Serenity Now!

As I pointed out here yesterday, the Board of Governors were going to sit around and be rich old farts and talk about ways to further disturb the NHL.

Turns out they may actually be getting wise as Tim Wharnsby of the Globe and Mail in Canada tells us.

There is an arena ready to go in Kansas City and one planned for the near
future for Las Vegas. Last week, deputy commissioner Bill Daly said the league
hopes to have teams based in Europe in the next 10 years.

But despite the apparent fascination, expansion was not a topic on the
agenda at the NHL board of governors meeting in Toronto yesterday.

I'm faint, my head is spinning with this news - I demand further quotation as proof.

"We like our 30 teams now and we don't feel this an appropriate time to do it,"
commissioner Gary Bettman said. "What the future may hold, I'm not prepared to
predict, but it's not on the agenda."

Well how about that. Do I believe any of this for a minute? Not really - these owners and Bettman are famous for talking out both sides of their mouth. I'm sure there were some enlightening conversations behind the scenes about these cities.

One quote that I was foolish enough to look past but has been brought up in discussion on Kukla's Korner was this from Herr Bettman courtesy of Pierre LeBrun at ESPN:

"At the present time, we're not ready to engage in any sort of expansion
process," Bettman said yesterday. "If that changes -- and it doesn't mean it
will, but it could at some point -- then we'll open it up and see what the
interest is."

Without any prompting, Bettman himself brought up Vegas.

"There were some articles indicating that there's no building deal yet in
Vegas," Bettman said. "We've had expressions of interest from lots of places,
both north and south of the 49 parallel, and at some point we may deal with
them. But not right now."

The NHL will be Vegas one day. You can bet on it.

Is Gary tipping his hand here or what? Then again, I kicked the tires on this happening a while back. While I did speculate that the Kings might be just that team to go to Sin City, Wharnsby's story brought up something that's a bit more worrisome.

What else comes to light, and has come up elsewhere recently, is that the fervor which the NHL gained steam behind the Canadian dollar is slowing up in a very noticable way, especially to the owners who have capitalized greatly on hockey's success in Canada and the "extra money" that has come flowing in thanks to the relative strength of the Loonie compared to the U.S. Dollar.

Mind you, it's not as if the U.S. Dollar is the world beater it was years ago, that's not the case at all - but while the Loonie caught up to our Benjamins, with it went NHL revenues and the salary cap. It begs our attention to keep an eye on what the Loonie will do because that will tell us if the Salary Cap continues to shoot up or leads to chaos in the front offices.

A weakened Canadian dollar against the U.S. Dollar means less money for everyone since Canada is obviously the NHL's cash cow. Shocking, I know. Less money means that teams in trouble like Nashville, Atlanta, and Florida could be looking for greener pastures. Hell, even Calgary could throw its hat in the ring once again if things got bad enough for the Loonie - Calgary was supposedly close to peril before the Canadian dollar leveled out with the U.S. dollar.

While expansion may not have been on the table, I'd bet more than anything Kansas City and Las Vegas were being discussed in great detail about the sweet deals and opportunities that await in these cities (Kansas City especially) and while no one is looking to move right now... things change. And when things change in this situation, these cities might just get to pick and choose from who they'd rather come to fill up their AEG owned arena.

Did you ever get the feeling that while the NHL owners were doing right by the CBA and their own revenues and what the books were saying that they'll still find a way to get caught with their pants down?

Yeah - so do I.

Brilliant Ideas Sullied By Madness

Recently, NHLPA executive director Paul Kelly gave an interview with the Palm Beach Post (wait...huh?) and one thing he said stood out so much, TSN decided to carry it as one of their main stories.

In it, he says something that I stand firmly behind and support, and then blows that support up with the clarifying statement. Quoting from the TSN article:

In an interview with the Palm Beach Post, Kelly listed a number of cities
that are "anxious" to get a team, including Seattle, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Kansas
City, Las Vegas and Houston.

"The six Canadian franchises do so well, they pack the buildings, get great
TV, great revenue streams. If you put another team up there, be it in Nova
Scotia or Hamilton, it would be more of the same."

This sounds good - we've got a handful of cities that are really hurting in the support category and could be looking to get out of town. Reinvigorating the Canadian market is also a brilliant idea as they will fill up an arena at will and the Canadian dollar is on par with the U.S. dollar (scarily so).

Except that the article leads off by saying that these cities are all interested in expansion opportunities.

NO! NO! NO! NO! Bad NHL!

You continue to learn nothing from past mistakes and seek to overwrite them by making more bad mistakes. Yes, revenues keep going up magically - mainly by bilking the fans that want to come to games.

They seem to think these revenues will continue to keep coming whereas instead we're just going to see the fans in cities where they do love and care about hockey continue to get it stuck to them for ticket monies and the hemorraging markets will keep trying to cut deals to fans to make it affordable while still eating a huge financial loss.

I know the Players Association wants expansion, it's more voices to add to yell at Bettman - that much I support. What it'll do to the game, however, I do not support. If anything, the NHL needs contraction.