All of my hockey blogging buddies are wondering which team it was that contacted the city of Winnipeg to inquire about relocating the franchise. Like the others, I don't know who it is. But together, we ought to be able to figure out which team it isn't -- especially if we work together. So let's start the list with teams we definitely know aren't going anywhere. I picked the following on the basis of market strength, ticket sales, and age of their arena (with explanations where needed):
East
Toronto
Philadelphia
Ottawa
Boston
Montreal
NY Rangers
Buffalo (new local owner)
West
Detroit
Colorado
San Jose
Vancouver
St. Louis
Calgary
Dallas (Hicks losing money, but not so much that he'd move the team)
Los Angeles
Phoenix (brand new arena)
Minnesota (always sold out)
Edmonton (even a Canadian team in trouble won't be moving to Winnipeg)
Columbus (too new to the league)
Chicago
Ok, here's the rest of the list, with reasons why we can eliminate them:
NY Islanders (local owner, will eventually get new arena)
New Jersey
Tampa Bay
Atlanta (new owners -- who also own the arena and NBA Hawks)
Florida
Carolina
Washington (owner has option to buy NBA Wizards, sale of Caps might endanger that)
Pittsburgh (denies report)
Nashville
Anaheim (moving Ducks, or selling them to owner who would=PR disaster for O.C.-based Disney)
Which leaves us with:
New Jersey (almost moved to Nashville before 1995 Cup Win)
Tampa Bay (leading division, but maybe re-thinking this Florida thing)
Florida (middling squad, empty seats)
Carolina (only three weeks until Daytona 500, arena emptying)
Pittsburgh (shell of a team, may not survive lockout)
Nashville (bloom of the rose in Hockey Tonk, though team is on edge of playoff berth)
Of the five remaining, I'm leaning towards Pittsburgh, their public denials notwithstanding. Anybody else want to take a whack at it?
Pittsburgh makes the most sense to me, though I wouldn’t think Mario would want to give up on the city like that. I can’t see how they’ll survive the potential lockout unless the League does something to save them. They’d probably be the first to go.
I’ve been told Pittsburgh is the place for sure. There were a ton of initial reports with some quotes which I saw on television, ESPN and otherwise – I’m hanging this on them.
Chicago isn’t immune, if you ask me. Seen any Hawks fans recently? It may be a huge market but that doesn’t constitute a guarantee of keeping a team. Nobody cares about that franchise, including the owners. Sad but true.
I’ve also heard Pittsburgh. I’d rank the possibilities of your final six moving as:
1. Pittsburgh (can’t build arena, city in decline)
2. Florida
3. Tampa Bay
4 (T). Carolina (owner has bigger ego than TB/Fla, otherwise the Canes would be #2/#3. The best way to save the team, short of major financial restructuring to bring ticket prices down, would be for a big-name free agent to be interested in both the Red Wings and Carolina. Karmanos would open the wallet to screw Mike Ilitch — remember the Canes signed Sergei Fedorov to a $28M offer sheet in ‘99.)
4 (T). Nashville (crowds should be getting better now that the Titans’ season is done, and Nashville is a showbiz city that needs a place to “see and be seen”)
6. New Jersey (still got fan support)
Here’s my whack at it: The whole story is fiction, and no team is seriously looking at moving to Winnipeg, or anywhere else in Canada.
It makes absolutely no sense for a team to move north of the border, where its arena revenue–that’s ticket sales as well as the more-lucrative advertising money and other non-hockey events–will come in the form of the Canadian dollar, which is worth about 60 percent of the U.S. bill. That means a team in Winnipeg would have to sell twice as much product as it would in any American market. There is no team in the NHL whose straits are that dire.
If a team or teams are looking to move, they’ll opt for Portland Oregon, Houston or even Kansas City before looking at Canada. That’s the plain truth. Winnipeg is only being mentioned because of the stunt offer made by its council a couple of weeks ago to the Penguins; there’s nothing to it.
That was a $38 million offer sheet duringt the 1998 season, Josh. And you’re right about Karmanos, he would love to screw Illitch over again. That deal didn’t just screw Mr. I. though, it screwed over the whole league by setting a new high standard for league salaries. Karmanos is now one of the biggest advocates of a salary cap but he was one of the key men responsible for this salary inflation.
CT’s analysis is founded on a fallacy about exchange rates. (Because Canada’s unit of account is smaller, businesses here must sell more “product” to make the same real earnings? Huhwha?) It’s also factually mistaken: the Canadian dollar is worth 78 cents U.S. as I type this. The commodity-backed Canbuck is volatile, which is a problem, and until recently the long-term trend was certainly steadily down. But this year Canadian clubs have unexpectedly made back many years’ worth of exchange-rate erosion in their budgets. Which they hedge against by means of financial instruments anyway.
Matt: that’s what I get for going on memory and not Googling. February ‘98, 6 years, $38 mil, including a $12M bonus for taking his team to the conference finals (which was a direct shot at the Wings, since the Canes weren’t going anywhere that season).
The owners’ conduct begs the question: does the NHL really want to become a 16-team league? Because there probably aren’t more than 16 teams that can afford to keep going the way things are going.
Besides Columbus being “too new to the league,” it isn’t going anywhere because there are 14,000 season ticket holders and about 17,000 thru the doors every night to see a last place team. The support of the corporate community is still strong, too.
If anybody moves, I would think it would be one of the Florida teams. Two seems too many for a warm weather state.
Also, could somebody explain to me why anybody would want to move back to a city that failed in its first attempt with a team. What has changed that would make it a viable move now?
I agree with many who say that Winnipeg is a stretch for the NHL, but the “failed the first time” argument is plain wrong. The league has returned to lots of cities it has left (some quality markets too, like Minnesota and Colorado.)
The biggest change in Winnipeg is a new, more state-of-the-art arena, which is a big upgrade over where the Jets used to play. The other is a presumably more dedicated fansbase, although the counterargument there is that lingering resentment from losing the Jets may keep them cool to the NHL in general (but if they did indeed get a team of their own, I’d imagine Winny fans would embrace it).
Regarding the exchange rates: Sorry, but that is the prime factor in a team not relocating to Canada, and for one major reason: A team’s main expense, player salaries, have to be paid in U.S. dollars. That’s not going to change, regardless of what the new CBA looks like. In essence, a team that goes to Canada would have the U.S. currency follow it. It’s not like another line of business, where if a company moves north of the border, all their expenses, including employee salaries, convert to Canadian funds. A hockey team will be collecting Canadian money from its market, and then have to convert it to American money to meet a payroll that’ll be around $30 million minimum. That’s why the team would have to sell that much more product in Winnipeg than it would comparably in the States (because, no matter what the exact exchange rate is, it’s always going to be lower than the U.S. dollar–that’s a fact, and the goal of every government that comes into Ottawa). Add to that probable higher taxes (as Canadian communities have, in the past, shown reluctance to give teams the kind of tax breaks found in U.S. markets) and difficulty in attracting free agents because of higher income taxes, and the best–the very best–a team in Winnipeg could do is match what it has in even the most difficult market in the U.S.
As I said, this whole idea of a team relocating to Winnipeg is simply not going to happen. You can have fun speculating on which teams “seem” like weak links ready to move, but all this conjecture is basically on the level of fantasy league sports.
It was a good guess though, Josh. I was surprised it was that much myself. I seemed to remember it as $36 million but I wasn’t sure so I did Google it. that $12 million was a real dirty shot by Karmanos but there is no love lost between the Illitch’s and him. The Wings obviously had to pay that since they won the Cup that year. Mr. I. had to dig deep.