The City of Winnipeg still waits for the announcement that will, in all certainty, arrive this coming week. The Mayor and Premier both say it will come and the Toronto newspaper owned by the man who will purchase the team and give it to Winnipeg has already reported that the deal is done.
So as the city waits for the Atlanta Thrashers to arrive, it’s hard not to suspect that the National Hockey League has had its first domino drop.
Is this the end of the Great Southern Hockey Experiment? It easily could have ended in Phoenix and you have to figure Phoenix will still be the next to go. And, hey, it’s no picnic in Florida, Nashville or Columbus these days either.
Ponder this for a second:
A small city on the Canadian prairie – and Americans have every right to call it “the middle of nowhere” – is now more desirable a place for a National Hockey League franchise than the seventh largest television market in the United States.
That says so many things about (a) the bleak U.S. economy, (b) the game of hockey itself (c) the death of the non-traditional market experiment and (d) the simple economics of the game.
The NHL will leave a city that has almost 10 times as many people as its destination and plays in an arena that has 18,545 seats and the league will move it to a city that is only accessible directly by air on a regular schedule from two or three U.S. cities and has an arena with only 15,000 seats.
It’s moving from a $213 million arena built in 1999 to a $133 million arena built in 2004. It is such an incredible example of downsizing that it tells major financial and corporate leaders in the United States that the NHL is a dying industry. There are people in places in the Southern and Western United States who will never buy a ticket to a sporting event that involves a team from Winnipeg because those poor people have no idea what, let alone where, a Winnipeg is.
The owners in Atlanta say the team has lost $40 million a year for the last five years. That’s a questionable number, but it does say clearly that the owners in Atlanta have enough of their “dog” hockey franchise.
As a result, the NHL has now admitted defeat. When you take a franchise out of the seventh largest TV market in the United States and move it to a Canadian city with the same population as Des Moines, Iowa, you have given up. If I’m an American investor and I see you pulling out of cities of nearly six million to head off to cities in other countries with populations of 700,000, I wouldn’t put a plug nickel into your league. Hell, UFC has given no indication it would ever come to Winnipeg. NASCAR couldn’t find it on a map. MLB, NFL or NBA? Bwahahahaha.
The experiment is over. Because if the NHL can’t find an owner in Phoenix, can’t get a building built on Long Island, is losing $25 million a year in Columbus and $10-$15 million a year in Nashville, is a disaster in South Florida and can longer sellout in Dallas or Denver, it’s done. As dead as the Hartford Whalers. There aren’t enough stupid rich people in America left to buy these money-pit franchises.
And what’s going to happen when the NHLPA’s Donald Fehr starts to stare down Gary Bettman? The NBA and the NFL already have labour problems. Hockey is next.
I worry about the future of this league. The hockey is great. But in far too many markets, the business is a mess.
No. 1: I’d make a lousy owner. 
Almost everyone seemed to be worried about the kid. Was he good enough? Could he handle the pressure? Don’t forget, the NHL is a lot tougher than the American Hockey League.