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It’s Official: For the NHL, the Jets are a Rousing Success!!!

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment
8420529e3ab735ca810247d1155004ef getty 135150807 300x205 Its Official: For the NHL, the Jets are a Rousing Success!!!

The fans deserve a salute.

TAMPA — While sitting in the press box between a group of NHL executives on Thursday night, an official-looking list from the National Hockey League was passed around.

It was a list of the NHL’s gate receipts, ticket sales and ticket prices through Jan. 31, 2012. It confirmed everything Jets fans have known since the season opener against Montreal back on Oct. 9.

The Jets are 13th overall in NHL receipts per game even though Winnipeg’s rink is the smallest in the NHL at 15,004. Winnipeg makes $1.24 million per game. According to the NHL, last year in Atlanta, the Thrashers made $331,000 per game.

The Jets also had the seventh most expensive ticket in the NHL in average price at $76.41 per seat.

Montreal is No. in gate receipts at $2.058 million per game ($1.965 per game last year). Toronto is No. 2 at $2.004 million per game ($1.981 million per game last year). Montreal’s average ticket price is $96.44 per seat while Toronto’s is $105.94 per ticket.

56187890 gary bettman mark chipman attend news conference winnipeg 300x185 Its Official: For the NHL, the Jets are a Rousing Success!!!

Mark loved the move from Atlanta. Gary? Not so much. Until now, one guesses.

At the bottom of the list — at No. 30 — in game per game gate receipts is Phoenix (no surprise) at $387,364 per game. Last year, the Coyotes averaged a meagre $378,925 per game.

Those Coyotes numbers make it all the more unbelievable that Commissioner Gary Bettman has three buyers in Phoenix who are prepared to keep the team in the Arizona desert.

How come Gary Bettman has the ability to find stupid people with lots of money who are eager to piss it down a toilet? I keep looking for those guys and just can’t find them anywhere.

(Note: To the commenter below — from the Globe and Mail: “True North considered a number of different pricing plans before deciding on the one it unveiled. Tickets will range between $39 and $129.” On the secondary market, ticket prices are obviously high. The original market was $39-$129.”)

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The NHL at the Quarter Pole

Posted on November 26, 2011 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment
sidney crosby 238x300 The NHL at the Quarter Pole

The Kid is Back

Sidney Crosby is back, Alexander Ovechkin is struggling, the Calgary Flames are fighting amongst themselves, Ken Hitchcock is now coaching in St. Louis while everyone is wondering how long Scott Arniel will last in Columbus and Phil Kessel is the leading scorer in the National Hockey League.

We’re one quarter of the way through the 2011-12 NHL season and these are among the key stories as the league speeds head-on into the holiday season.

Things are crazy this season. The Winnipeg Jets are back but they’re still playing like the old Atlanta Thrashers. The Minnesota Wild, with 29 points, is the No. 1 team in the league. And after 20-plus games for most teams, there are two teams in the Top 8 in the East that didn’t make the playoffs last year and three in the West.

It’s the NHL at the quarter-pole. Let’s look at the 10 biggest stories:

1. Sidney Crosby is Back: The Kid returned on Monday, Nov. 20 and wowed national audiences on both sides of the border with two goals and two assists in his return. After missing almost a year with post-concussion syndrome, his return to the game was just as important to the NHL as it was Sidney himself. The fact that he went scoreless in his second game against St. Louis went without notice. Crosby is back and that’s good for hockey.

Phil+Kessel+Buffalo+Sabres+v+Toronto+Maple+bAvHC8tETdsl 242x300 The NHL at the Quarter Pole

Phil Kessel

2. Phil Kessel is the NHL’s Leading Scorer: He was drafted fifth overall in 2005 and since that day, the NHL has been waiting for Kessel to reach a level of play that no one with a walnut for a brain ever truly believed he could reach. Drafted by Boston, he scored 36 goals in 2008-09 but the Bruins expected more. Dealt to Toronto, he’s had a 30-goal season in 2009-10 and a 32-goal season last year and he’s a damned good player. Trouble is, Toronto fans – like Boston fans – have expected more. This year, he has 16 goals and 14 assists in the first 22 games and leads the NHL in goals and points. Maybe, just maybe, this will be the year Kessel gets the respect he deserves.

3. Ken Hitchcock Hired to Coach the Blues, Not Jackets: Everyone – and that means absolutely everyone – thought Hitchcock would return to the NHL this year as head coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets. After all, the Blue Jackets were still paying him, Scott Arniel was said to be on the verge of a sacking and the Blue Jackets had allegedly spoken to Hitchcock. Then, out of the blue (pun intended), Payne Davis was fired in St. Louis and Hitchcock was behind the bench of the Blues. He started out 4-0-1, the best start of any coach in Blues franchise history and suddenly the Blues found themselves fifth overall in the West. Quite a move.

Alex+Ovechkin+Washington+Capitals+v+Toronto+G1Edq3jHTLtl 250x300 The NHL at the Quarter Pole

Alex Ovechkin

4. Alex Ovechkin is Not the Same: Sure, it’s early yet, but something seems to be terribly wrong with Alex the Great. He has seven goals and nine assists in the Capitals first 20 games and is 58th in scoring. He is on pace for a 65-point season. In 2007-08, he had 65 goals. After he had 50 goals and 59 assists in just 72 games in 2009-10, he hasn’t been the same. He had only 32 goals and 53 points last year and this year, while he plays exciting hockey in spurts, he is not consistently great – or exciting. Insiders say Caps coach Bruce Boudreau has sucked the life out of Ovechkin with his defense-first philosophy and perhaps that’s true. If it is, it’s time for a change. Man, Ovie would look really good in L.A., but then again, the Kings probably couldn’t handle the cap hit.

5. The Leafs Look Like a Playoff Team: Even with goalie-of-the-present-and-future James Reimer out with a concussion, the Leafs have played steady hockey and through 22 games, they are 12-8-2, fifth in the East. They have the leading scorer in the NHL in Phil Kessel and they often appear to be a team that could stay in the hunt all season long. In fairness, the next 20 games will probably show us whether or not the Leafs are for real.

Andrew Ladd 1 235x300 The NHL at the Quarter Pole

Andrew Ladd

6. Winnipeg’s Return to the NHL: Wow! The building is sold out, the team is 8-9-4 through their first 21 games and fans are madly in love with this group of orphans who were once known as the Atlanta Thrashers. It’s the fans, however, that have sent a message to the NHL. That message is clear, too. Get teams out of Florida, Phoenix, Nashville, Dallas, Columbus and all those minor-league southern markets and send the game back to Canada and the northern United States. This is where players are revered and the game is loved. The NHL would be better off with three teams in Toronto, two in Vancouver and one each in Halifax, Quebec City and Saskatchewan than it is with teams in the U.S. Sun Belt.

7. The Minnesota Wild Is No. 1: Last year, the Wild went 39-35-8 and finished 12th in the West. Today, the Wild are 13-5-3 during the first 21 games and No. 1 overall in the NHL. Yes, that’s the whole NHL. Yeah, really. The Wild acquired Dany Heatley and Devin Setoguchi from San Jose in the off-season and have made themselves one of the better clubs in the NHL. It certainly doesn’t hurt to have Nicklas Backstrom and Josh Harding as your goaltenders and the heart and soul of Cal Clutterbuck, Guillaume Latendresse, Matt Cullen, Mikko Koivu and Kyle Brodziak, but the acquisition of Heatley and Setoguchi have made the Wild a legitimate playoff contender. The key now, is to avoid last season’s late collapse.

martin st. louis 201x300 The NHL at the Quarter Pole

Marty St. Louis

8. Tampa/Washington Fighting with Coaches: There is a real sense out there that the Washington Capitals are having trouble relating to the defense-first philosophy of head coach Bruce Boudreau and that the Tampa Bay Lightning have simply stopped listening at all to Guy Boucher. The Caps won the East last year and are now sixth. The Lightning was fifth in the East last year and is now 12th. Whatever the reason, something is definitely wrong with both teams.

9. Phoenix is Still an Ownership Wasteland: See: “Winnipeg’s Return to the NHL.”

10: Brendan Shanahan Hands Out Discipline (Or Not): If you can figure out the reasons for why players receive or don’t receive secondary discipline from Shanahan’s office, you’re smarter than, well, just about everybody. Why some players get three-game suspensions and others avoid any secondary discipline at all seems like a pure guessing game. At least, from afar. It’s amazing that while few people understood Colin Campbell’s disciplinary policy, even fewer seem to understand Shanahan’s. Maybe the players get it.

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Should Curt Keilback be the Voice of the Jets?

Posted on July 9, 2011 by Scott Taylor| 2 Comments

There are a lot of people out there who believe that since the Winnipeg Jets have returned, the Voice of the Jets should return with them.

It’s impossible to avoid the groundswell of support for Keilback, the one time big voiced play-by-play caller of Winnipeg’s “old” professional hockey side. It’s everywhere. So many Winnipeggers are convinced that Keilback is the best and he should be the team’s play-by-play voice once again.

A week or so ago Keilback told me that there was no interest from any of the radio stations in Winnipeg that were preparing to bid on the broadcasting rights to Jets games. Those rights will be expensive so one would think those stations would want to have the best available play-by-play man in the country calling the games. Not so, we’re told.

Still it’s quite likely Keilback will be on the air in Winnipeg this winter, calling the play-by-play of junior hockey games. It ain’t the Jets, but it’s still Curt keilback calling hockey and that’s pretty special.

Not long ago, Curt and I sat down and talked about the past – and a broadcasting future that is still uncertain.

*   *   *

For more than 30 years, Curt Keilback has been known to his close friends as “Sod.” But even though he’s from Yorkton, Sask., the former Voice of the Winnipeg Jets doesn’t look much like a “Sod.” Unless, of course, you know the story, a story that will be even more intriguing if, by some strange aligning of the planets, Keilback becomes the NEXT voice of the NHL in Winnipeg.

It was a lovely day in Atlanta (How’s that for a coincidence?), a November morning in 1980, when the Winnipeg Jets were about to return home after playing the old Atlanta Flames at the Omni in Atlanta, Ga. As the players were boarding the airplane, someone mentioned that the team’s newly hired play-by-play announcer, Curt Keilback, was no where to be found. The late Friar Nicholson, Keilback’s boss at the time, asked the team if it would request that the pilots to hold the plane for just a moment. Nicholson had seen Keilback in the airport and wondered what happened to him.

After a brief search, Nicholson found his 31-year-old charge and got him onto the flight amid laughter and derision from the Jets players, the team’s management and other members of the media.

“For a boy from Yorkton, Atlanta had an awful big airport,” Keilback recalled with a laugh. “I got lost. Simple as that. When they found me and got me on the plane, I took a real beating from the players and the other media guys. Patty Doyle – who has since had a sex change and become Patti Dawn Swanson – called me ‘Just a big sodbuster from Saskatchewan.’ The name was shortened to Sod and it stuck. Everybody started calling me Sod.”

“I have so many great memories as a broadcaster it’s hard to put my finger on just one of the them,” said Keilback, a recent inductee into Manitoba’s Hockey Hall of Fame. “It was great to be part of Teemu Selanne’s rookie season when he scored 76 goals. It was great to be part of that 1984-85 Jets team that really had a chance to go a long way, but just couldn’t get past the Edmonton Oilers. I guess maybe my best memory was that day in 1979 when I got a call from Friar (Nicholson) asking me if I’d like to leave Yorkton and come and call the Jets’ games in Winnipeg.

“Of course, it was pretty nice getting that call last week telling me I was going into the Hall of Fame. That’s a nice memory, too.” Curt Keilback, who was born in Brandon and raised in Yorkton, followed his father into broadcasting. His dad, Jim, gave him his first radio show on CJGX in Yorkton, called “Minor Sports Corner,” back in the days when local radio was really local.

“I started doing my first play-by-play of a hockey game when I was 12,” Keilback remembered. “My dad was calling the senior games in Yorkton and on Minor Hockey Day in Canada, I got to call the second period. I fell in love with it and did that every year as I was growing up. When I was 20, I was hired full-time at CJGX and along with my other sports casting duties, I did hockey, baseball and curling play-by-play. Then, in my early 30s, I was doing TV in Yorkton and I got the call from Friar in Winnipeg. The Jets had just joined the NHL and I jumped at the chance.”

Keilback was wonderful as the Jets play-by-play man, but a contract dispute in 1994, signaled the end of his career in Winnipeg. But when the Jets moved to Phoenix in 1996, he caught on with the Coyotes and did radio and TV play-by-play in Phoenix until 2008. This past winter, he was the play-by-play voice of the Manitoba Junior Hockey League on NCI FM, right across the province of Manitoba.

He also picked up a part on the movie “Goon,” as, what else(?), a hockey broadcaster. Filmed in Portage la Prairie, it’s scheduled to be released this fall. “I absolutely enjoyed calling the junior games on NCI and hope to be able to do more next year,” Keilback said. “But if somebody gives me the chance to do NHL games again, I’d be behind the microphone in less than a heartbeat.” Keilback has had an amazing career in Winnipeg and he’s still one of the most copied hockey broadcasters in Canadian history. In fact, so many of his signature lines (Hawerchuk, with the wr-a-a-a-p-around!) have been stolen by so many broadcasters that it’s as if he was the first and only hockey play-by-play man.

However, he’ll be the first to tell you he had a couple of iconic broadcasting heroes himself.

“My dad, of course, because he was the first broadcaster I ever heard,” Keilback said. “And Danny Gallivan the long-time play-by-play guy with the Montreal Canadiens. I always thought Gallivan was the best and I could listen to him all night long.”

I’m one of those people who could listen to Curt Keilback all night long. It’s too bad we won’t hear him calling the new Winnipeg Jets.

 

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Winnipeg Hockey Fans Were Right. They Almost Had The Coyotes Last Year.

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment

Last February, when Joe Aiello and I started talking about all the hockey rumors on 92-CITI-FM, it was intriguing to watch the response. The local mainstream media instantly crapped all over us.

Joe and I were expressing our interest in all the chatter that had been emanating from MTS Centre where more than one employee talked openly about the changes that were planned for the building, the employees and the future of hockey in Winnipeg.

At first, it was thought that there was an opportunity for True North Sports and Entertainment to acquire the Atlanta Thrashers, but as we looked and listened more closely, it was apparent there was an even greater chance, at the time, that the Phoenix Coyotes might move north. The rumors did not stop circulating until mid-May and by then, it was clear that while most MTS Centre employees were convinced something was happening, by the middle of May, all the talk had died.

We thought we were right. We thought Winnipeg hockey fans and MTS employees were right, but unless True North ever admitted it piblicly, no one would know for sure.

Then, this past week, Mark Chipman, president of True North, admitted during a speech to the Chamber of Commerce that he and his partner, David Thomson were only minutes away from acquiring the Coyotes last May.

In fact, according to Chipman, if the City of Glendale had not committed to a guarantee of $25 million toward any monies lost by the Coyotes operation during the 2010-11 season, the Phoenix hockey franchise would have been heading back to Winnipeg on May 10, 2010.

“We literally came within 10 minutes of acquiring (the Coyotes) in May 2010 when the City of Glendale met a 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time deadline to wire the funds necessary to pay for the league’s losses for the (2010-11) season,” he told the Commerce gathering at the Fairmont.

“We left somewhat disappointed, but uplifted by the fact that the league had taken us so seriously and, as a consequence, had indicated it would just be a matter of time before we would actually acquire a team.”

That turned out to be true, too.

Although it really doesn’t matter now whether or not True North was close to acquiring a team 13 months ago, it’s nice to know that the time Joe and I spent chasing all the talk, wasn’t in vain. The fact is, True North was close to bringing the NHL back to Winnipeg, despite the protests of the major media. And, in the end, our first instinct, the Atlanta Thrashers, turned out to be correct. At least, it became correct on May 31, 2011.

I now feel I can look back on what I wrote at www.citifm.ca and rest secure in the knowledge that we were right — and so too, were the hockey fans of Winnipeg.

 

 

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Lots Going On. Some Good, Some Bad and Some, well you know…

Posted on June 12, 2011 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Another week in Toyland and another week of good, bad, and very, very ugly.

THE GOOD

1) On the good side, there was Ben Dartnell. As a young kid, Ben was a Winnipeg Goldeyes bat boy who used to play catch at Shaw Park (old Canwest Park) with anyone who happened to have a glove. He was a great kid who always seemed to be better than the other youngsters  his age.

This week, Ben Dartnell was selected in the 34th round (1,042 overall) by the Boston Red Sox on Day 3, of the Major League Baseball Amateur Draft. A 6-foot-3, 210-pound lefthanded throwing fireballer out of Vauxhall Baseball Academy in Alberta, Dartnell has been a Red Sox fan all his life.

“This is a kid who owned Red Sox underwear,” said his dad, Goldeyes director of security, Paul Dartnell.

“I can’t complain,” young Ben said via Facebook. “I’m part of Red Sox Nation!”

It doesn’t get a lot better than that.

2) According to Forbes Magazine, this past week NHL commissioner Gary Bettman told Research in Motion founder, Jim Balsillie, he could still acquire an NHL team as long as he “didn’t create any more bad publicity for the league.”

Interesting comment considering that very few people have created more bad publicity for the NHL than Gary Bettman.

In fairness, however, that’s a big turnabout for Bettman who refused to allow Balsillie to buy the Phoenix Coyotes out of bankruptcy. Now, it’s apparent that with the instant success of the Winnipeg franchise that maybe Balsillie could bail the NHL out of that mess it has created in Phoenix.

The fact that another Canadian-based NHL team could be on the horizon makes Bettman’s reluctant kind-of-apology to Balsillie intriguing.

3) On Saturday,  the Winnipeg Blue Bombers held a day of training camp at Brandon’s Vincent Massey High School. Practice ran from 11:30 to 1:30 and autographs followed soon after the workout.

For no profound reason, that’s just good.

4) Ichiro. Watched him play against Detroit this week. Ichiro is good.

5) Nyjer Morgan. Because the guy is certifiably wonderful. Watch him here: http://ca.deadspin.com/5810810/the-week-in-deadspin?skyline=true&s=i

THE BAD

1) The Dallas Mavericks defeated the Miami Heat 112-103 in Game 5 of the NBA Finals.

The Mavericks had another big run to the finish. This time they outscored the Heat 15-3 down the stretch. Dirk Nowitzki led Dallas with 29 points, but the dagger was a long three by Jason Terry, over a lazy LeBron James, with 20 seconds left. The Mavs shot 56.5 per cent from the field, 68 per-cent, 13-of-19, from three-point range. LeBron had a triple double, 17 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists but only two points in the fourth quarter.

The Mavs lead the Heat 3-2 heading back to Miami for Games 6 and 7. Miami can still win this championship and LeBron can win the first of all those championships he vowed to win when he decided to “take my talents to South Beach.”

But here’s what can make this still fluid situation bad: the Heat do proceed to lose the series. This was a team that celebrated its 2011 championship BEFORE it held its first shoot-around. It’s as if the Heat are supposed to win.

They aren’t. And if they don’t, the entire season was a failure and the stupid TV show last summer looks even more outrageous.

2) The reports of an “imminent (there’s that word again)” deal to end the NFL lockout was apparently premature. The Eagle-Tribune of Lowell, Mass., reported that the players and owners were close to a deal to end the work stoppage but spokesmen for both the players and owners said otherwise.

NFLPA spokesman George Atallah posted this 54-character comment on his Twitter account: “There’s a report that the lockout is over. Umm…no.”

It’s bad that the lockout isn’t over. It’s good, however, that there is at least some discussion about ending it.

3) So we’re told LeBron and Dwyane made a snotty remark about Dirk Nowitzki’s case of the flu this week and while Dirk seemed a little hurt by it, the American media blew right up.

“I just thought it was a little childish, a little ignorant,” Dirk said. “I’ve been in this league for 13 years, I’ve never faked an injury or an illness before, but it happened.”

To that, Wade’s response was as follows: “First of all, it wasn’t fake coughing. I actually did cough. And with the cameras being right there, we made a joke out of it because we knew you guys were going to blow it up. You did exactly what we knew. We never said Dirk’s name. I think he’s not the only one in the world who can get sick or have a cough. We just had fun with the cameras being right in our face about the blowup of the incident, and it held to be true. You blew it up.”

No matter who is right or wrong — the two Heatles or the U.S. media — the whole stupid little joke was just bad.

THE UGLY

1) The track at Belmont Park on Saturday.

2) LeBron’s shot … on both Tuesday and Thursday.

3) Colby Lewis’ fastball against Detroit on Monday and Minnesota on Saturday.

4) Roberto Luongo on Monday and Wednesday in Boston.

5) Shane Carwin’s face on Saturday night.

 

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The NHL Returns to Winnipeg.

Posted on May 31, 2011 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

I spent lunch hour at the Forks yesterday and it was invigorating. Hundreds of people converged on Winnipeg’s meeting place to celebrate the return of the NHL to Winnipeg.

Perhaps I should make that a little clearer: “Return of the Jets.” Some kids who were barely out of diapers when the Jets played their last game in 1996 were sporting Jets jerseys at the Forks yesterday. Although it’s likely this team will not be the Jets — we’ve heard Manitoba Somethings, maybe Falcons or Polar Bears –it’s pretty definite now that 75-80 per cent of Winnipeg hockey fans WANT the team be the Winnipeg Jets.

But yesterday, the name argument took a back seat to the simple realization that the National Hockey League would once again have Winnipeg as a member.

Mark Chipman, David Thomson, Jim Ludlow and, yes, Gary Bettman (looking like a guy who just got punched him the stomach) made it official. The National Hockey League has indeed, returned to Winnipeg.

At a news conference yesterday at the MTS Centre, True North Sports and Entertainment announced that it had completed a deal to purchase the Atlanta Thrashers and the team would begin play this fall at Winnipeg’s downtown arena. Through it all you got the feeling Bettman did NOT want this to happen. His Southern U.S. experiment has started to crumble and his body language suggested he was pained by the fact he had to move a team out of the seventh-largest TV market in the United States and into a city of 700,000 on the Canadian prairie.

There was some talk that if Winnipeg’s owners didn’t sell 13,000 season tickets by June 21, there was a chance the NHL’s board of governors would not allow the team to move to Winnipeg, but that just seemed outrageous. Yesterday, Chipman said that True North had signed off on a deal to purchase the team from the Atlanta Spirit Group and while Winnipeggers were partying at the Forks, the rich guys who own ASG were doing cartwheels in their executive offices, having dumped the Thrashers, a team that has allegedly lost $130 million in five years. One suspects those guys aren’t about to take the team back so if True North doesn’t sell 13,000 season tickets, what’s the NHL going to do? Move the team to Portage? Winnipeg is the ONLY alternative to Atlanta and I’m sure that with the use of some brilliant legal term there was a “no give-backsies clause” in the final sales contract.

Meanwhile, it appears Moose GM Craig Heisinger will play an important role with Winnipeg’s new franchise and last night Atlanta’s president Don Waddell said he would not accompany the team to Winnipeg. Head coach Craig Ramsey was in Winnipeg yesterday and will likely keep his job.

And just to make everyone happy, Bettman said yesterday, if the new owners decide they want to use the Jets name, the NHL will give it to them.

The NHL is coming back to the ‘Peg. Just as we wrote last year, it was the Atlanta Thrashers, not the Phoenix Coyotes who wound up moving to River City.

It made for a very nice day. Of course, so did getting my picture taken with Ab McDonald, Bill Lesuk and Thomas Steen.

 

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Thrashers Still Not in Winnipeg. So?

Posted on May 28, 2011 by Scott Taylor| 2 Comments

It would appear that the National Hockey League’s cranky old owners are doing everything they possibly can to delay the sale and move of the Atlanta Thrashers to Winnipeg.

It’s not that there is much the league can do. At worst, it can hold up the deal to sell the Thrashers to True North Sports and Entertainment and make it more difficult to sell tickets and corporate sponsorships in Winnipeg.

After all, the Atlanta deal isn’t the Phoenix deal. In Phoenix, the league owns the team and essentially all the revenue from the arena. Any legitimate owner would have that same luxury. In Atlanta, an owner would own the team and not the arena and therefore would not have the ability to raise revenues from the building outside of hockey nights. It’s a bad business model and the NHL knows it. In Winnipeg, True North has the rights to the building and the hockey team and all the revenues. This deal and move is as much about real estate as it is about ice hockey.

However, while Gary Bettman and his bosses continue to claim that the Thrashers-to-Winnipeg deal is not done, there is reason to believe that the main portion of the sale agreement is completed and that the rest is just legal-eze. After all, Atlanta Spirit Group, the current owners cutting the deal to sell to Winnipeg said earlier this week that the deal “is 80 per cent done.”

More than a week ago, Toronto’s Globe and Mail, the newspaper owned by David Thomson, the major financier of the deal to buy the Thrashers and move them to Winnipeg, announced that the deal was done and the announcement would be made on Tuesday, May 24.

The story was written by Stephen Brunt, one of the country’s finest sportswriters and columnists, but also a gentleman who breaks very few stories. In fact, if Brunt breaks a story, one figures that it’s broken. Period. He’s not the kind of guy who turns up two days later and apologizes for being wrong. And to Brunt’s credit, he went on radio shows right across Canada to stand by his scoop.

Now, here we are, four days after the announcement was supposed to have been made and still… insert sound of crickets chirping here. In fact, True North Sports and Entertainment has said without hesitation that the deal is not done and there will definitely be no announcement before NEXT Tuesday.

However, if one studies Brunt’s story, the insider leaks from Atlanta and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman’s almost angry response to anyone who suggests, “the deal is done,” it’s clear that the buyers and sellers have a deal, but the NHL itself is doing everything it can to delay the sale in an effort to (a) find a local owner in Atlanta immediately(?) or (b) hold up the move until the beginning of the 2012-13 season (?) or what?

What, could mean the NHL’s by-laws. Thrashers fans in Atlanta (yes, there are some) dug up the following from the league’s own constitution and posted it on SB Nation Atlanta:

36.1: Investigation

(a) Any Member Club seeking consent for a transfer of its franchise and club to a different city or borough in accordance with Section 4.2 of the Constitution, shall file a written application for such consent with the Commissioner of the League.

(b) Such applications shall be filed no later than January 1st of the year prior to the year in which it is proposed the Club will commence its first season in the new location, unless a majority of the Member Clubs consents to a later filing date.

(c) The application shall include a statement as to why the applicant seeks such transfer. It shall also include a statement of reasons why the applicant believes consent to the proposed transfer should be given and shall be accompanied by such documentation as the applicant deems appropriate, in light of the provisions of this By-Law Section 36 and Section 42 of the Constitution.

The aforementioned could be a big reason why many American owners have no desire to see the Thrashers go anywhere in 2011-12. They want more answers.

And that’s probably why Commissioner Gary Bettman went on his radio show on Friday and ripped anyone who believes the Thrashers are moving. That would include me, who believes the Thrashers deal has been in the works for more than a year and is so close to done, it’s done.

“Maybe at some point there will be a deal, maybe there will never be a deal,” Bettman said during the NHL Hour With Commissioner Gary Bettman on NHL Radio. “But there isn’t one now.”

Bettman claimed there is no deal yet. and that the owners in Atlanta were only “exploring their options,” (that’s a festering pile of excrement).

“If the team gets sold, and if the team gets moved, then there will be a press conference,” Bettman told his radio listeners. “If you keep saying it enough, you might ultimately be right. But the level of accountability, in terms of the willingness to just put anything out there in terms of a news story, is really just ridiculous.”

Bettman took calls from fans on Friday’s show and when a fan in Atlanta asked him about the move, the commissioner said that the team still hadn’t gone anywhere (oh, how observant).

“Well nobody has decided to do anything yet,” Bettman said. “There isn’t a deal. If there is a deal, it has to go through the usual processes and procedures that we have. But the issue, if there’s a problem that’s unsolvable, despite the grass roots hockey, despite all of the corporate headquarters, is there somebody, if it gets to this point where the current owners don’t want to own it anymore, is there somebody who wants to own this franchise in Atlanta?

“The threshold has always been for us, when we’ve had to move a franchise, (nobody wanted) to own the team there anymore. It would be one of those head scratchers where you say, ‘Look at all of this great corporate opportunity, look at all of this grass roots hockey, why doesn’t somebody want to own a team here?’ And that would be a difficult, but unfortunate situation to be dealing with if it has reached, or does reach that point.”

It’s getting late. Every day that the deal is not done is another day the NHL’s board of governors have to debate the legality of this move and vote not to allow it. It’s also another day that True North loses to sell tickets and corporate sponsorships.

One senses this deal has been “done” for some time, but there are, apparently, some things in the way. Those things relate directly to the NHL’s concern about moving a team from the seventh-largest TV market in the United States to a city of 700,000 in the middle of the prairie. They relate directly to the NHL’s concern that Winnipeg can be reached from only two cities in the United States on a regular airline schedule – Minneapolis and Chicago. They relate directly to the fact Winnipeg does not have a five-star hotel for teams to bunk in. They relate directly to the fact Winnipeg would have the smallest arena in the NHL — by a long shot. They relate directly to the fact that if Winnipeg sold out every ticket for every single game the team would be 24th or 25th in league attendance. They relate to the fact that they would be moving a team from a city of six million to a city of 700,000 and from a city that has already lost an NHL team to another city, in a different country, that has already lost an NHL team.

The owners are nervous about all of this and Gary Bettman just happens to be the angry face of that nervousness.

 

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AJC Gets Scoop. Everyone Else Watches.

Posted on May 13, 2011 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

It was exactly 15 months ago that I wrote on www.92citifm.ca that the Atlanta Thrashers was the NHL team likely to move to Winnipeg if any NHL team ever moved to Winnipeg.

The reasoning was simple. For one thing, anyone who had spent any time around the MTS Centre knew that True North Sports and Entertainment had asked the folks in Atlanta about the availability of their hockey team. At least, that’s what more than a dozen True North employees were telling people. For another, the Thrashers had a problem that other teams didn’t.

Unlike the Phoenix Coyotes who would own the building in which they played and would, as a result, generate and collect all the revenues from that building — just like the Florida Panthers, Tampa Bay Lightning, Nashville Predators and Columbus Blue Jackets — the Thrashers would be an orphan if the current owners, Atlanta Spirit Group, ever sold them to another local owner. In other words, the Atlanta Spirit Group would still own Phillips Arena and the Atlanta Hawks but someone else would own the Thrashers and would likely have to pay rent to the ASG folks just to use the building.

That doesn’t work. Period.

So if the Thrashers were going to be sold, they’d have to be sold to somebody who was going to take them away from Atlanta — to a building that was available and was owned by the buyer.

That’s why Winnipeg made sense in February of 2010 and it makes sense now. And it’s why the Phoenix Coyotes were NEVER moving back to Winnipeg.

When the Atlanta Journal-Constitution got assistant NHL commissioner Bill Daly on tape, saying there was no guarantee that the Thrashers would still be in Atlanta in 2011, one can understand why. It would be virtually impossible to own the Thrashers on your own and pay rent, — or even get free rent, but no revenues — from a building that belongs to somebody else.

The Thrashers are very likely to move. And it’s also likely that Winnipeg is the only reasonable destination.

However, before anything happens, the NHL will make certain that it has exhausted every possible scenario in an effort to keep the team in Atlanta. Even if there is no guarantee that Atlanta has a legitimate future as a home to an NHL team.

* * *

STATEMENT FROM THE COMMISSIONER

Commissioner Gary Bettman made the following statement on his radio show this week:

“I think everybody needs to take a step back because I think there’s been a fair amount of speculation, supposition and even hysteria in the media, which has been largely fabricated,” Bettman said, according to NHL.com. “I wish I had a dollar for all of the reports a month ago that said the Coyotes were definitely moving, and it was going to happen in a matter of days.

“I mean, people who are reporting on this stuff are simply making it up, and that’s unfortunate for our fans. It’s unfortunate for the fans who have a club they don’t want to lose, and it’s unfortunate for building up expectations in other places.”

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A Week in the Trenches

Posted on April 30, 2011 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

It is Saturday night, April 30 at 6:40 p.m. CST. Neither the Phoenix Coyotes nor the Atlanta Thrashers have moved to Winnipeg yet. We provide this is a public service considering that we were told on national television on March 5, that the Coyotes move to Winnipeg was “imminent.”

The length of “imminent” is now eight weeks. Just for those who were wondering why their dictionary definition of imminent (which is: “likely to occur at any moment.”) is so incorrect.

That’s not to suggest that either team — or both teams plus three or four others — won’t be moving to Winnipeg. It’s just that “imminent” is now eight weeks in length. Who knew?

Here’s another week in the trenches:

1) LeBron James told ESPN this week that he “didn’t quit” on the Cleveland Cavaliers last year. Like “imminent,” I guess it’s how you define the word “quit.”

2) While watching the NFL draft this week, I really thought that maybe, just maybe the greedy owners would come to their senses, open their facilities and lift the lockout voluntarily. They would still make grossly huge profits on their license-to-print-money franchises if they simply continued to do business with last year’s CBA.

However, the 8th Circuit Court in St. Louis, a court made up of two Republicans and one Democrat, voted 2-1 to give the owners their lockout back. That’s what I love about Republicans. If greedy rich people need more money, they can always count on Republicans.

The NFL owners, remember, are the same people who threaten to move your favorite team if you don’t build them new stadiums with taxpayers’ money. Then they ask for as much money as possible in a clawback from the bottom guys on the players’ totem pole, guys who barely have enough money at the end of their short careers to pay their medical bills. What they do to peanut vendors, cabbies, beer hawkers, small businessmen and football fans in general is a whole different argument.

NFL owners are people that you always hope have nice dark spots in hell reserved for them.

3) On Fox News this week, Texas Tech football coach Tommy Tuberville criticized U.S. president Barack Obama for having shown the world his birth certificate three years ago.

“I don’t know why he wouldn’t just step up and say, you know, ‘Here it is.’ Obviously there’s gotta be something on there that he doesn’t want anybody to see,” said Tuberville, a man who is so stupid, he shouldn’t be allowed to work at a major university. Obama released his long form birth certificate three years ago.

Sadly, Tuberville is another one of those bat-shit crazy birthers who simply can’t handle the fact that there is an African-American person in the White House.

Why a black football player would ever play at Texas Tech is a mystery to me. Then again, why a person with a discernible IQ would play at Texas Tech is a mystery.

4) I loved No 1 pick Cam Newton’s first comment after he was selected by the Carolina Panthers No. 1 in the NFL draft this week.

“Everybody is not just going to stop and say, ‘That’s Cam, the No. 1 pick, and we can leave him alone,’ ” Newton said of his critics, as he met the press after his selection ”If anything, the floodgates have officially opened.”

Poor kid. He’s 21, he’s a great football player and the American media will never let him alone. There will be more garbage fabricated by the media about Newton over the next decade (because always remember, that’s what the media does, fabricates things) than any human on the planet. Even Barack Obama.

5) On Streetz 104.7 FM in Winnipeg on Friday morning, I picked Georges St. Pierre to beat Jake Shields and Jose Aldo to beat Mark Hominick at UFC 129 in Toronto tonight.

We’re only a few hours away from the Hominick fight and I’ll stick with both predictions.

 

 

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The Coyotes Deal is Really This Crazy.

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

I have a friend who wants to sell his MacPro. It’s a five-year-old $2,000 computer that he has up for sale for $800. His roommate, a friend and a person he likes, has offered him the $800, because he wants to keep the computer in the apartment they share, but instead of just writing him a cheque, the roommate wants my friend to negotiate with his girlfriend.

Seems the roommate likes the computer, but doesn’t believe it will last more than a year (it is, after all, five years old) and so he’s talked his girlfriend into buying it for him. Trouble is, the girlfriend’s pals have been trying to convince her not to fork over the money for some guy she dates, so she’s been hesitant.

My friend told his roommate to just get him $800 and he can have the computer, but the roommate is adamant that the girlfriend is going to pay for it, even though my friend has been waiting for a few months for the two deadbeats to come up with the dough. Now, the roommate doesn’t even want to talk to my friend about it.  He wants my friend to deal with his girlfriend.

Meanwhile, my friend has an offer from a  complete stranger who is prepared to take the laptop off his hands for $800 cash. He’ll come by the house, pay cash and pick it up tomorrow.

Sound familiar?

The NHL should just tell the two deadbeats, Glendale and Matthew Hulsizer to bugger off and let the complete stranger buy the Coyotes and take them anywhere he wants to take them.

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