The Blackberry, one of the most popular “must-have,” techno gadgets of businessman—and slacker alike—has made Jim Balsillie a very wealthy man.
When you have literally millions of disposable cash, you are able to do a lot of things you and I can only dream of—like own an NHL Franchise.
Jim Balsillie by all accounts is a reasonable man and a top-notch businessman as well. So, why is the NHL basically treating his persona non grata? And attempt to buy the cash-strapped, soon to be arena-less Penguins?
A second attempt to buy the Nashville Predators seemed to be a done deal, an ideal seller, and a willing buyer willing to pay well above market price for the team. Nashville was a team on the rise, young, talented, and coached to perfection.
Only one problem, Nashville is known for country music, not hockey, and building a fan base was a problem. Nashville had a buyer and a man who wanted to rescue a team from its own fate and market as well—Moving it to Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
It baffled many hockey fans. Why on earth is the league so unilaterally opposed to moving a team back to Canada? Quebec City and Winnipeg lost their teams to the United States.
Gary Bettman and his sun-belt hockey plan took teams out of solid markets, like Minneapolis and Hartford, and moved them to experimental markets, like Dallas and Raleigh respectively.
The move to Carolina was so disastrous, that the team initially offered flight and ticket packages to fans in Hartford to come down and support “their” former Whalers.
On the other hand, Dallas turned out to be a better story, but having a successful team, also, helps.
Colorado had been another question mark, but winning the Stanley Cup the very first season was a major plus for the franchise.
Only minutes from the New York boarder, Hamilton is a huge hockey town, hungering for years of an NHL team of their own. It would be right outside Toronto's "zone of control", a ring around markets to prevent encroachment by other teams—the Buffalo Sabres.
Balsillie knew this, and planned to move the team there. He had an arena lined up, and began advance selling of season tickets. That's when Gary Bettman stepped in. He would not approve the sale of the team if was to be moved to Canada.
There are certainly worse things than moving a team into a booming market where the game was born. It's like saying we're expanding the NFL to Mexico, and we're going to send Patriots and the Cleveland Browns to start, and no more teams will be added to the U.S.
The worse thing is, it started a very uneasy relationship between Jim Balsillie and the league itself—almost like Jim Balsillie is hesitant about showing interest in a team, solely due to the fact he thinks that Bettman will reject it out of hand. Despite Bill Daly's constant assurances that there is no bad blood between Balsillie and Bettman, Bettman himself has not denied it.
Today TSN.CA released a story, that Balsillie's money is “still good.” According to the report, eight ownership groups: Dallas, Atlanta, Carolina and Tampa Bay are among them. They are in negotiations according a report from the Canadian newspaper, The National Post.
While it’s still not clear whether or not they are interested in selling a team to Balsillie, they might merely offering him to own a part of the team.
What’s also puzzling is why the NHL finds Balsillie's overtures so offensive? According to Richard Rodier, Balsillie's advisor, "The commissioner made it very clear he does not want Jim in the league under any circumstances, period." However, like stated before, it is Bill Daly who is coming to the commissioner's defense, not the commissioner himself.
While Bettman feels the need to have Bill Daly come to the rescue is unclear. It actually makes Bettman look like a coward. Daly insists it is the owners, not the commissioner who makes this decision: that the sale of a team is dependent upon how the other 29 teams feel about it.
That it is "not something that the commissioner decides." Well, it’s interesting to know, since it is well known that Bettman was involved when it became known that Balsillie was going to take his team back above the 48th Parallel.
Anything that grows the game helps all the teams in the NHL. Balsillie's foray into selling season tickets showed only one thing—he had an overwhelming fan support back home.
This is just another example of Gary Bettman trying to bend the NHL to what he thinks it ought to be. This is not the NBA. The NHL is still wounded by the lockout and does not have nearly close to the public visibility the NBA has.
It has been learned that Gary Bettman owns a Blackberry, I wonder if he'd been having any problems with it recently?
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4 months ago
very nice article aaron i loved it
4 months ago
According to TSN.ca, "Ultimately, Mr. Balsillie's ability to be an owner in the NHL will depend on his ability to find an existing owner who wants to sell him a team, and his ability to persuade the 29 other team owners - his prospective partners - that he would be a good owner and good partner in the league venture. That's not something the Commissioner decides. Maybe Mr. Rodier would be better off confining his comments to subject matters as to which he might have some small level of knowledge; this subject isn't one of them."- Daly, Bettman's Deputy Commissioner.
First of all, this is freaking stupid. "Mr. Balsillie's ability to be an owner in the NHL will depend on his ability to find an existing owner who wants to sell him a team." Who can forget last year's attempt to buy the Nashville Predators. It was an extremely ugly business and gave the NHL a bad name in the media. Second, please tell Mr. Daly and Bettman how and why are there 8 teams in the NHL interested in selling the team or partnership with with Research in Motion?
It is clear that NHL Commissioner, Gary Bettman, has a personal agenda against Research in Motion and Mr. Jim Balsillie. The bottom line is that Gary Bettman doesn't want another an American team to move to Canada even if that team is struggling financially due to poor market.
Bettman is the Anti-Christ.
4 months ago
Agreed!
Bettman has come out several times and asserted that the only reason he shut the door on Balsillie was because the NHL's first priority is always to "do what they can to keep a franchise in the city it's already in". This is a good PR answer, but pure codswaddle if you really look at it.
If this were true, then why didn't the NHL make as much of an effort to keep Quebec, Winnipeg, and Hartford in their respective cities?
They didn't make 1/15 of the effort they made to keep Nashville on life support, continuously offering them mulligans to save the team.
4 months ago
Good article, I only have two points to make.
Hartford was not a "solid market". The Whalers struggled for years and never even came close to winning a cup, winning only one single playoff series while in the NHL. Their arena, now home to an AHL team, holds less than 16,000 for hockey. Attendance was awful and the city refused to help build a new home for the Whalers.
Gary Bettman wants fans. Period. He wanted (and still wants) to tap into markets where hockey is irrelevant, in order to create more revenue for the league. If he moves a team out of a hockey hotbed, such as Winnepeg or Quebec City, he won't lose those fans; they already love hockey. Bettman is foolish, however, for thinking that the NHL should have teams in California, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, North Carolina, etc. Hockey just doesn't matter there, and it never will.
from 4 months ago
I think more than a few San Jose Sharks fans will beg to differ that hockey doesn't matter. Check out the attendance figures.
from 4 months ago
Any team can draw fans when they win; the solid markets are the ones that draw fans even when they aren't winning.
4 months ago
First off, Bettman has to go.
Secondly, the sooner Bettman goes, the better.
Thirdly, Bettman doesn't like Canadian teams for the most part. He didn't like the Jets or Nordiques and if it weren't for the Winnipeg fans desperately lining up at Portage and Main, that last Jets season wouldn't have happened.
4 months ago
While I have no love for Bettman, I don't think Balsillie is doing himself any favours by the way he is going about this.
When you are joining an exclusive club such as the NHL (and that's what it is, a club for billionaires), you don't walk in and act like you own the place, make the rules and call the shots.
You need to be diplomatic, and largely Balsillie has been a giant ass. (Can I say ass?)
Now as for more teams coming to Canada, I often think too many Canadians let their national pride get in the way of rational thinking.
Yes Canada is hockey, and yes we lost some teams, but the two don't add up to the fact that there should be more in Canada.
I don't see how Winnipeg and Quebec City could support NHL hockey, neither have a decent arena, sufficient population, enough corporate support or even a willing owner right now.
The only one that would work is a second team in southern Ontario and we all know the Leafs will NEVER allow that.
A court battle would surely be required to overcome the Leafs objections.
Why would the Leafs want competition in their market? Right now they have the drones...errr...fans right where they want them.
4 months ago
I think both are trouble makers. They make a good couple.
4 months ago
Yes, Hartford struggled, but so, currently, does Carolina. And Nashville runs like a hobbled horse. Phoenix can barely fill the stands, and Columbus isn't exactly burning things up.
"Keeping fans" was never Gary's excuse, He specifically said he "DOES EVERYTHING HE CAN" to keep the teams where they are.
Whether or not he was going to lose a certain number of fans is not the issue, or a valid excuse. The issue is that he WILL do "all he can" for certain markets, and precious little for others.
Hartford was a good hockey town - admittedly they had to compete with the Boston Market, but again, if Gary and the NHL had made 1/2 the effort they made for Nashville, the Whalers might still be playing.
He also made no where near the same effort to stop Norm Green from moving the Stars out of Minnesota.
Not to mention that Colorado and Kansas City already had FAILED shots at NHL franchises before they were considered for another. It's a double standard.
No one is saying the NHL has to move any teams to Canada specifically, but when a business man with Balsillie's credentials and money, and love for the game, comes in to save a team that is floundering, and on life support systems, and is openly deemed untenable by its previous owner, then it seems pure stupidity not to let him bail it out. That's business! That's capitalism!
Bottom line: If he really cared about keeping franchises where they are, he would have made more of an effort to keep those other teams where THEY were. He may not have succeeded, but he didn't try nearly as hard. Despite his denials, something stinks about the way he handled this situation.
4 months ago
GAry Bettman hates the idea of more canadian teams which is rediculious. Yes he is trying to grow fans in other places but guess what..... if they don't want to learn it then they wont!! Simple fact. But yet this man still believes that hockey should be in america which is rediculious. SSo screw Atlanta, nashville or anywhere and stop Bettman from killing the NHL and let it be. If the team is going to be moved then so be it I mean if the NHL is being run by a business then isn't the whole point to make as much money as possible and go where demand is?? Well u wanna know something Bettman Business sucks in the southern states and business is goosd in Canada dumbass!!
from 4 months ago
The point of business is to open it up to new markets and try to make more demand. Canada only has a certain population up there so you guys could not keep the NHL going on your own. I am in Nashville and I am a big predators fan. Our fan base is growing, we are starting to get more corporate support, and some of us are enjoying hockey for the great sport that it is. I happen to like Canada too most of the time, except when people like yourself act like an idiot and a spoiled kid who doesn't want to share his toys with anyone else. Just remember, there would be no NHL without the USA. Hopefully business will get better for everyone, including my Predators and your Canadian teams.
4 months ago
Quick question, any relation to Jim, Aaron?
And yeah, I agree, he would be the right guy to buy the team, but he did go about it all wrong, I do agree with that too.
Bettman will do anything to see another franchise, be it a sold team or an expansion team, not come to Canada. We all know that Kansas City, Las Vegas, and apparently even Portland (:S) will get NHL teams before one comes to Canada again.
On a side note, since he is at like every game, why doesn't Country singer Vince Gill, his wife (also a singer) Amy Grant, and a bunch of their country music buddies buy the Preds? Surely they could afford it.
from 4 months ago
First off, I am happy that this thread has generated some interest. As far as being related to Jim Balsillie, I am, but very distantly...not nearly enough to ever tap into the RIM fortune, although I do own a Blackberry...family loyalty. I think that wether Bettman likes it or not, another team will find it's way to Canada in the next ten years. If the cap keeps going up every year, teams that still can't spend to the cap won't. And with the US ecnonomy hitting areas like Detroit so hard (you could still by tickets at the Joe for the finals...from the box office) some other teams in totally non-hockey area like Nashville will start to wither on the vine not being able to draw in quality talent. As far as why country stars like Vince Gill and Amy Grant don't want to buy the Predators...I'd like to think they've seen what happens when a couple of people who have very limited hockey buisness experience own/run a team...like the Leafs!
4 months ago
Hey I have no problem with American teams. I just hate the fact that Bettman gives teams to cities where there is too much competition and not enough demand. I know some people in nashville like the Predators I am not denying that. All I am saying is I can think of so many other places that would better support an NHL franchise.
4 months ago
Hamilton is not outside the Toronto protection zone for another team. It encroaches on both Buffalo and Toronto's protective zones.
3 months ago
Toronto can bite me.They have offered up garbage for all of us Southern Ontario fans for decades. As for Buffalo, it was the right place to put a team in the 70's but time and circumstance suggest that they should now be playing in a bigger and better Copps rather that at the HSBC.
My only dilema would be be a split allegiance to the Habs as well as to my Hamilton (Tigers/Steelers...)
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