Two for Elbowing

On the Forecheck: Back in the saddle again - NHL Stats, Analysis, and Opinion

On the forecheck on Del Biaggio:

Back to the Del Biaggio story; there are many out there jumping on Gary Bettman and the NHL for failing to perform due diligence and getting caught looking foolish, but if you go back to the initial stories in this drama, you'll see that Del Biaggio's brokerage is being sued right alongside him. While we have to wait for all the facts to come out in court, the appearance is that the lenders were trying to independently verify Del Biaggio's collateral claims, and received documents that, while appearing genuine, where in fact falsified by an employee there. The responsibility lies with the guilty parties here, folks, not the victims.

This won't stop the Bettman bashers, but if the people they went to and got the due dilligence docs falsified them, not much the NHL could do. Be interesting to see how that plays out.

(of course, nothing will stop the Bettman bashers, especially not facts...)

Del Biaggio files for bankruptcy

Del Biaggio files for bankruptcy - San Jose Mercury News:

William "Boots" Del Biaggio III filed for personal bankruptcy today, listing $56.8 million owed to his top 20 creditors. A second bankruptcy filing, for his investment fund, lists debts of $10.6 million.

This is terrible for Del Biaggio and horrible for the Predators fans (from all accounts, it's inconvenient for the Preds ownership group, but do the fans really need one more crisis to worry over?) -- but I gotta believe one person giggling quietly into his corn flakes is Greg Jamison, managing partner of the San Jose Sharks, because a year ago, Del Biaggio was a minor partner of the Sharks, and he sold his stake so he could try to get a team into Kansas City (and his stake in Nashville STILL looks to me to be a long-term play towards that goal. That goal has now been "haseked" and cleared out of the crease...)

there are some who want to point a finger of blame at Bettman for this, mostly because they point a finger of blame to Bettman for everything including sunspots (hell, some of the pundits, especially in Canada, even take good news, declare it to be really BAD NEWS, and then blame Bettman for it. Horrors, the league isn't perfect and as financially successful as the NFL and NBA combined. Heads must roll!) -- but the reality is that as new, younger investors are coming into the league, they're coming from (in many cases) the high tech world. And it's now coming to light that lots of high tech companies took, well, liberties in their interpretations of financial regulations.

This isn't Bruce McNall playing games with coin speculation, and not something that is going to be found by a standard financial evaluation until the SEC comes in with its army to go over the books. The reality is that a new generation of owners are coming into the NHL (a good thing, IMHO), and some of them are coming from an industry that's come under scrutiny and falling short of the ideal practices. Plus, the economy has turned south in a big way, and even people with moderate practices are feeling the pinch.

I don't know what the league could have done here other than avoid taking in any new money; that's not going to happen. There are always going to be owners in trouble or who fall onto hard times. That was true here, it was true of McNall and Pocklington, and from what I can tell, what Del Biaggio is accused of isn't nearly the kind of crap that went on in buffalo a few years back.

And for what it's worth, no league's perfect. the NFL has Al Davis and his screaming band of rabid lawyers -- and remember when the 49ers were the franchise every other franchise in every sport wanted to model themselves after? Or baseball turning a blind eye to the steroids scandal?

The NHL's not perfect, but at worst it seems no worse than what we see in other leagues. It happens -- lots of money is involved, and where there are lots of money transactions, there are occasionally going to be flubs and fumbles and mistakes (and the occasional fraud). It's how the league deals with them that matters -- assuming the charges hold up.

Paring down the goalie gear

Paring down goalie equipment seems to be the continuing story this season. We came into the season with the usual suspects whining about the goalies having an unfair advantage, and the GM's meeting seems to have done nothing else but discuss the state of the gear. 

Even former members in good standing of the "Goaltenders Union", Darryl Rheaugh and Brian Hayward, have said the goalie equipment needs to be cut down to size. Bet that makes them popular in the goalie's corner of the locker room!

But before all those people who want to turn the tables and go after the guy *in* the mask with a chain saw, some things to think about:

1. The NHL doesn't live in a vaccuum: I know this may come as a surprise to the GMs and various NHL columnists, but there's a whole bunch of hockey out there that isn't NHL. If the NHL cuts back on the gear to the point where a number of goalies decide that playing in Europe beats taking multiple bone bruises, the game *will* suffer. Oh, Europe will fall in line, just like university hockey and all the other ways to the NHL not in the system? Really?  How about the World Junior champsionships, the World Hockey Championships, heck the Olympics?  Do the NHL GMs still think the rest of the hockey world rolls over and pees for them?  There's peeing going on, that's for sure, but I'm not seeing a lot of rolling over these days.

2. Who's paying for this party? Okay, so you cut the pads down to 10 inches or some clever boy comes up with a way to wrap the leg pads around the shins, and they cut the glove size and the blocker size, etc.   If the NHL does get their way and it somehow magically ripples through the hockey system, there's a bunch of hockey equipment that suddenly is of no use.  I guess the NHL GMs, and those ex-goalie color analysts all make enough money that if they have to swap out their kid's  equipment, hey no hassle. Maybe after changing the rules, they'll switch their little goalies to center or something!  But for real people, goalie gear is a serious expense, and even if the local league is helping to foot the bill, someone is going to have to pay for all that new equipment. Better get your PR people on this in advance, because the first tearful hockey mom on HNIC, and you all look like throughtless creeps.

3. "But it looked good in the photos":  If you skate too close to the edge of biometric data (you're doing biometric data, right?  right?) someone at either end of the spectrum is going to get hurt, maybe because the pretection wasn't big enough, maybe because someone forgot that as they cut the width and the height of the pads, maybe the ability to absorb shock goes down in a non-linear fashion (oops!). And since no one was thinking about sizing the equipment down, it works fine for adults, but the kids start getting linear fractures of their tibia.  All I'm seeing are a bunch of people who are running like mad towards "we must make it harder for the goalies to tend goal", and not thinking about the consequences.

And that's the thing--the GMs are running towards a "solution", not to original problem ("fans want more scoring--how do we get more scoring?), but to one of the contributing factors. Why aren't we seeing any evidence that someone actually thought about this?

Caps owner Leonsis says 13-year deal was originally only a six-year pact

The Hockey News: Headlines: Caps owner Leonsis says 13-year deal was originally only a six-year pact:

"So the question was, would you sign Alex Ovechkin for seven years for $10 million a year six years from now? And the answer is yes," explained Leonsis. "So that's how we came to six years at $9 million and seven years at $10 million. That was the thought process."

Essentially, it's two contracts wrapped up into one.

When Ovechkin and his parents walked into the Capitals' offices Thursday, they fully expected to polish off a six-year deal. Then the Caps unveiled the second part of the deal and found a willing partner. Add up six years at $9 million per season and seven years at $10 million per season and you get $124 million.

"How I looked at it is, we have him until he's 35 years old, we'll have him through his best statistical years and his statistics are pretty good right now," said Leonsis. "And who else would you want as the face of your franchise?"

What we see here is the league inventing a new class of contract. This isn't the "best player on the team" contract, or the "franchise player" contract -- it's the "face of the franchise" contract. it's not just for someone who's a good (okay, great) hockey player, it's the person you define your franchise with. In some ways, this is a way to counteract the fan complaint that more liberal (and younger) free agency means players move around too much.

Now, teams are taking the option -- spawned by the improved financial setup of the salary cap -- to take one player and guarantee they'll be around for a long time. Injury isn't really a problem; the contracts will be insured. The only risk is you guess wrong, because this isn't JUST about being a good player, it's about being a good player AND willing to partner with the team to market and promote it AND be the kind of player you can trust to stay committed to playing and training.

The one assumption made with these contracts is that the financial basis of the game doesn't shrink radically; in practice, it doesn't even have to grow much, and if the game does grow, then these players become bargains in later years. If the league falls into financial disaster -- these contracts will be a minor part of a bigger crisis, so the actual risk is low.

The reality is, there's only one of these contracts per franchise -- and not all franchises will have a player they want to (or should give) this kind of deal. You can bet some players are going to want it, but teams are going to have to be careful choosing who they sign up. But I think this deal is a good deal for the Caps, just like the DiPietro deal was for the Islanders. And you can bet, franchises are going to screw this up and make the Caps signing of Jagr look like a bargain, and the CBA, as currently structured, makes it hard to get away from something like this. But when those teams do screw up, it shouldn't be taken as a reason to see all of these deals as bad. Bad deals are bad deals in any form...

I like it. Gutsy. And as long as Ovechkin doesn't turn into Sergei Samsonov, Leonsis is going to be seen as a genius down the road....

The NFL tried this kind of gambit with their franchise player tag -- to keep that key player out of free agency (teams are allowed to declare one player a franchise player, and sign them to a one year deal at least the average of the top five players in the league at that position). In practice, it's used to grab whatever player is hardest to sign and hogtie them, and so it hasn't really created that "face of the team" aspect as much as it has allowed teams to finesse plan B free agency somewhat. So this may well seem to be a place where the NHL is innovating in a better way than then NFL legislated in THEIR CBA.

james mirtle: Richards's big deal - A hockey journalist's blog

james mirtle: Richards's big deal - A hockey journalist's blog:

A little more than a year after Rick DiPietro's landmark, 15-year deal earned guffaws across the league, the Flyers are pulling the trigger on a deal that's likely to surpass the $67.5-million given to the Islanders goaltender.

And the Islanders are looking a lot less like idiots a year later, no?

The long contract actually has advantages under the CBA -- it lets you spread the cost across the years of the salary cap. If a player gets hurt, they go on IR, insurance pays the contract and they go off the cap. If they retire, they go off the cap.

The only place it hurts a team is if they guess wrong and the player ends up sucking (and you can't convince them to retire); at that point, teams have the option of waiving them to the minors, and if a player doesn't retire in disgust, they make their money at the AHL level and the cap hit is significantly reduced. Yes, it costs money to pay them, but for the higher revenue teams, money doesn't matter, "cap money" does, and if they can make the money disappear off the cap, they're okay.

does that mean these contracts are good for teams? If they guess right, they seem to be.

But guess wrong? you're saddled with a bad contract for a while -- but that was true under the old CBA. The options are somewhat more limited for a team, but they still have options.

So it turns out these things aren't so bad -- when used properly -- as the pundits who ripped Garth Snow said they were. What it really means is taht talent evaluation is even more key now, because you have to decide on your franchise players earlier and not guess wrong too often. So good teams will prosper, and bad teams will founder, just like in the days of the old CBA. And the first time one of these contracts blows up in a team's face, fans will rip the CBA, but in fact, a bad team is a bad team under any CBA, and good teams will find ways to make the CBA work for them.

SportingNews.com - Your expert source for NHL Hockey stats, scores, standings, blogs and fantasy news from NHL Hockey columnists

SportingNews.com - Your expert source for NHL Hockey stats, scores, standings, blogs and fantasy news from NHL Hockey columnists:

But despite being in first place in the ECHL's Pacific Division, the Wranglers aren't packing the Orleans. They average a little less than 4,600 fans per game, with the season-best 6,611 earlier this month for a game against the Idaho Steelheads.

Those are healthy numbers for a second-tier minor league franchise, but they also show Las Vegas isn't mad for hockey. And with an expansion city like Nashville struggling to draw 14,000 fans per game, that's not a trivial concern.

Which begs the next question: Given the difficulties teams experience drawing fans in the Sun Belt, would it really be a good idea for the league's owners to take that $300 million check, only to find they had once again tried to sell hockey to a market that didn't want anything to do with it?

Despite caterwauling to the contrary, the post-1990 era of expansion and relocation to the American South and West hasn't been a failure. It's a mixed bag. The expansion Florida Panthers and relocated Phoenix Coyotes have never drawn well. Nashville's struggles are well documented. The Carolina Hurricanes, who relocated from Hartford, reached the Stanley Cup Finals twice, winning in 2006. The franchise is stable, but not too much so.

Critics point to those teams and declare the Sun Belt experiment a failure. Those same folks are less likely to mention the Tampa Bay Lightning regularly play before sellout crowds. The Dallas Stars were a success at the box office from the moment they arrived from Minnesota. Such was the case as well in Denver, where the Colorado Avalanche had a 487-game consecutive sellout streak from its arrival from Quebec until October 2006.

As I'm typing this, I'm sitting in my hotel room in Las Vegas. There's no doubt in my mind that if an NHL team were playing in Las Vegas this weekend, I'd go to the game -- something I'm sure plenty of tourists from the frigid Northeast would take advantage of while visiting.

Every time the NHL's expanded, the negative comments about the cities has appeared. San Jose was laden with the reputation left from the Seals decades before, as if nothing had changed in the meantime. Today, it sells out 98% or more of its tickets per season (so the critics prefer to claim that there are merely JUST ENOUGH hockey fans in the bay area to fill the building....)

You have to be careful about using the minor league franchise in Vegas (or any city, for that matter), because the audiences and pricing are very different. When a sport "moves up a notch" in a city, many times most of the old fan base is left behind or marginalized, and it doesn't "upgrade" to the more expensive sport, it's replaced by a different audience (and left in the upper rows of the upper bowl).

That would be true of Vegas; a minor league team draws more from the working class and families; if you go, you won't see the major casinos advertising much (if at all) or keeping boxes or more than token seats; it won't be Caesar's Palace or the Flamingo sponsoring, it'll be Imperial Palace or one of the downtown casinos; you'll likely see the strip clubs as sponsors (they were for the Thunder, including having a girl carry a "period card" out onto the ice between periods, like a boxing match would).

The NHL wouldn't be competing for the family entertainment dollar, but against other events in the city, and that's part of the key -- it'll be more of an "event" marketing to attract visitors to the city as well as the more white collar worker. On the plus side, you can expect the major casinos to get involved in marketing and sponsorships and be looking at suites and tickets to ply on big rollers and other important visitors. Whether that's enough of a market to support Vegas, I'm no expert. The people who are experts seem to think it is, not just in hockey, but with the NBA actively sniffing around the city (at elast before the reffing scandal -- Vegas was the first time they hosted an all-star game in a city that wasn't a team city -- you think that was just for fun?), and even baseball -- the sports leagues clearly think there's money there for the right deal, but they all seem worried about the gambling aspect. In practice, today, with the internet and indian casinos and other gambling that's gone nationwide, I just don't see that as a real problem (if it ever was) any more, but a public perception, and that can be dealt with.

The biggest problem Vegas has had is venue. Thomas and Mack frankly sucked as a hockey venue (we saw the thunder there multiple times when they existed, including when future first draft pick Radek Bonk played for them...); not only did it suck, it was at best a negligent landlord, and in many ways a hostile one because it really only cared about UNLV basketball and major events. Today the Wranglers are at the Orleans Arena, a newer mid-sized arena, but the Orleans is a mile off the Strip and a 2nd tier hotel -- not a place that's going to draw from the major hotels or get a lot of "while we're here" crowd -- too many other attractions easier to get to.

I think Vegas would be a reasoonable risk; not a guaranteed success, but well worth doing. But it has to be remembered that Jack Kent Cooke used to talk about how many Canadians lived in Los Angeles, and then gripe that it was his luck that all the Canadians that moved into LA hated hockey... Depending on the visiting snowbirds to fill up the arena is risky, but take a look at the demographics of the city, and you see one of the fastest growing cities in the states -- and one full of former snowbirds taht have retired or moved there to get away from the snow. And THAT is an interesting segment to market to...

Tom Benjamin's NHL Weblog: The Unforeseen

Tom Benjamin's NHL Weblog: The Unforeseen:

Today, in the third season after the lockout that changed so many facets of the game, the NHL finds its popularity waning in three of its gold star American markets: Detroit, Dallas and Colorado...

...a disturbing trend has emerged from the myriad rule, schedule and economic changes foisted upon fans after a year without hockey. That is an erosion of three of the dominant American markets of the last decade, the collateral damage of a new economy that nobody saw coming in Dallas, Colorado and Detroit.

But it was foreseen and people did recognized the possibility of collateral damage in the three successful American markets. It was one of the dozens of possible scenarios discussed on this site during the labour dispute. Snafu - a regular contributor and Red Wing fan - considered this to be a likely result of the lockout and new CBA.

And if you ask me, it's not even remotely proven that the CBA is the primary cause of it.

It needs to be remembered that attendance is cyclic anyway. All three of these teams are at the end of a cycle where they've been a dominant, successful team with marquee Hall of Fame caliber players. In Detroit, Yzerman's gone, Hasek might as well be, Shanahan is in Detroit. In Colorado, no more Roy, no more Forsberg. In Dallas, many of the names the fans were used to are gone, and the big name, Modano, is fading rapidly to black (and was jerked around gracelessly by the team when they stripped him of the "C").

Both Dallas and Colorado were handed shiny brand new teams already finished and competitive and winning -- it was fairly easy for the fan base to buy into that, unlike a traditional expansion franchise like San Jose or Tampa or Atlanta. Those teams have never HAD down cycles where they've had to rebuild through youth and have a couple of down years as a result. We don't know what the fans will do when the team is mediocre, but we're going to find out. If you look at the history of almost every team in any sports league -- that always means reduced fan interest and fewer tickets sold. That's natural (except in Toronto, where there are simply too many fans clawing for too expensive tickets)

Also, let's not forget that Detroit has been seriously jacking up prices over the years -- and the local economy has hit a serious air pocket. They've finally found, the hard way, the point at which people say "love hockey, gotta pay the rent". Dallas is in a similar situation, and let's not forget a few years ago they moved into a new building and jacked up ticket prices in a major way when they did. When you're challenging for a Cup every year, you can raise prices -- but will the fans stay when you become merely decent?

All of this hand-wringing about these franchises ignores a lot of factors, some out of the team control (local economy), some within (arrogance towards the fans in Detroit, for instance), and the natural cycle. To blame this on the CBA is silly.

It also ignores the fact that in other cities, you're seeing teams that were in serious down cycles show a resurgence. Look at Chicago (finally!), look at St. Louis.

Back before the current Red Wing owners bought the team, we should remember that Detroit struggled to win and struggled to sell tickets -- while Chicago was a strong team with a full building. Then the Wings got a new owner who rebuilt the team and funded a better team and marketed it well, while Chicago stagnated, moved into a new building fans hated, had lousy teams and an owner that was arrogant towards its fans, and the fans ran away in droves. Now, the Wings are showing the signs of arrogance, and the new Wirtz in town seems to be a real breath of fresh air in Chicago, long needed.

It seems that Spector and Tom are arguing that a team that is good should ALWAYS be good, and the CBA should somehow be structured to support that. That would imply that the other teams in the league should always be weak; this is a variation of the "New York should always be in the playoffs to keep the networks happy" argument.

And that's false. the CBA should be set up to allow good management to succeed in whatever market, and no CBA can prevent economic collapse in a team's city, or save bad management from itself -- unless you want to go back to a model where the rich teams could spend whatever they want to buy themselves out of mistakes, but that leads to leagues where half the league is really a minor league system for the "real" teams (ask the Kansas City Royals fans; both of them).

Spector and Tom are taking part of what is the natural life cycle of teams and blaming the CBA for what is three teams coming to the end of a nice, long run -- and in the case of Detroit, shooting itself in the foot along the way with pricing in the face of a weak local economy. If the CBA is to blame for anything, it's that it no longer allows a team like Detroit to simply buy a team, it has to now go out and build one again. At the same time, that CBA is allowing teams like Chicago and Philly and the Islanders and St. Louis and even places like Columbus and Atlanta to improve their teams and become competitive quickly.

To me, the CBA is a GOOD THING here; instead of certain teams being able to guarantee their dominance, all teams now have a chance -- and that's good, unless you want to believe in a league where six or eight teams are the "real" teams and the rest are cannon fodder. One could in fact make an argument that part of the reason this league hasn't broken out of "regional sports" mode is because the old CBA made it hard for teams that weren't already able to spend lots of money on teams to build teams to compete with the "powerhouses" -- and now, they can, and teams like the Rangers and Red Wings aren'g going to be guaranteed playoff spots or high performing teams just because they can out-spend their peers.

Good teams in Atlanta and Columbus and St. Louis and Tampa will do wonders for growing this league, if the people who deep down inside want this league to contract and crawl back into it's "traditional" markets of Canada and the Northeast don't get in the way (again).

Funny thing is, Spector could have written this article five years ago about the death of the Blues, and ten years ago, his "powerhouse" Stars was actually a failing team in Minnesota and many were skeptical of the move to Dallas. And fifteen years ago, it would have been Chicago. But, of course, the real point here is to rip the CBA and Bettman, because that's what we do. Well, they do.

As always.

Reality is -- these up and downs are part of a natural cycle. Good teams stop being good, fan interest wanes. Bad owners struggle, good owners improve, and fan interest comes back. The only real difference in this CBA here is that there's no longer a guarantee that a deep set of pockets can spend themselves out of bad management decisions, and that is something I find hard to see as a bad thing. Yes, you're seeing weakness in some markets. But you're also seeing growth and resurging attendance and interest in others. But mentioning that might weaken the argument, no?

Brian Burke is trying to promote movement in the NHL

KuklasKorner : Hockey:

Brian Burke is trying to promote movement in the NHL.

Three executives told Sun Media yesterday that the Ducks president and GM has asked NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly to study a proposal that would allow teams to pick up a portion of a player’s contract to help facilitate trades.

I'm all for this, as long as the salary involved stays on the books as far as the cap is concerned. If a team wants to hold back part of a salary and have it count against their cap, be my guest.

The way it's structured, and the way this works in the NBA where value for value on contracts is required, means very little interesting trading and innovation happens. Give teams flexibility, just don't let them use it to get around the salary cap.

That could, in fact, lead to some interesting complexities -- if a player is later waived and sent down, or retires, or a team decides to buy out a player, it could not only benefit that team, but also a competitor that had held back some salary in an earlier trade. Wouldn't that be a hack!

Never the Fan's Fault

Tom Benjamin's NHL Weblog: Never the Fan's Fault:

Bunk. Whatever the Leaf problems - and I don't think they are as bad as the Toronto media makes out - none of them can be laid at the feet of the fan. The fan can't do anything about the fact that corporations will buy all the tickets win or lose, and the fan can't force the league to put another team in southern Ontario.

Furthermore, while the Leafs may make a ton of money with a mediocre team, they would make much more with a Stanley Cup Champion. Even if that was not the case, the hockey people hired want to win just as much as the hockey people in every other city. Perhaps more, simply because the pressure in that market is so unrelenting. Finally, I don't think anyone can accuse the Leafs of being unwilling to invest. If anything they have been too willing to spend money over the years. They haven't necessarily spent wisely, but they have spent.

I almost want to agree with Tom here, but there are a couple of problems with his assumptions here.

First problem: corporations may well buy most of the seats, but someone inside that corporation is making the decision to buy them and is allocating the money to pay for them. And that person is very likely a FAN, or they would be spending the money somewhere else. Corporate spending starts with a fan who decides to do the spending, because it's a lot more fun to get their company to pay for the tickets than paying for them directly.

Second problem: there have been studies in baseball (I'll try to find references, I don't have them handy) that show that the MOST PROFITABLE teams tend to be teams with really strong fan bases who play .500ish baseball but never spend the money to go out and Win The Big One. Two words: Chicago Cubs.

And the Chicago Cubs are a great analogy for the Leafs, because of the real core of the second problem with what Tom says: it's true that the hockey people hired want desperately to win -- but the people that hire them want to make money. In Chicago, it's the Tribune, in Toronto, it's the Teacher's Pension plan. And if you look at both organizations, the "Hockey people" and "baseball people" in management tend to turn over fairly frequently, because they come in thinking they can fix the organization, and they quickly learn that their bosses don't really want them to, because it'd cost money....

I think you're seeing similar problems with Sather in Edmonton -- After years of buying in expensive free agents who didn't perform well enough, he finally started to restructure the team towards home-built youth and good drafting, and you saw that team really improve. And this year? Way overpaid for some free agents and they're struggling again. Back to the Good Old (or Bad Old) Rangers. Not because Sather went senile again, but, I think, because his uber-bosses told him they wanted "names" to market around, and that was more important than actually winning hockey games. New York is, after all, a Marquee city, and when you have a Marquee, you need Marquee names.

So I wouldn't be suprised if Sather left New York fairly soon. He tried to fix the team, and then something made him go off and start buying expensive free agents again. I don't think that was Sather's idea, either, although he won't say so.

On the Forecheck: Bouncing Balls - NHL Statistics, Analysis, and Opinion

On the Forecheck: Bouncing Balls - NHL Statistics, Analysis, and Opinion:

Thanks again to Richard Lawson at the Nashville Post, we have word that Jim Balsillie is still working hard to purchase the Nashville Predators, this time by sending a note to the Nashville Sports Authority that claims that if he owned the team, "the existing arena operating agreements will require no changes whatsoever unless they benefit the Authority and the residents of Nashville."

Is this an effort to undermine the current Freeman/Nashville negotiations, or indeed a genuine change of heart on Balsillie's part? His representative also wrote in that note,

Okay, anyone who thinks the Balsillie offer is on the up and up, please raise your hand. I have a bridge for sale. Cheap. One owner. Only drove it to church on sunday.

This offer is perfect for Balsillie's long-term goal of getting this team to Hamilton. It's designed to screw up the local ownership's push for fixes to the deal by giving the local politicos an easy out for avoiding looking like they're subsidizing the team to people who don't want to invest in it. After all, Balsillie will take it without changes or subsidies.

Of course he will. it leaves him with a lease trivially easy to break in a year or so, after the "white knight" comes to the realization it's not going to work. His protestations to try to make it work notwithstanding, he doesn't have to screw this stuff up to make the lease breakable, he can do it merely by doing a good faith effort, suck up the losses for a couple of years, and then break the lease.

Given this second round in is something like $25m less in the price for the franchise? that's a nice chunk of change he can invest in letting the team lose money, no? And in the end, the money he pputs in is about the same, but he has a free pass out of town.

His offer to bring in local owners? Sure -- they're just as easy to buy out again later. It's nice eye candy, but it doesn't mean anything.

And that assumes a few things.

First, it assumes that once he gets them to nuke the deal with the locals, he doesn't come in and start negotiating. And what leverage do you have once the other owners get told to stuff it and leave?

Second, it presumes he's actually going to follow through on his offers. What if he doesn't? Or if he does them badly?

Third, it assumes the NHL will approve him as an owner. Given you can pretty much bet that Balsillie as an owner will someday lead to a lawsuit over moving the team to Hamilton, I think it's far from given the NHL will let him join the club at this point.

We aren't even talking about whether moving a team to Hamilton is good for the league. that's an entirely different argument...

If Nashville falls for this gambit by Balsillie, they WILL lose the Predators. Maybe not for a couple of years, but they will. And they'll deserve to. Now, with the other ownership group, will the Predators be saved? Maybe. Maybe not. But with Balsillie in the house, you KNOW you have no chance.