Nashville, we barely even knew ya
So there goes the best “rival” in the Central Division. Craig Leopold, owner of the Nashville Predators, announced that he is selling his franchise to Jim Balsillie. Balsillie, you may recall, was the guy who was the front-runner to buy the Pittsburgh Penguins but eventually pulled his offer, probably due to pressure from the league to keep the team in Pittsburgh. Balsillie was expected to move the franchise to Ontario.
So the thing to pay attention to is whether the league courts Balsillie or tries to find a potential owner who would keep the team in Nashville. I suspect this is a deal that has already received the league’s blessing -otherwise why would Balsillie even make the offer so soon after being rebuffed by the league? It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if the league told him to bow out of the Pittsburgh bidding and that he would get another franchise in fairly short order. It has been no secret that the Predators have struggled to gain support and that Leopold could have pulled the team out of the city as soon as the 2008-09 season if certain benchmarks weren’t reached.
Moving the franchise to Ontario makes perfect sense. For those who aren’t familiar with the geographic makeup of the province it is likely the biggest hotbed of hockey in North America. Within the province you have Toronto and Ottawa. But just beyond its borders you also have Detroit, Buffalo and - perhaps a stretch - Minneapolis. Legendary coach Herb Brooks said that Minnesotans think of themselves as southern Manitobans. But Manitoba doesn’t have any current NHL teams. Toronto is obviously the Notre Dame of the NHL - and they’ve had about as much playoff success lately. It is the media epicenter of the NHL. Ottawa, meanwhile, has been a very successful franchise over the past decade and has a chance to claim their first Stanley Cup since being reconstituted in the nation’s capital.
Detroit and Minneapolis produce lots of hockey talent, with the University of Minnesota, the University of Michigan, and Michigan State University being some of the best college hockey teams. There are more NHL players who hail from Minnesota than from any other state in the U.S. Moving the North Stars to Dallas was a joke that was only corrected when the Wild joined the league. That isn’t a knock on Dallas so much as the idea that an NHL franchise couldn’t flourish in Minnesota.
While I feel bad for the fans who have taken to the Predators and are about to lose their team, I think it’s time for the NHL to acknowledge the cold, hard facts of what it is going to take for the league to be successful. The league cannot award franchises to teams that are not in major media markets instead of placing those teams in Canada. So moving Nashville, which is in television market #30, to Kansas City, which is television market #31, makes no sense. The NHL is better off moving the franchise to Ontario, which is the most populous province in Canada.
Looking further down the road, Eric Duhatschek imagines what the NHL will look like in a little over 40 years. He imagines a league made up of teams in Canada, the United States and Europe. Travel is the biggest issue - the Red Wings bitch about traveling to the west coast, so I can only imagine what their thoughts would be about traveling to Europe for road games. With that being said, I think this is something the NHL needs to embrace sooner rather than later. My guess is you can have two separate leagues and schedule some road trips between leagues where the teams would play both in North America and Europe. You can even cut back the total number of games but keep the same length of the regular season to facilitate travel and rest.
There are enough hockey fans in Canada, the United States and Europe to make the league wildly popular amongst a pretty large population. It would also make the league even more international than other professional sports leagues in the United States. Premier League soccer seems to be gaining a foothold in the states, so there is reason to believe expanding the NHL to Europe would be much more successful than putting franchises in places like Nashville and Phoenix.
Craig Leopold Jim Balsillie Nashville Predators Red Wings2 Comments
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
[…] Reasearch in Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie is pulling out all of the stops to buy an NHL franchise and move the team to southern Ontario. When I commented on the initial offer to purchase the Nashville Predators I assumed his advances were probably welcomed by the league. Balsillie, you may recall, was the guy who was the front-runner to buy the Pittsburgh Penguins but eventually pulled his offer, probably due to pressure from the league to keep the team in Pittsburgh. Balsillie was expected to move the franchise to Ontario. […]
[…] Reactions from the Blogosphere Dave @ Gorilla Crouch offers up his own opinion on the potential sale: So there goes the best “rival” in the Central Division. Craig Leopold, owner of the Nashville Predators, announced that he is selling his franchise to Jim Balsillie. Balsillie, you may recall, was the guy who was the front-runner to buy the Pittsburgh Penguins but eventually pulled his offer, probably due to pressure from the league to keep the team in Pittsburgh. Balsillie was expected to move the franchise to Ontario. […]