumed that the team was drowning in red ink. In 2008-09, the Blue Jackets averaged 15,543 fans per game (think about this: it would be at least 500 more tickets sold per game than can actually be purchased to attend hockey games at Winnipeg’s MTS Centre). With tickets priced between $18 and $150 per game, not including suites or loge box seating, the team will lose more than $10 million on operations this year.

Blue Jackets president Mike Priest issued this written statement on the team’s website late last week: 

“The Columbus Blue Jackets are in the process of seeking a solution for a structural problem in the economic model that was created over a decade ago to ensure the construction of Nationwide Arena and the procurement of a NHL team for Columbus. This is an issue for us because we manage and operate the team as well as the building. Because the building was financed and constructed privately, there are certain revenue streams typically available to teams that are not available to the Blue Jackets.

“As an organization, we have incurred substantial losses over the past several years, of which a significant portion is related to arena operations under the current structure. It is a building financial problem that has become a team financial problem. If we fix the building problem, we fix the team problem.”

Sound familiar? That could have been Barry Shenkarow talking about the Winnipeg Jets relationship with Winnipeg Enterprises Corporation in 1982.

Over the last seven seasons, the Blue Jackets have lost upwards of $80 million. This year, despite reaching the playoffs, the Jackets lost more than $10 million.

If a team like the Blue Jackets is losing money, a team that makes the playoffs, draws well and is closer to the salary cap floor than the ceiling, I can’t imagine what the numbers are like in Atlanta, Nashville, Florida and Tampa. However, I do the Islanders have lost $283 million of Charles Wang’s money since 2001, so those losses would be significant.

No wonder teams are looking seriously at that court case in Phoenix.

2) It’s great to be a star in the NHL. Had Dan Cleary or Maxime Talbot received an instigator penalty with 19 seconds to play in a Stanley Cup final game, you can bet they’d be suspended for the next game.

But not Evgeni Malkin. The league found a slick rationalization for keeping Malkin in the lineup Tuesday night.

From the NHL’s own website: 

National Hockey League Executive Vice President and Director of Hockey Operations Colin Campbell issued the following statement regarding the instigator penalty assessed to Pittsburgh’s Evgeni Malkin at 19:41 of the third period of tonight’s Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final:

Rule 47.22 states: “A player who is deemed to be the instigator of an altercation in the final five minutes or at any time in overtime shall be suspended for one game, pending a review of the incident.  The director of hockey operations will review every such incident and may rescind the suspension based on a number of criteria. The criteria for the review shall include, but not be limited to, the score, previous incidents, etc…”  

Following that review, Campbell said: “None of the criteria in this rule applied in this situation. Suspensions are applied under this rule when a team attempts to send a message in the last five minutes by having a player instigate a fight.  A suspension could also be applied when a player seeks retribution for a prior incident.  Neither was the case here and therefore the one game suspension is rescinded.”

NHL Hockey Operations also determined that Malkin should have been assessed a game misconduct for not having his jersey tied down.

Whatever. It just pays to be a big name.

3) Sobering news for the Pittsburgh Penguins:

History tells us that the winner of Game 1 of the Stanley Cup final, wins the Cup 78.6 per cent of the time. When it’s the home team that wins Game 1, as Detroit did on Saturday night, the winning percentage increases to 87.9 per cent. When the home team wins Games 1 and 2, it wins the Cup 94.9 per cent of the time.

We’re merely heading into Game 3 in Pittsburgh and even though the Penguins have yet to lose at home, they still need a miracle.

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