I'm not sure what we will see tonight; that was a pretty beaten looking Calgary team we saw in the dying moments of game three. I think we'll probably see Calgary come out very strong tonight but if it doesn't pay off with some goals and they fall behind again, I can see the tents being folded. The players aren't dumb, they know it's all but impossible to come back from 3-0. It has only been done once in WHL history - the 1996 first round, Spokane lost the first three games to Portland but came back to win four straight, including game 7 in OT. But Spokane was 41 points better than Portland that year, so Spokane SHOULD have won that series anyway - which makes them pulling off four straight wins considerably less remarkable than having somebody do it in a battle of two fairly evenly matched teams like Calgary & Kelowna.
In other hockey news, Jim Balsillie is at it again. The Blackberry billionaire has made a $213 million U.S. offer for the Phoenix Coyotes (who filed for chapter 11 bankrupty protection the other day), with the offer conditional on Balsillie being able to move the Coyotes to Southern Ontario. My understanding of U.S. bankruptcy law is that when selling the team or dividing up its' assets, the bankruptcy court is obligated to accept the offer which best compensates the team's creditors....assuming Balsillie's deal is for cash, it means somebody else is going to have to offer more money in order to prevent the court from selling the team to Balsillie. It's not a case anymore where the owner of the team can choose to accept a lower offer if he wanted to.
I'm sure Balsillie is quickly becoming a major pain in the ass for Gary Bettman. Balsillie has been involved in trying to purchase every NHL team that has been on the market or in any kind of financial trouble for the last four or five years now. I don't think the NHL is enamoured with his maverick ways and would probably prefer that he never owns a team, but the guy has real money and isn't going away. Good luck to the NHL trying to find somebody else willing to pay $213 million for the Coyotes in this economy.
Just a thought, but if Balsillie wants to bring NHL hockey to Southern Ontario so bad, why doesn't he buy the Maple Leafs and try to make them an NHL team?
Update: TSN's Bob McKenzie has just weighed in with a good article outlining the NHL's dilemma. My question is, why is the NHL seemingly so intent on keeping a team in Phoenix, at the apparent financial detriment of the league itself, since the league is now owed $35 million by the Coyotes? The Coyotes have never made money in Phoenix....when are the losses enough? I wonder how the other owners in the NHL feel about their money being used to prop up a money pit like the Coyotes, and how many of them would probably just rather sell it to Balsillie, let him move the team and be done with this headache. Sure, letting Balsillie into the league probably brings its own set of headaches, but at least they won't be ones that hurt the NHL in the wallet.
Update #2: now even Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has come out in favour of the Coyotes moving to Ontario....I believe the ball is in Barack Obama's court now....
6 comments:
As to why keep a team in phoenix? You have never been golfing down there have you? LOL
Define South Ontario. Being an American. I hardly know wher Ontario is let alone what citys are there.
Yeah, keep a dud franchise like Phoenix cause of it's golfing. And you're American, not surprised you don't know where anything else is, that's not in the states.
Typical nieve American comments. The other owners need to keep bettman locked up, and do what's best for the game of hockey.
Lighten up, folks....it's obvious the original commenter was speaking tongue-in-cheek about the golfing.
As for Southern Ontario, hey, I'm Canadian and even _I_ am not sure what Balsillie is talking about when he says he wants to move the team to an "untapped" market there. There's obviously a lot of cities there but really only one market since the entire golden horseshoe is basically one giant urban area that already has two NHL teams, Toronto and Buffalo.
HAMILTON
Yes, Hamilton and Kitchener-Waterloo are the two most likely destinations.
I'm just not sure how they qualify as "untapped" (Balsillie's words, not mine) since they are basically part of the same huge urban area. Downtown Hamilton is what, 50km from downtown Toronto?
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