Gary Bettman, Do Your Job! Allow the Coyotes to Move to Ontario!

For Mr. Bettman to do his best to keep a second NHL team from relocating to Southern Ontario is one of the largest injustices in sports.

Southern Ontario is the best hockey market in the world, with roughly seven million people and a passion for hockey that is unmatched anywhere.

Toronto has been able to support an NHL team which grosses nearly 60 million dollars more than the second-highest grossing team, the New York Rangers, on an annual basis.

Toronto has been able to support NHL, NBA, MLB, MLS, and CFL teams, there is no doubt it can support two NHL teams. If the Buffalo Bills see Toronto as the best market to move their team to, the NHL should think about moving the Phoenix Coyotes here.

The NHL in the desert doesn’t work. When the Winnipeg Jets folded, many cities made bids to the NHL hoping they would relocate the Jets to their area. One of these cities was Kansas City, but the NHL didn’t think it was suitable to move there.

So why now, when your first choice doesn’t work, do you decide to move it to the city you once turned down? The NHL is bent on putting as many teams in America as possible, while overlooking the best market in the NHL.

And when asked about teams in Southern Ontario, the NHL says they haven’t looked into it. Mr Bettman, your job is to do what is best for the NHL and its fans—and you haven’t considered moving a team to Southern Ontario? None of this makes any sense.

If the reason the league won’t allow another NHL team in Ontario is because of Jim Balsillie, then Gary Bettman should be fired. To put personality over business is not a smart move, and shouldn’t be a tactic used by a person in charge of 30 NHL teams.

Toronto is the centre of the hockey universe and the only logical place to move a struggling team to. Kansas City is five times smaller than Toronto, and it is never been considered a hockey hotbed. It would be one of the most ridiculous things in the world to move an NHL team to Kansas City over Toronto.

Mr Bettman, grow up, do your job, do your research, and relocate a team to Ontario. You would be taking a team who sits at the bottom of the league for financial grosses, and within one year turn that same team into the second-highest grossing team in the league, just by allowing them to move to a place where hockey is the number-one sport.