Hockeyhead

Jim Balsillie’s gall is admirable, but it’s hard to think he’s doing anything other than pissing off Gary Bettman.  Gary loves Phoenix, he probably wants to retire there and have the luxury of watching the occasional hockey game.  The Phoenix Coyotes, aka Wayne Gretzky’s team (how pathetic is that?) have failed.  The experiment is over, or at least it should be.  All they’ve managed to achieve since their inception is the transition from an ugly uniform to a less ugly uniform.  Hockey is as foreign to an Arizona winter as credibility is to a Bob MacKenzie rumour.

So if Gary continues to insist that the hockey in Phoenix will be alright, one is led to wonder what it actually takes to successfully acquire an NHL franchise.  We put together a shortlist of what we felt were some requirements for a prospective owner to relocate a struggling franchise.

• Financially sound ownership. The last thing you would want is your owner to have to borrow money from the previous owner to complete the sale of an NHL team.  It would be much more beneficial to approve a sale to an owner that can remain financially viable even through the toughest of times, for instance the CEO of that BlackBerry maker.  He could probably support a team… hmmmm.
• On top of being financially sound, it would be ideal to have an owner that will remain active in the day-to-day, season-to-season operations of the club.  Imagine if Disney bought a team, gave it a goofy name, and just didn’t give a fuck about for years.  That would be awful, you would have to hope they would sell it and that someone could turn the franchise’s fortunes around.
• Major League Baseball would never put a team on Baffin Island.  That’s because it’s frozen, and unlikely that residents get to play much baseball, let alone watch it.  Hockey teams tend to fare better in climates and regions that are familiar with the sport.  An existing fan base is important, although trying to convince the fine folks in California that an arena is a more entertaining form of air conditioning than a Vin Diesel movie has been amusing.
• It never hurts to have a national television contract either.  Up here in Canada, we’ve got a number of networks fighting over rights to the NHL.  Versus does a decent job of showing the game south of the border, but that network is only available in pockets of the United States.  I’m sure that Rogers Shitsnet is looking for some quality winter programming to dilute the depressing Toronto Maple Leafs games and poker matches they show for six months… maybe not though, it’s a pretty shitty network.