Momentum swings our way
NHL in Hamilton no longer long shot
October 22, 2008
Steve Milton
The Hamilton Spectator
The important thing to remember is that, for the past 18 years, this battle has always been less about Hamilton than about a second team in Toronto.
Not the city proper, but its massive catchment basin. And the only NHL-sized rink in that area just happens to be in Hamilton.
And, despite what our colleagues at another newspaper insist, that is the rink where the next NHL team in this area -- assuming there is one -- will play. It's where Jim Balsillie, for his own reasons, wants the team.
For some months, there's been a softening of the once-rigid assumption no team could ever invade the Toronto Maple Leafs' sacred space. Prompted by The Spectator, some NHL owners had already wondered in private why theirs is the only professional league in the world that lets just one team mine its richest market.
What has changed this week is that some NHL governors are actually willing to talk about it in public, even if they're leery of attaching their names to their most pointed comments. Even staunch Gary Bettman ally Harley Hotchkiss, co-owner of the Calgary Flames, wouldn't deny he's heard Toronto-2 talk.
As recently as six months ago, Bettman had such control over his board no one would have expressed anything but the company line about the Toronto market -- which was essentially "no comment, so buzz off" -- let alone suggest there was a movement to put a second team there.
This change suggests Bettman is losing some of his grip on the people he works for, but who sometimes act like they work for him.
And, among Bettman's many mantras has been a Hammer-less NHL. His greatest issue with Jim Balsillie, until things got personal, was not the man himself but where he wanted, and still wants, to put a team. But trashing a city, especially one with ticket buyers to two NHL franchises, is bad form so, instead, the man got trashed. Balsillie was falsely demonized to governors.
Many things have changed since the NHL board meeting in June 2006, where, and after which, Bettman could not control his anger at Balsillie for staring him down with the season's ticket and corporate box campaign in Hamilton.
That got Balsillie's bid plenty of attention, which, at the onset, was destructive to his NHL aspirations but has quickly morphed into a strength. He challenged a basic assumption out loud and that got some important folks inside the league wondering why, in a revenue-sharing era, the NHL is leaving so much money on the southern Ontario table.
And some owners have become better acquainted with Balsillie, who has been quietly pitching his ownership strengths, with the mounting help of some allies within the NHL. Additionally, Bettman-recommended ownership structures in Nashville and Tampa have blown up very publicly in the NHL's face, with the Boots Del Biaggio fiasco far more resonant behind closed doors than the league will admit. So is the rising salary floor.
The teetering North American economy has become the best friend of the Balsillie bid. Even with the downsized Canadian dollar, there will be no shortage of franchises that can be rescued only by sale, relocation or both.
All this has conspired to change the direction the wind blows and even the folks at Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment Limited are rejigging their sails. They know their league brethren are beginning to abandon them, recognizing a team in this area won't hurt the Leafs much, especially since no one involved disputes a Spectator report that Balsillie's group would hire MLSE to run their arena.
But a Leaf compromise would fall short of allowing within their city limits a new team and, far worse, a new arena that would be serious competition for the same non-hockey properties the ACC hosts.
Copps Coliseum is already in competition for those dates, so nothing would change there if Balsillie bought and moved Nashville, Phoenix, Florida, Atlanta, or, oh geez, the list is getting longer with each Dow drop.
As for Buffalo, their Canadian ticket sales have been greatly overestimated. The real figure is 11 per cent after being as high as 25 per cent a few decades back.
And no small portion of those Canadian tickets are sold for Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal games. Hamilton would join that trio. Can any sane person believe the 50 kilometres between Copps and, say, Woodbine Racetrack, would make a substantial difference to the Buffalo franchise? Puh-leeze.
But a team in Hamilton would still hit the Sabres, perhaps knocking their Canadian sales down to 5 or 6 per cent. Balsillie is known to have a relationship with the Sabres' ownership and management, so a financial arrangement could easily be worked out.
Talk is of an expansion team, but that won't happen, at least not soon, although expansion would give the other owners a share of the Balsillie windfall. There are too many franchises wanting to sell. Plus, according to Spec sources, the other expansion sure thing is now off the table. Well-known TV producer Jerry Bruckheimer, once willing to pay $250 million, has grown disinterested in hockey for Las Vegas. Head office isn't popular over that defection, either.
So momentum, once so stiffly against Balsillie and Hamilton, is moving behind them. That doesn't mean a team here is imminent, but it's no longer such a long shot.
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