Balsillie versus Bettman

Up here this is BIG news. Canada’s RIM billionaire, Jim Balsillie, wants to buy the failed Phoenix Coyotes hockey team and move them to southern Ontario. Gary Bettman, NHL Commissioner, is against it.

Let’s get back to basics. Phoenix is in a desert. It is, as I’ve said before (Dec. 21, 08 entry), the hottest city in the world with a population of a million or more. Hockey, last I looked, is played on ice. I, for one, want hockey to fail in Phoenix for the same reason I’d want beach volleyball to fail on Baffin Island: some things just don’t belong together.

Gary Bettman, American businessman raised under the tutelage of David Stern in the NBA, is simply, as most Canadians will tell you, the wrong man for the job. He gets hockey even less than me, who at least grew up in Boston when Bobby Orr was working his magic. Gary Bettman sees markets and tv contracts and dollars in places where there are lots of people but, alas, no hockey fans. It doesn’t take an MBA to know the NBA is no model for expansion.

Listen Gary, you want your dreams of NHL expansion to work? Then look to water when it freezes—that’s expansion. And it happens every winter all across Canada, on ponds and backyards, on the canal running through the nation’s capital. You want real expansion? Bring back the Winnipeg Jets! Bring back the Quebec Nordiques!...Then you'll have fans who actually know the difference between icing and a cake.