Gary Bettman Continues To Defend American Losers

At the NHL All Star festivities, Gary Bettman continues to defend the current status quo of American money-losing franchises. In the latest incident, he continues to refute the idea of moving an existing franchise or expanding into southern Ontario (Hamilton?).

He also admitted that the ex-Winnipeg franchise, Phoenix, needs new capital to survive.

There are already rumours that there may be a "fire sale" there before the March trade deadline if this does not happen.

His continuing stubbornness reinforces the feeling many Canadians have of the NHL; that it is controlled by Americans who are determined to keep Canadian franchises and influence to a minimum.

In many ways they are right. But in a roundabout way, it also reinforces the theme I wrote about in my recent series about the history of NHL expansion into Canada; that Canadians are their own worst enemies and are willing to give control of the NHL to the Americans on a silver platter.

When I read of this latest incident, I recalled three past NHL franchise shifts; Atlanta, Quebec, and Winnipeg.

At the time, Atlanta was shifted to Calgary, there was a different leader, John Ziegler and there was no resistance from his office to the proposed franchise shift. Atlanta was losing money, interest was waning, and there was no significant tv revenue.

Edmonton had just joined the NHL the previous year and had proved a great success. So with the promise of a future NHL-size arena, the franchise was shifted from a large, non-profitable market to a small successful one of 600,000.

After Bettman took office, Quebec and Winnipeg were beginning to reach the end of the road. The cities refused to shed small-city thinking and build NHL-size new arenas. Nor were new investors committed to keeping the franchises in their locations to be found.

At the time, Bettman made no particular attempt to save the Canadian franchises, but gave them his quick blessing to shuffle off to American markets.

Quite a marked contrast to his zealous attempts to keep money losing franchises in American cities at all cost. When Jim Balsillie attempted to buy and move the Nashville Predators, Bettman was quick to frustrate the scheme, give time to search for new investors, and immediately approve them when they were found.

He is prepared to do the same for Phoenix.

Meanwhile, Hamilton has a small NHL-size arena, and a pledge of $50 million for upgrading it on the table for the taking. A success is almost guaranteed.

Why is Bettman so resistant to making an unhealthy situation healthy again? Perhaps in his mind a franchise-shift to Canada is a symbol of the failure of the grand scheme he instituted when he took office; to make the NHL one of the "big four" sports in the United States, complete with large American TV viewership and revenue.

He has failed in both these cases and refuses to consider other alternatives like expansion to Canada, Europe or even the northern United States.

Bettman's scheme called for increased American interest by expanding into areas of the United States where there was no significant interest in hockey before.

Franchises were granted, others were shifted from the north to the south (including Hartford). Canada and the northern United States were ignored. The result has been money-losing American franchises.

Now I am not calling for a mass-shift of money-losing American franchises to Canada all at once. For one thing, only Hamilton has a proper NHL-size arena to be a success in today's market. No other Canadian city has one or is prepared to build one and Winnipeg built another "get-by" arena at best.

But antagonizing potential investors like Balsillie who can correct a bad situation in order to cling to a failed dream is not going help his league. And one more Canadian franchise is not going to make a bad American situation worse. If John Ziegler can shrug and okay a reverse franchise shift, so can Bettman.

And Canadians who in the years before Bettman's appointment did all they could to get American money and American TV glory are now getting the payoff of their investment:

An NHL leader who puts America first even when it means losing money.