Tag Archives: RIM

In Phoenix, the Only Surprise is When There is Not a Surprise

Posted on August 26, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

When it comes to the National Hockey League in Phoenix, there is a surprise every day.

Which means, of course, that when it comes to the fate of the bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes, nothing should surprise anyone.

Not even more examples of insanity, panic and sheer desperation.

On Tuesday, right after Jerry Reinsdorf dropped his bid to purchase the Coyotes and keep the team in the desert (because he’s a smart businessman and he never really seemed all that interested in buying them anyway), the National Hockey League its-own-self filed a bid to buy the team out of bankruptcy, obviously hoping to sell it later.

The league is very nervous. When Reinsdorf pulled the plug, it left only Ice Edge, a group that wants to play Coyotes games in places such as Halifax and Saskatoon (Do we hear Plum Coulee? How about Iqaaluit?) and Jim (RIM) Balsillie the Canadian billionaire the NHL hates s-o-o-o-o much, who wants to buy the Desert Dogs and move them to Hamilton, Ont.

In other words, Balsillie became the only legitimate choice for bankruptcy judge Redfield T. Baum when Reinsdorf pulled out and, to be quite frank, the RIM CEO is, and always has been, the only real person interested in paying an amount of money (in this case more than $212 milllion) to buy the Coyotes and pay off the creditors.

Of course, he wants to move the team to Hamilton, Ont., and the NHL sure doesn’t want that.

So the league has decided to make an offer itself, an offer to buy one of its own franchises, and then try to sell it to some unsuspecting sucker willing to piss away all is wealth on a bad franchise in a lousy hockey market.

That takes nerve, you know.

The judge might just want to sell it back to the NHL if only to see if those grifters can find another wealthy person stupid enough to own a hockey team in a desert. Hey, they already found Richard Burke, Steven Gluckstern, Steve Ellman and Jerry Moyes.

There must be more crazy rich people out there?

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Bettman Uses Winnipeg as a Pawn in His Nasty Fight With Balsillie.

Posted on May 17, 2009 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment

You knew the word “Winnipeg” had to turn up at some point.

National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman, in his ugly court battle with RIM CEO Jim Balsillie, a wealthy entrepreneur who wants to move the Phoenix Coyotes to Hamilton, filed an affidavit with the court in Phoenix suggesting the NHL would rather have a American-based team move to Winnipeg than Southern Ontario.

The news arrived in Canada on TSN yesterday and not long after I received a telephone call from Winnipeg mayor, Sam Katz.

“What do you think of Mr. Bettman’s proclamation?” the Mayor asked.

“I think it’s disingenuous,” I replied. “I think Bettman will use anything he can to win the war with Balsillie and make himself look good. I think he’s said something to make it seem like he cares about the NHL in Canada, but he doesn’t, and he’s just being the same guy who lied about ‘not being in control of the Coyotes’ for six months when he actually was in control.” 

Mayor Sam didn’t seem happy.

“All this is going to do is cause more grief and unnecessary heartache,” Katz said. “I think it would be great to have a team back, but we don’t have anyone with deep enough pockets to buy the team and then operate it in Winnipeg. And until we find an owner, there is no sense talking about it.”

The mayor, as usual, is absolutely right. We did have someone who was rich enough and smart enough to own a team, but Izzy Asper has passed on and that leaves no one.

Although some people would love to call the MTS Centre, “NHL-suitable,” it’s too small, the seats are too uncomfortable for the prices that would have to be charged, the press box is too small, there aren’t enough suites, parking revenues are a problem and no one is sure about the value (if any) of television revenue or corporate support. The fans are there, nobody doubts that, but what price will they pay to sit in an undersized arena is anyone’s guess.

An NHL team in Winnipeg would lose money, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. That’s because it’s very unlikely a team in Winnipeg would lose as much money as the teams are already losing in Florida, Atlanta, Tampa, Nashville, Long Island and Phoenix.

The return of the NHL to Winnipeg would be the right move by the NHL, but we all know the NHL isn’t full of “right moves” (What the hell IS Versus and why is there a team in Fort Lauderdale?). 

In the meantime, it’s pretty unfair to use this community as a pawn in an ongoing battle with an honest, well-meaning billionaire who wants to put a team in Hamilton.

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Coyotes File for Bankruptcy: Hate to Say We Told You So, But….

Posted on May 5, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

We’ve been reporting the losses for 13 years. Today, our expectations finally came true. The Phoenix Coyotes have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

By our calculations — with the help of reports by the Arizona Republic — we believe the Coyotes have lost more than $400 million since being yanked out of Winnipeg and shipped to the desert by NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman in 1996.

What we expected to happen four or five years ago, ultimately took 13 seasons and three different ownership groups to come to pass. Because of problems created by his struggling core business, trucking-magnate Jerry Moyes could no longer pick up this franchise’s massive losses. Today, the inevitable became official. The Coyotes are bankrupt.

It’s not the end of the world, of course, The Pittsburgh Penguins have filed for bankruptcy twice. This time, however, moving the franchise might be the only alternative. 

That’s because, almost immediately upon the announcement of the filing, it became apparent that the Coyotes had actually asked RIM CEO and proud Canadian billionaire, Jim Balsillie to make an offer for the team.

Balsillie has been asked to provide “debtor-in-possession” financing. Essentially that means Balsillie provides the necessary funds tp allow the team to keep operating while the bankruptcy process continues. According to our insiders in Phoenix, Balsillie’s offer is for $216.5 million and will pay off all the current creditors. There is $35 million owed to the NHL, about $80 million to SOF Investments LLC and about $97.8 million to a long list of unsecured creditors.

If Balsillie’s offer is accepted, he intends to move the team to Southern Ontario.

“The current team ownership asked that I table an offer to purchase the Coyotes and significant discussions resulted in an offer that is in the best interests of the franchise, the NHL, and the great hockey fans of Canada and Southern Ontario,” Balsillie said in a written statement.

“I am excited to move closer to bringing an NHL franchise to what I believe is one of the best un-served hockey markets in the world, Southern Ontario. A market with devoted hockey fans, a rich hockey history, a growing and diversified economy and a population of more than 7 million people.”

Naturally, the NHL wants no part of that move, but the league might not have any alternative this time. The league is dying in the southern U.S. and it’s unlikely that the Coyotes are the only team suffering financial stress.

Last night, NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly issued the following statement:

“We have just become aware of today’s Bankruptcy Court filing purportedly made on behalf of the Phoenix Coyotes. We are investigating the circumstances surrounding the petition, including the propriety of its filing.  We have removed Jerry Moyes from all positions of authority to act for or on behalf of the Club.  The League will appear and proceed before the Bankruptcy Court in the best interests of all of the Club’s constituencies, including its fans in Arizona and the League’s 29 other Member Clubs.” 

The Jets should NEVER have been moved to the Arizona desert in the first place. The business failure of Gary Bettman’s commissionership is becoming more apparent every day. 

(For more information on the move of the Winnipeg Jets to Phoenix, see my book, Winnipeg Jets: A Celebration of Professional Hockey in Winnipeg, available at chapters.ca or winnipegmen.com)

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Don’t believe stories based on “un-named sources”

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Now that just about everyone in the National Hockey League has denied that anyone at any level of the game has ever discussed, even informally, the prospect of having two NHL teams at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, it might be time to remind ourselves that you can’t believe everything you read.

Especially if the premise of the story comes with “Un-named Sources.”

 

The cornerstone of the Globe and Mail story (and don’t worry, when we originally read the story on the news at 92-CITI-FM last week, as always, we went out of our way to credit the Globe for their fine reporting), Joe Aiello and I discussed the fact that we couldn’t believe that the NHL would really, truly consider putting another team in Toronto.

 

Both of us contended that if RIM’s Jim Balsillie — the Blackberry inventor who would very much like to buy a chunk of any NHL team and move it to Ontario — actually did realize his dream, his best bet would be to build an arena on the 401 near Kitchener and draw from a huge fan base in Kitchener, Waterloo, Guelph, Cambridge, Brantford, Brampton, Georgetown, London, Fergus, St. Thomas, St. Mary’s Stratford etc., etc. 

 

But a second team in Toronto? Who said that?

 

Evidently, nobody.

 

Commissioner Gary Bettman immediately denied the story, but hey, most Canadian hockey fans tend not to believe Bettman at the best of times. However, when everyone from MLSE’s Richard Peddie to the general managers of just about every team in the NHL denied EVER having even suggested or heard a suggestion that the league might put a second team — an expansion team no less — into Toronto’s ACC, it was the embarrassing end for a newspaper reporter’s best friend, ol’ Un-named Sources.

 

Ultimately, this story was a lot like most NHL trade rumours you hear (or Hockey Night in Canada‘s made-up yarn that Tampa owner Len Barrie went into the Lightning dressing room and started writing up plays on a chalkboard). Until the trade deadline rolls around and GMs actually talk publicly about potential deals, none of those rumours are true. They are all based on “un-named sources,” which means they were probably made up over copious barley sandwiches.

 

So here’s a tip, don’t believe any story based on “un-named sources.” Especially, when it comes to our favourite rumour (one that always seems to be full of Un-named Sources): The Return of the Jets.

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Some things to think about…

Posted on September 29, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Comments Off

Three things to think about as the U.S. economy craters:

 

(1) This could be the biggest “no surprise there” announcement in the NHL this season. Monday, the Chicago Blackhawks put former Winnipeg Jets goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin on waivers.

Khabibulin is entering the final season of a four-year $27-million contract, but this past off-season, the Blackhawks signed free agent goalie Cristobal Huet to a four-year $22.5-million contract, giving the Hawks two No. 1 goaltenders. One had to go and yesterday it was Khabby.

He was a great goaltender for a long time, but in the end, his success priced him out of the market.

 

(2) At the start of this season, the St. Louis Rams were convinced a once-successful NFL assistant coach named Scott Linehan would make a great head coach. Sadly, Linehan wasn’t the answer to the Rams’ problems.

 

So on Monday, Rams ownership admitted its mistake and fired Linehan after four consecutive lopsided losses to open the season. Now, if someone can just convince the Minnesota Vikings that Brad Childress should go…

 

(3) And Canadian Jim Balsillie, founder of Reasearch in Motion, the inventor of the Blackberry (no, it wasn’t John McCain) is apparently once again close to finalizing a deal to purchase the NHL’s Nashville Predators.

 

Last year, the NHL would be dead set against a Canadian billionaire buying a U.S.-based franchise if there was even any thought that the wealthy Canuck might move the team to Canada. 

 

Now, with the U.S. economy in deep, deep trouble, there is a good chance that the NHL brass will allow teams to return to a country with a less-volatile, more stable economic future. 

 

Frankly, if I owned Nashville, Phoenix (a failed franchise that returned to Winnipeg for a pre-season game in order to guarantee a better gate), Atlanta, Florida, the Islanders or Washington, I’d give serious thought to moving to a country that actually likes hockey enough to pay the NHL’s grossly inflated ticket prices.

 

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