Tag Archives: steven gluckstern

Bettman Working On His Revisionist View of Hockey History As Canada Becomes His Final Frontier.

Posted on October 18, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

TAMPA — This week, Gary Bettman started his “Dick Cheney Tour.” It’s a simple format. You find people in the media who won’t challenge your assertions and then you go out and change history.

This past week, Bettman sat down with Toronto-based Sun Media and got all warm and fuzzy about his relationship with Canadian hockey markets. In a piece entitled: Bettman Asks Canada to Be Patient, the commissioner of the National Hockey League suggested he had a great track record “in respect to the Canadian franchises.”

“For anyone that knows my record in respect to the Canadian franchises, that’s simply not true (that he tried to keep Jim Balsillie out of Hamilton simply because he disliked teams in Canada),” Bettman told the Sun. “I can’t satisfy those who believe our intentions were other than straightforward of ensuring NHL rules and procedure. That’s what this was about.”

Really? What rules? And at what cost?

When Bettman forced the Jets out of Winnipeg in 1996, he convinced the two hockey-ignorant rich guys who bought the franchise that if they couldn’t cut a deal with the Target Center in Minneapolis, they should take the team to a basketball gym in downtown Phoenix, Ariz.

Dr. Richard Burke and his partner Steven Gluckstern lost a fortune on the Coyotes (mostly because of the restricted view arena they were forced to play in) and soon sold the team to Steve Ellman and Jerry Moyes who lost millions more. Since 2004, the Coyotes have lost $389 million and that doesn’t count this year. Currently, the Coyotes are on pace to lose approximately $140 million on operations. Especially after virtually giving away tickets to the season home opener, then drawing announced crowds of 6,899 and 9,162 to their next two games.

So in order to “uphold the rules” of the NHL, Bettman is going to ask the other 29 franchises to find another $140 million (at least) to cover the losses of a team owned by the league (as long as Judge Redfield T. Baum allows the NHL to ultimately purchase the Coyotes for about $140 million out of bankruptcy). Nice rules.

Trouble is, Bettman has always found ways to bend his own rules. For those who remember the loss of the Jets, owner Barry Shenkarow proposed a “group ownership” position, in which a number of Winnipeg business people would own an equal share of the team. Bettman said, “No,” that the NHL’s governors wanted to deal with only one prominent person in each market, a person who could make financial decisions at the drop of a hat.

Bettman put a halt to the group ownership plan in Winnipeg, adding more fuel to the team’s demise, but a few years later he went ahead and allowed it in Edmonton, since it was the only way to save the Oilers. In essence Bettman made up the rules as he went along: First, to take a team out of Winnipeg and put it in Phoenix and then, to save a team in Edmonton. Some Canadian markets he likes, others he doesn’t. Rules be damned.

So if Gary Bettman simply asks Canada to be patient, I wouldn’t believe him. However, if he told the truth (remember, this is the guy who said the league was NOT funding the Coyotes last year and then, in court, was forced to tell the truth) and admitted that he had to come back to Canada because he had no other alternative in the recession-crippled United States, I’d probably listen to that.

Remember, the six Canadian franchises make up 33 per cent of the league’s revenues. Despite what Bettman says or thinks, he’s going to have to come back to Canada eventually.

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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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Could the Dominoes Start Falling?

Posted on June 6, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

There is a fear among North America’s major sports leagues. It’s a fear we’ve discussed before at rivercitysportsblog.com. If Gary Battman and the National Hockey League lose in court this month and if the Phoenix Coyotes are allowed to re-locate to Hamilton, Ont., the dominoes will start to fall.

And every other major sports league knows it.

For if the Coyotes’ owner, Jerry Moyes, is allowed to sell his team to the highest bidder in order for that bidder to move the franchise without the permission of the league, struggling franchises all over pro sports will just get in line.

In hockey, that could mean the Islanders, Florida, Tampa, Atlanta, Nashville, Columbus or even Dallas.

And that’s why the NBA, Major League Baseball and the NFL filed a joint court document on Friday warning that by allowing Moyes to do what’s right — get the most money possible for his asset in order to pay off the debts on a failed business — “it has the potential to undermine the business of professional hockey and other major league sports.”

Officially, the three other leagues joined in an “amici curiae” brief in U.S. Bankruptcy Court supporting, “the NHL’s right to determine where a team is located and who owns it.” But if Moyes has his ownership stripped, his ability to do with his business what he feels he must and to receive a $212.5 million offer instead of an alleged $130 million offer from a very reluctant suitor (there is still no reason to believe that the NHL has an actual buyer), then anyone who would enter into an agreement with the NHL’s cartel, is always in a position whereby he could lose every penny he’s ever had.

Just ask one of the men who purchased the Winnipeg Jets, Steven Gluckstern. Gluckstern is said to have lost half his personal fortune on ownership gambles with Phoenix and the Islanders. Hockey is a pretty questionable investment.

The judge in this case, Mr. Redfield Baum, set a deadline of midnight last night for the filing of all briefs in the distpute between the NHL and Moyes. Moyes wants to sell his team to RIM CEO and boring Canadian billionaire Jim Balsillie (Did you hear that speech in Winnipeg? ZZZZZZZZ!), who wants to buy the bankrupt Coyotes (although the NHL says they aren’t bankrupt) for US$212.5 million and move them to Hamilton.

Now, according to tsn.ca, the NHL has blamed the Coyotes’ financial problems on a lack of success on the ice and believes that with a new lease agreement and solid management a franchise in Arizona still could be successful. If that’s true, why would ANYONE want to be involved with the NHL?

The National Hockey League has said — legally and on the record, no less — that one of it’s most popular spokespersons, Wayne Gretzky, is an incompetent boob who has driven one of its precious franchises into bankruptcy. It’s also claimed that President Doug Moss and a handful of GMs are idiots who couldn’t run a one-car funeral.

And into all of that, Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz told our Shaw Channel 9 TV audience, between innings of a Winnipeg Goldeyes-Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks game on Friday night, that it would be possible to have the NHL return to Winnipeg in “two-to-five years.”

“It’s possible,” Katz said, “but I believe it isn’t imminent, it’s down the road.”

When asked, “How far down the road?” Katz repsonded, “I believe it’s possible that it could happen in between two and five years.

“It would take an available team (and there will be available teams if Phoenix is allowed to move), and an owner who wants to risk the losses to bring a team here, plus the involvement of Mark Chipman and the people who own the MTS Centre. It’s complicated and it will be a difficult negotiation, but it’s possible.”

If Winnipeg gets a team, I wonder who would want to run it? If he’s working for Gary Bettman and the current cartel, he’d better have a thick skin. After all, these guys aren’t afraid to blame Wayne Gretzky for their problems — and then publicly call the Great One an idiot.

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Fraud and Lies Beget Fraud and Lies

Posted on May 18, 2009 by Scott Taylor| 2 Comments

Fraud and lies. That’s the NHL way. And it just never stops.

Every hockey fan with a brain bigger than a walnut knows that lying is a way of life in the NHL, but commissioner Gary Bettman, a man the Winnipeg Sun called a “rat-weasel” in a headline on Sunday, would sure like everyone to think differently.

According to a court filing from Jerry Moyes, the man on the hook for the monstrous debts of the Phoenix Coyotes, the people for whom he ran the Phoenix franchise seem to lie for fun: “The National Hockey League acted fraudulently in its bid to take control of the Phoenix Coyotes,” Moyes claimed this past week. “And the NHL’s current position proves the fraudulent inducement claim.”

Funny how the word fraud always comes up in any court filing involving Bettman’s NHL.

In fact, we pointed out earlier here at rivercitysportsblog.com that at least six of the NHL’s most prominent owners were convicted (or are in court facing charges) of fraud. To review:

1) When he took over as commissioner, one of his closest friends and supporters inside the league was Los Angeles Kings owner Bruce McNall. McNall went to jail for fraud.

2) Former Islanders owner John Spano was sentenced in January of 2000 to 71 months in federal prison for bank fraud.

3) Later in the Isles ownership history, long after former Coyotes owner Steven Gluckstern nearly went broke owning the franchise, Bettman brought in Charles Wang and Sanjay Kumar. Kumar is now serving a 12-year sentence for a multi-billion dollar fraud. 

4) Bettman also needed help after Buffalo Sabres owner Seymour Knox died in 1996, so he found cable TV magnate John Rigas. In 2002, while he was the Sabres owner, Rigas was convicted of, you guessed it, fraud. He’s still in prison.

5) Then came former Anaheim Ducks owner Henry Samueli. He’s a big time crook who, among other things, lied to the SEC about his role in a $2.2 billion stock-option scam. He’s currently doing his time. 

6) Then there was “Bootsie.” With the Nashville Predators in bankruptcy protection, Bettman refused to sell the team to Balsillie because Balsillie wanted to move it to Canada. So Bettman went out and found a wealthy venture capitalist named William (Bootsie) Del Biaggio III. It seemed like a good idea at the time, I guess, but it wasn’t long before Bootsie was facing fraud charges brought on by everybody from the SEC to Luc Robitaille to Joe Montana. Bootsie hasn’t gone to jail yet, but there are a lot of people who would like to see him in the crow bar hotel. Today, he faces a six year term. 

Meanwhile, Bettman’s pals have been saying Balsillie is “very brash” and “doesn’t want to play by the rules.” What rules? There are no rules. And if there are, Bettman will change them as he goes.

Don’t believe me? There are plenty of examples, including this current one:

Bettman claims Moyes handed over control of the Coyotes to the NHL last November in return for financing, and that a team of league officials has been running day to day operations ever since. However, just as Bettman himself claimed for six months, Moyes has now filed an affidavit saying that the league never had control of the team and “did not want control.”

Moyes added: “By taking a different position now, the league is trying to fraudulently take the Phoenix Coyotes franchise away from me.”

Moyes has argued from the start of this proceeding that NHL officials have made it clear since Day 1 that after the financing was arranged, in November of 2008, the league “did not plan to operate the club and that the arrangment didn’t change anything in terms of how the club was run.”

According to documents filed in court: “The league did not have day to day control, but merely received weekly financial updates.”

Meanwhile, Bettman lies with such ease, you’d think he was Dick Cheney.

On his Sirius XM Radio show, Bettman said, “Ripping a franchise out of one city in violation of League rules and procedures to put it somewhere else isn’t the way we do business. and comparisons to Quebec and Winnipeg aren’t valid, because we couldn’t find anybody who wanted to own the teams there.”

I don’t know about Quebec, but as it pertains to Winnipeg, that is an outright lie.

Winnipeg had an ownership group in place, but Bettman looked me right in the eye and claimed that group ownership was not permitted in the NHL. He wanted one owner, period. No groups.

Then, after he ripped the Jets out of Winnipeg and shipped them to Phoenix for the 13-year disaster, he allowed an ownership group in Edmonton. 

The truth and Gary Bettman are strangers.

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Things that make you go “Hmmmmm…”

Posted on May 4, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Stuff that’s interesting, crazy, muddled, odd or just downright frightening:

1) Everyone out here in the West is just thrilled that B.C. product Scott Richmond is doing so well with the Toronto Blue Jays this season. It’s a tribute to both Richmond’s determination and the Jays decision to take a big chance on a guy who came out of the independent Northern League.

But while, Richmond has gone 4-0 with a splendid, Cy Young-like 2.67 earned run average and a brilliant 1.22 WHIP,  those who remember Richmond in his final season in the Northern League, are shaking their heads in disbelief most nights.

He went 10-9 that season with the Edmonton Cracker-Cats with a 4.26 ERA. Not bad, not great. But he was pounded by the Winnipeg Goldeyes. In fact he went 1-3 with two no-decisions in six starts against Winnipeg . He gave up seven home runs all season, three to Winnipeg.

Obviously, you can reach the big leagues through the Northern League. However, Scott Richmond makes it appears as if the Northern League is a lot tougher than the bigs.

2) There there is this report, just out in New York City yesterday: New York Islanders owner Charles Wang has lost $283 million in the nine years since he purchased the franchise. 

We could have told him it was a bad investment. So, too, could have the guy from whom he bought the team, re-insurer Steven Gluckstern. Gluckstern was a partner of Dr. Richard Burke. He and Burke bought the Winnipeg Jets from Barry Shenkarow and moved them to Phoenix where they just kept losing more money.

Gluckstern, a very nice man who loved hockey, eventually went off and bought the Islanders. It’s hard to imagine one good businessman could be sucked into owning the teams in Phoenix and Long Island, but re-insurance is a lucrative business. Hockey is not. Some say that between the Coyote sand the Islanders, Gluckstern lost more than half his personal wealth.

So now Charles Wang (Computer Associates) owns the team and while no one will have a tag day for Wang, one has to wonder how stupid these really smart people can be.

The NHL is a lousy investment, so unless you’re just a philanthropist who gets a charge out of making millionaires out of otherwise non-descript Canadian twenty-somethings, buying a National Hockey League franchise in the United States is a pretty stupid way to flush your cash down the toilet.

See Charles Wang. Or Steven Gluckstern. Or Jerry Moyes. Or Dr. Richard Burke. Or Alan Cohen in Miami. Or those poor suckers in Atlanta and Nashville.  

3) At 11:30 p.m. on May 3, 2009, the Winnipeg weather office predicted that on Monday, May 4, we would have gusting winds up to 50-kilometres and rain. 

When I got up this morning, it was perfect. By 6 a.m., the same donkeys who were predicting cold rain were now predicting sun and 20-degree C temperatures.

Of course, at 6 a.m., they didn’t have to do much predicting. All they had to do was walk outside.

We have many problems in this world from an economy that was simply one giant Enron to a mainstream media that preys on fear and ignorance to a national weather office that couldn’t properly predict what’s going to happen to the skies in the next seven minutes let alone the next seven days.

When I was giving ballpark tours at Canwest Park on Saturday, I asked our baseball fans to do me one favour this year: Do not believe a word a TV or radio weather person tells you about the upcoming weather. Not one word. The weather office is as useless as teets on a bull and the more it predicts, the dumber it gets. For a baseball team like the Winnipeg Goldeyes, these wild, stupid predictions of constant bad weather that turn out to be dead wrong do so much harm, it can’t be quantified.

Environment Canada hurts Canadian business. These morons tell people the weather is going to be lousy when it’s not going to be lousy and they seem to do it for laughs. They are bad for the economy and bad for anyone who does business outdoors in Canada.

Along with greedy Harvard MBA grads, we’d all be better off without them.

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Why Won’t Bettman Just Face the Facts in Phoenix?

Posted on March 28, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Not long ago, we asked if NHL commissioner Gary Bettman was delusional.

In fact, at the time, Bettman told Fox Sports Arizona that the Phoenix Coyotes financial problems will be resolved and — get this — new investors will be coming on board.

 

It was exactly the same line he had handed to a group of Canadian business leaders earlier that week. of course, as we found out this week, Bettman’s position on the Coyotes borders on the insane.

 

Maybe, he just has to keep trying to tell everyone that all is well in Phoenix because he was the guy who convinced businessmen Dr. Richard Burke and Steven Gluckstern to buy the Winnipeg Jets and move them to Phoenix back in 1995 (Burke and Gluckstern sold the team years ago after Gluckstern lost almost half his personal wealth on that dog). Maybe Bettman just has to continue trying to fool folks who know better.

 

This week, the Arizona Republic reported something I’ve been reporting for years. Since 2001, the Coyotes have lost $200 million. Since the Coyotes moved to the desert, the franchise has lost more than $300 million. The current owner, Jerry Moyes, is in huge trouble. His old partner, Steve Ellman, is now almost irrelevant. 

 

Moyes is losing his shirt. Maybe $40 million this year. Still, Bettman is telling anyone who will listen that all will be well and the Coyotes aren’t going anywhere.

 

That’s crazy. Since last year, Moyes has been trying to find a partner or new ownership altogether and while Bettman claims an investor is out there, one finds that really, really, really hard to believe.

 

My friends, Sam Katz, Bryon Hamilton and Jason McCrae-King were just at a game in Phoenix is which, maybe, 8,000 people attended. I’ll ask this question again: How are the Coyotes EVER going to be successful?

 

Gary Bettman must live in some weird alternative universe where everyone is rich and there is no recession. He does not inhabit the same time-space continuum as the rest of us.

 

Bring the Coyotes back to Winnipeg. Now. They might still lose money, but at least someone will care.  

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Winnipeg’s Last Great Sports Conversation of 2008

Posted on January 1, 2009 by Scott Taylor| 2 Comments

It is fitting, in a way, that the final big sports conversation in Winnipeg in 2008 has something to do with the return of the Winnipeg Jets.

 

It’s not: Will new head coach Mike Kelly turn around the Blue Bombers? or Will Winnipegger Jonathan Toews get the Blackhawks back to a Stanley Cup for the first time in 47 years? or Will Winnipeg’s concussed Corey Koskie indeed try to play for Team Canada at the World Baseball Championship this spring?

 

Nope. It’s the middle of the hockey season and once again, Winnipeggers are talking about the Jets.

 

Whether they think it’s just crazy talk or a legitimate discussion doesn’t seem to matter. The apparent financial failure of the Phoenix Coyotes combined with the thought that an impending collapse in the desert might allow the ‘Peg to one day get another shot an NHL team, has citizens taking sides in the debate once again.

 

Interestingly, as the stories swirl about the Coyotes’ most recent flirtation with bankruptcy, the local political big wigs all seem to be on the same side. If somebody out there wants to move a team to Winnipeg or sell one to the local burghers, the politicos will do all they can to make it happen.

 

“You know that in the right situation, I’m on board,” said Mayor Sam Katz who, ironically, is spending the holiday season in Scottsdale, Ariz. “I know there are plenty of arguments against a team ever returning, but if it ever appeared as if one might, I believe the city would be on side.”

 

Considering that one of Katz’s strongest rivals, far-left city councilor Dan Vandal, once wrote a letter to the then-struggling Pittsburgh Penguins asking Mario Lemieux, the Pens president and CEO at the time, if Winnipeg might purchase the team, suggests that council would probably support the mayor.

 

Meanwhile, Premier Gary Doer, has never wavered in his support of the NHL’s return to Winnipeg. He’s one of the few people who believes that the 15,001-seat MTS Centre, a rink built for an AHL team, could easily support an NHL franchise.

 

In fact, Doer has always said, “If the Coyotes are losing all that money and they’d like to come back to where they started, Winnipeg and Manitoba would welcome them with open arms.” 

 

And, one supposes, open wallets.

 

This latest round of “Can the Jets return?” started with the news last week, first published in the Arizona Republic, that the Coyotes will likely lose $30 million US this year and that the team’s owner, trucking magnate, Jerry Moyes, was facing financial problems with his core business, Swift Transport.

 

If the Coyotes do lose $30 million US this season, that will bring the total to almost $500 million US since the team left Winnipeg in 1996. People tend to forget that there have been three ownership groups in Phoenix and the original proprietors, the pair who took the team out of Winnipeg — Richard Burke and Steven Gluckstern — have been out of hockey for nearly a decade. The Coyotes have been a failure on and off the ice and reports from Larry Brooks in the New York Post last week suggested that the NHL has already started a financial bailout in the desert.

 

Why they’d want to save that mess is anyone’s guess, but the likely reason is that commissioner Gary Bettman’s long-held belief that hockey could work in non-traditional markets in the southern United States, must be protected at all costs.

 

In the meantime, Winnipeggers still hope and pray and talk. Maybe the downturn in the U.S. economy is the start of a return to sanity and maybe, one day, big league hockey will come back to the people who actually care about it.

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