Easy Dirty Ugly Dirty Money

I am always always happy when people start talking about a theoretical second Toronto team. As I see it, it makes sense, it makes a lot of sense and the only people in the NHL who disagree with that are the guys in charge of doling out the franchises. The NHL has its own plans for relocation but they don't involve Canada. It's an open secret that the Hockey Establishment wants a team in Kansas City, for all their secret and probably nefarious reasons. If anything has given me joy over the last few months (and it hasn't been the Leafs) it's been watching the NHL stumble around, caught with its pants down over its involvement with William "Boots" del Baggio and the sale of the Nashville Predators.

Have you been following this? I hope so because it is a good story. I hope so because this gets dirty. I hope so because this is the kind of stuff people lose important high up hockey jobs over. Maybe this story is familiar to you. You remember Jim Balsillie and his attempted takeover of said Predators and you remember Gary Bettman's ham fisted refusal of all that good Canadian money. He didn't want Balsillie's money because Ballsy was going to uproot the team and take it to Hamilton, Ontario and Hamilton, Ontario is not a city where any self respecting hockey franchise would find itself out past dark.

So the NHL turns down Balsillie and his guaranteed millions and instead turn to Boots del Baggio because Boots is buddy buddy with the hockeystocracy and Boots understands that the correct place to put an uprooted hockey franchise is not in Canada, where they probably already have enough hockey anyway, but in Kansas City where it is well known that local hockey fans have been in steep withdrawal-like symptoms since 1976, the year the Kansas City Scouts up rooted and headed for the snowier slopes of Colorado. (The Kansas City Scouts would be a pretty good name for a team if it was supposed to be parsed "the Kansas City Scouts," you know?). A hockey team in the KC is in line with NHL thinking and though Boots can't scrounge up quite as much buillion as certain Canadian billionaires, he gets the coveted Nashville stake.

This seems so obvious in retrospect, I'm sure the NHL is now realizing, but selling shares of their business to a man nicknamed "Boots" was a Bad idea (what are boots made for?). There is a new sports arena in Kansas City, built specially to attract any misplaced major league sports teams that might wander by and you maybe already know who owns that new arena. It's owned by Phil Anchutz, who also owns the LA Kings and probably a bazillion other things. So Anschutz owns an empty stadium in Kansas City. This story is great and it keeps getting better. This is the kind of Woodward and Bernstein stuff makes me want to enroll into j-school right now.

You will or will not be surprised to learn that a man named "Boots" did not actually have enough money to buy his own hockey franchise. And by "enough", I should say "any". But gosh darn it this is America pre-credit crisis and there is always someone willing to give an enterprising entrepreneur with a questionable nickname a line of credit. In this case it was our friend Anschutz who stepped up to the plate, along with buddy Craig Leipold, owner of the Minnesota Wild, both of whom have probably played more than a few rounds of golf with Gary Bettman, if you catch my drift. Now we have two NHL owners lending money to a third soon-to-be-owner. And that third owner is one or two bad season in Nashville away from flipping the team into another city, into a building owned by his creditors.

Business as usual until Boots del Baggio's con man act runs dry and he files for bankruptcy and we find out's he's in the hole for almost $60 million dollars. This wouldn't be so bad if Bettman's NHL didn't already have a track record of selling franchises to insolvent fraudsters and if the other guy offering to buy the Predators hadn't been so obviously a better choice.

This is all of course, I hasten to mention, all pure SPECULATION and should be treated as such as it's all before the courts as we speak. Boots is up on fraud charges plus a messy bankruptcy. If you want to read more, keep your eye on your local drugstore's literature section under legal thrillers, if you know what I mean.

It's also interesting to note that because Boots' creditors include two NHL owners in Anschutz and Leipold, those two may now theoretically own part of the Nashville Predators, which would obviously go against NHL bylaws. One more thing to think about.

I hope this gets ugly. This might have heavy fallout on Gary Bettman. This might cost Bettman his job. This might be the best worst mistake the NHL ever made.

At Least We Got Somebody?

The Maple Leafs were late to the free agent dance again, and while they didn't end up waltzing away with a complete minger, they didn't quite end up with the homecoming queens. Fergie picked up Jason Blake for a lot of money and a long time, and while it's not entirely a bad move - adding a 40 goal scorer is never bad per se - but still, the dude is 33 dudes, and he's only now starting to be a premier goal scorer? I mean, you have to be suspicious of a guy who puts up career numbers in a contract year, especially this late in the game.

On the other hand, I'm also pretty glad that the Leafs didn't break the bank to sign Danny Briere or Chris Drury or Scott Gomez. Anything past 5 years on a contract and you have to wonder how far ahead the people responsible are really thinking.

Philadelphia and the Rangers are now my two least favourite teams in the East, incidentally. Phillie's looting of Nashville to pick up Hartnell and Timonen left a really sour taste in my mouth, and now they have Briere for forever, Smith from Edmonton plus Biron in net and it's almost like last season never even happened. I seriously hope they pull a Boston. And over in New York, they've actually built a team in which Jaromir Jagr is only the third highest paid player, which is such an impossible sentence that it can only come out of Broadway.

And now with the cap hitting fifty million, it looks like it's back to business as usual for the NHL, with the divide between small and large market teams becoming visible once again. Poor Buffalo which lost its two best players, plus Zubrus if that counts for anything; the Islanders who will have no chance of repeating their unlikely run to the playoffs now that half their players have been bought out from under them; and saddest of all Nashville, who saw a championship calibre team cannabalized right before their very eyes in a matter of weeks. I don't think there is anything sadder in pro sports than a great team being dismantled for financial reasons.

Paul Kariya, keeping with the free agent theme, must know something we don't, because he has signed away the last years of his prime to St. Louis, which is not a team that looks like it will be a contender any time soon. You'd think for a guy who still needs a Stanley Cup that he would have chosen any number of contenders that were willing to pay him money, and yet he lumps on with a team that's still rebuilding. Sticking with St. Louis, they did it again. They resigned a player they traded at the deadline last year, this time Keith Tkachuk, previously Doug Weight. This is a way uncool practice that should be stopped.

Back to the Leafs, Fergie is going with essentially the same team as last year, but with Raycroft splitting time with Vesa Toskala, and Jason Blake on Sundin's wing. Steen, Wellwood and Coliacovo are all a year older, and hopefully that much better, Antropov will stay healthy and chip in at least 20 (I'm not even kidding dudes), Ponikarovsky has 30 in him, I know it and Mats Sundin will score a reliable thirty goals, seventy points. With the stars aligned, this team can make the playoffs, can win a round or two as well.

It's not a Stanley Cup team though.

Jason

For-Gone Conclusion

(Take a moment, please, to mull over the brilliance of today's post title. If there were Oscars for that sort of thing, you'd be looking at the front-runner)

The Maple Leafs took on Philadelphia today, and they got a little surprise present before the game. Peter Forsberg was a late scratch. Peter Forsberg, scratched? It doesn't take Bob McKenzie to figure out what that could mean, and by the first intermission, a firm deal had been completed, that sent Forsberg to Nashville for a a couple of youngsters and a first round pick. Nothing less than you'd expect for the buzziest player heading into the trade deadline (you have to think the schmucks behind the all day Tradecentre coverage spat out their overpriced sparkling water when they heard that).

The game was, if you'll excuse the pun, a forgone conclusion at that point. Without their best thing in orange, and playing on home ice (where they have won five time all season), the Flyers were done. Toronto scored three times in the first period for their first win in three games (which included a loss to Nashville and two shootout defeats) and their Behemoth Line (consisting of the vertically unchallenged Sundin, Ponikarovsky and Antropov) had two goals as they walked to 4-2 win.

OK, forget the Leafs; the real story is Nashville. As we mentioned recently, even before this blockbuster of a doozy, Nashville is legit. They were the top team in the league before the trade, and now, with Forsberg thrown in the mix, what does that make them now?

Favourites to win the cup, if anything. Forsberg has all that wonderful, intangible playoff experience you'll remember, something Nashville, as a whole, does not. In fact, Forsberg has put up more points in the post season than Nashville's entire roster.

Caveats abound of course; we are talking about the man who plays every game like it's his last and hasn't had anything approaching a full season since 02/03. If Forsberg goes down before the playoffs, or misses any significant time, well, it will all have been for nothing, especially if Forsberg walks at the end of the season as a free agent. That's worst case scenario though. Nashville is deeper than the Pacific, meaning Forsberg won't be asked to carry anything heavier than the power play, and he's not here to hoist Nashville on his shoulders like Joe Thornton did for San Jose. Reduced ice time, and more realistic expectations for Forsberg mean he is much more likely to finish the season on both feet, and with a contract extension to boot.

It says here that Nashville is our favourite to win the cup, we only hope Nashvillians (Survey question: residents of Nashville should be referred to as Nashvillains. YES, or, AWESOME?) are paying attention.

Jason

Sidenote: Hey casual Canadian sports fan, have you ever thought to yourself, "boy, I really like the the traditional sports newscast format, but wouldn't it be great if they made it more like Entertainment Tonight?" Because, if you have, you should totally check out Sportsnet's new reinvention, Sportsnet Connected. Because while having two guys in suits who know their sports banter back and forth is OK, what sports reporting was really missing was a casual dresscode, vacuous, permacheerful women with fake smiles and lots and lots of faux drama. Thank you Sportsnet, thank you for pushing that envelope - wait no, what we meant to say was that this is terrible, terrible idea and whichever smartass marketing exec is responsible for this deserves to be fired. Sorry for the confusion.

OK, You Can Stop Being Surprised Now

Here's what pisses us off: people who act surprised when the topic of the NHL's best team comes up. Do you even know which team is tops? Because it's not Buffalo, and it's not Anaheim.

It's Nashville.

Please, let's start giving them some 'spect, because these guys, and especially their coach, Barry "My Suits Are Just Too Small" Trotz are a little starved for attention. You can be sure if this collection of twenty-two guys played with say, a flying wheel, or a blue maple leaf instead of... whatever that is that they wear now, you would hear a lot more about the Predators.

Let's do something about that. The Maple Leafs are in town on Thursday, so apropos of that, let's talk Nashville. Nobody seems to want to give them the recognition (They only had one player at the All-Star game), and by nobody, we mean nobody on the Atlantic seaboard, which is really all that matters. Long disparaged as a team that simply should not be, Nashville is, as they say, a "non-traditional" market (which is the aristhockeyracy's code for, "it doesn't snow there!!"). They kicked off in '98 winning all of 28 games. Six years later, they posted their first winning season and were treated to a first round playoffaganza with the Red Wings, which they lost in six.

Last season was their coming out party, going toe-to-toe with Detroit all season long, for Central bragging rights, and they would've gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for Tomas Vokoun and his meddling blood-clot disease. Nashville lost in the first round to San Jose behind back-up Chris Mason, but the rink was set for next year. Too bad nobody north of the Mason-Dixon line noticed.

Well, 'cept us of course. You'll note at the bottom where we put Nashville in the cup final.

How can everybody miss it? Just look at their roster, which is so chock full of quality guys it almost makes us sick. Kariya, Timonen, Arnott, Sullivan, Dumont, Vokoun... how do all of these guys land on the same team and not draw attention?

Whatever, it's time for the non-traditional markets to take over. The Original Six (except Detroit of course) have shown themselves to be inept and the Stanley Cup hasn't seen any snow in three years now. Nashville is looking set to make it four.

Jason

P.S - We're pretty sure we are the first to use the word "aristhockeyracy" in a sentence.