Post by dhildeb1 on May 19, 2009 1:07:17 GMT -5
My apologies if this article was linked to previously...
slapshot.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/16/what-southern-ontario-means-and-why-losing-the-sabres-could-crush-the-nhl/?scp=5&sq=Phoenix%20Coyotes&st=cse
What Balsillie Means by ‘Southern Ontario,’ and Why Losing the Sabres Could Crush the N.H.L.
By JEFF Z. KLEIN
Throughout the Jim Balsillie-Phoenix Coyotes saga of the last couple of weeks, news reports and Balsillie himself have tossed around the words “southern Ontario” pretty freely. But that’s an inexact term, and its use serves Balisillie in a very real way.
That’s because the main obstacle to Balsillie’s scheme for putting a team in Hamilton isn’t really the Toronto Maple Leafs; it’s the Buffalo Sabres — a team that could conceivably be destroyed if Balsillie is able to defy N.H.L. rules in court and install a team in Canada’s Steel City. But the use by news outlets, commentators and Basillie of the broader term “southern Ontario” obfuscates the threat to the Sabres — and the possibility of the N.H.L. gaining a great hockey town, Hamilton, at the expense of losing another of the same size, Buffalo.
Note interviewer Ron MacLean’s explicit approval of a Coyotes move to southern Ontario during this on-air chat with Balsillie on “Hockey Night in Canada,” and the absence of any talk about the effect such a move would have on the Sabres:
Here’s why that southern Onatrio trope works so well for Balsillie.
When it comes to hockey, there’s a very real difference between “southern Ontario” and “Hamilton,” the specific place within southern Ontario where Balsillie wants to put a team. But first you must familiarize yourself with these terms if you live outside the: (a) GTA, (b) Golden Horseshoe, (c) Niagara Peninsula or (d) Niagara Frontier (translations: a. Greater Toronto Area, the fourth largest metropolitan region on the continent, after New York, Los Angeles and Chicago; b. the GTA’s densely populated corridor along the western shore of Lake Ontario, including Hamilton, Canada’s ninth-largest city; c. the smaller Ontario cities between Hamilton and Buffalo; (d) the U.S. side of the border region, which includes Buffalo, 45 miles from Hamilton and 90 from Toronto).
With the GTA so huge and so deeply into hockey, it’s easy to see why Balsillie would want to own a team there. Balsillie lives in Waterloo, also the location of his company Research in Motion, makers of the BlackBerry. Waterloo is just north of Hamilton.
Here’s the rub. Under longstanding N.H.L. rules, Hamilton lies within the Buffalo Sabres’ territory. Anything having to do with N.H.L. or affiliated minor league hockey within a 50-mile radius of the Sabres’ home rink in downtown Buffalo has to be approved by the Sabres. Hamilton’s Copps Coliseum is 45 miles from downtown Buffalo — a problem the Hamilton City Council knew about before construction began in 1983 but chose to ignore by jettisoning alternative plans to build the rink farther to the north. (Nice timeline on the history of Copps Coliseum in this article from The Hamilton Spectator.)
If Balsillie were to build a new rink in, say, Waterloo, or in the nearby cities of Kitchener, Guelph or Cambridge — all just north of Hamilton and therefore beyond the territorial reach of the Sabres — he would have only the Leafs to bargain with. The Leafs, the N.H.L.’s richest team, could well afford to have another team in the GTA, as long as the extremely wealthy Balsillie paid them an extremely high indemnity.
But the Sabres are always in a very precarious financial position, given Buffalo’s shrinking size and awful economy. The Sabres (company name Niagara Frontier Hockey, L.P.) depend on the roughly 15 percent of their business that comes from the Niagara Peninsula, all the way up the Golden Horseshoe to Hamilton. Never mind that after almost 40 years most of the Canadians who attend Sabres games do not root for Buffalo; the main thing is that they’re helping to fill the HSBC Arena.
It would take an enormous indemnification payment to the Sabres to make them give up as much as 15 percent of their annual business — an amount that Balsillie is trying to get out of paying by trying to strike down the N.H.L. territory rules in a Phoenix court. Unless the Sabres — who were themselves being operated by the league and at risk of folding before Tom Golisano bought them in 2003 — get that kind of big money, they will never approve a Coyotes move to Hamilton that could easily drive them out of business.
In much of the cheerleading coverage of the current Balsillie vs. N.H.L. saga from some Canadian sources, the use of the vague “southern Ontario” obscures the potential damage to the Sabres that Balsillie’s move to Hamilton could cause (and note the choices for describing Balsillie in this Globe and Mail piece: hero or martyr — your call). Another question: why has almost no one asked why Balsillie doesn’t simply back construction of a new rink in Kitchener-Waterloo, so that his southern Ontario team would do less damage to another existing N.H.L. club?
What would the N.H.L., and hockey in general, lose if a Hamilton team were to cause the Sabres to fold, as owner Golisano has warned? Beyond a historic club with an outlandishly loyal following — what other U.S. city could have hosted the N.H.L.’s first New Year’s Day outdoor game so successfully? — it would lose plenty.
Buffalo is by far the N.H.L.’s strongest TV market in the U.S., despite its small size. For the Sabres-Rangers series in 2007, more people in Buffalo tuned in than in New York. The Sabres also are often the No. 1 American team in sweater sales.
The number of hockey people who live or have lived in the Buffalo area is astounding, even those who never played for or worked for the club, like Marcel Dionne and Darryl Sittler. And due partly to the presence of the Sabres, the city has produced a rising number of N.H.L.’ers, like overall No. 1 draft pick Patrick Kane of the Blackhawks or Cup winners Todd Marchant and Kevyn Adams.
All that is at risk if Balsillie’s plan, as presently conceived, goes through. No hockey fan wants to see Hamilton, or southern Ontario, denied a team, and the vast majority probably would not be too unhappy to see the Coyotes leave Phoenix. But to gain a true hockey city in a way that would cause the destruction of another true hockey city … is that what fans, Canadian fans, really want?
slapshot.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/16/what-southern-ontario-means-and-why-losing-the-sabres-could-crush-the-nhl/?scp=5&sq=Phoenix%20Coyotes&st=cse
What Balsillie Means by ‘Southern Ontario,’ and Why Losing the Sabres Could Crush the N.H.L.
By JEFF Z. KLEIN
Throughout the Jim Balsillie-Phoenix Coyotes saga of the last couple of weeks, news reports and Balsillie himself have tossed around the words “southern Ontario” pretty freely. But that’s an inexact term, and its use serves Balisillie in a very real way.
That’s because the main obstacle to Balsillie’s scheme for putting a team in Hamilton isn’t really the Toronto Maple Leafs; it’s the Buffalo Sabres — a team that could conceivably be destroyed if Balsillie is able to defy N.H.L. rules in court and install a team in Canada’s Steel City. But the use by news outlets, commentators and Basillie of the broader term “southern Ontario” obfuscates the threat to the Sabres — and the possibility of the N.H.L. gaining a great hockey town, Hamilton, at the expense of losing another of the same size, Buffalo.
Note interviewer Ron MacLean’s explicit approval of a Coyotes move to southern Ontario during this on-air chat with Balsillie on “Hockey Night in Canada,” and the absence of any talk about the effect such a move would have on the Sabres:
Here’s why that southern Onatrio trope works so well for Balsillie.
When it comes to hockey, there’s a very real difference between “southern Ontario” and “Hamilton,” the specific place within southern Ontario where Balsillie wants to put a team. But first you must familiarize yourself with these terms if you live outside the: (a) GTA, (b) Golden Horseshoe, (c) Niagara Peninsula or (d) Niagara Frontier (translations: a. Greater Toronto Area, the fourth largest metropolitan region on the continent, after New York, Los Angeles and Chicago; b. the GTA’s densely populated corridor along the western shore of Lake Ontario, including Hamilton, Canada’s ninth-largest city; c. the smaller Ontario cities between Hamilton and Buffalo; (d) the U.S. side of the border region, which includes Buffalo, 45 miles from Hamilton and 90 from Toronto).
With the GTA so huge and so deeply into hockey, it’s easy to see why Balsillie would want to own a team there. Balsillie lives in Waterloo, also the location of his company Research in Motion, makers of the BlackBerry. Waterloo is just north of Hamilton.
Here’s the rub. Under longstanding N.H.L. rules, Hamilton lies within the Buffalo Sabres’ territory. Anything having to do with N.H.L. or affiliated minor league hockey within a 50-mile radius of the Sabres’ home rink in downtown Buffalo has to be approved by the Sabres. Hamilton’s Copps Coliseum is 45 miles from downtown Buffalo — a problem the Hamilton City Council knew about before construction began in 1983 but chose to ignore by jettisoning alternative plans to build the rink farther to the north. (Nice timeline on the history of Copps Coliseum in this article from The Hamilton Spectator.)
If Balsillie were to build a new rink in, say, Waterloo, or in the nearby cities of Kitchener, Guelph or Cambridge — all just north of Hamilton and therefore beyond the territorial reach of the Sabres — he would have only the Leafs to bargain with. The Leafs, the N.H.L.’s richest team, could well afford to have another team in the GTA, as long as the extremely wealthy Balsillie paid them an extremely high indemnity.
But the Sabres are always in a very precarious financial position, given Buffalo’s shrinking size and awful economy. The Sabres (company name Niagara Frontier Hockey, L.P.) depend on the roughly 15 percent of their business that comes from the Niagara Peninsula, all the way up the Golden Horseshoe to Hamilton. Never mind that after almost 40 years most of the Canadians who attend Sabres games do not root for Buffalo; the main thing is that they’re helping to fill the HSBC Arena.
It would take an enormous indemnification payment to the Sabres to make them give up as much as 15 percent of their annual business — an amount that Balsillie is trying to get out of paying by trying to strike down the N.H.L. territory rules in a Phoenix court. Unless the Sabres — who were themselves being operated by the league and at risk of folding before Tom Golisano bought them in 2003 — get that kind of big money, they will never approve a Coyotes move to Hamilton that could easily drive them out of business.
In much of the cheerleading coverage of the current Balsillie vs. N.H.L. saga from some Canadian sources, the use of the vague “southern Ontario” obscures the potential damage to the Sabres that Balsillie’s move to Hamilton could cause (and note the choices for describing Balsillie in this Globe and Mail piece: hero or martyr — your call). Another question: why has almost no one asked why Balsillie doesn’t simply back construction of a new rink in Kitchener-Waterloo, so that his southern Ontario team would do less damage to another existing N.H.L. club?
What would the N.H.L., and hockey in general, lose if a Hamilton team were to cause the Sabres to fold, as owner Golisano has warned? Beyond a historic club with an outlandishly loyal following — what other U.S. city could have hosted the N.H.L.’s first New Year’s Day outdoor game so successfully? — it would lose plenty.
Buffalo is by far the N.H.L.’s strongest TV market in the U.S., despite its small size. For the Sabres-Rangers series in 2007, more people in Buffalo tuned in than in New York. The Sabres also are often the No. 1 American team in sweater sales.
The number of hockey people who live or have lived in the Buffalo area is astounding, even those who never played for or worked for the club, like Marcel Dionne and Darryl Sittler. And due partly to the presence of the Sabres, the city has produced a rising number of N.H.L.’ers, like overall No. 1 draft pick Patrick Kane of the Blackhawks or Cup winners Todd Marchant and Kevyn Adams.
All that is at risk if Balsillie’s plan, as presently conceived, goes through. No hockey fan wants to see Hamilton, or southern Ontario, denied a team, and the vast majority probably would not be too unhappy to see the Coyotes leave Phoenix. But to gain a true hockey city in a way that would cause the destruction of another true hockey city … is that what fans, Canadian fans, really want?