The_Admiral

By most accounts, no, but they're cutting it extremely close. They can swing it if Quebecor has known for some time and has had a whole shadow cabinet set up to do all the business stuff, but if that's the case, what are we waiting for now?

A Jets board is tracking a private jet that's flying between Quebec City and Bergen County. Apparently there was similar traffic a year ago, but with Winnipeg. Hooray, we've crossed the Rubicon and entered the domain of Creepy Plane-Stalking SEC Fans.

Semi-interesting interview with Marcel Aubut on a Quebec City radio station. He was predictably coy about anything obviously germane to having someone on the NHL's inside track come on and talk hockey business in Quebec City, but I'm more interested in his Ontario thoughts:

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/hi0ujk

- What do you think of Markham, Ontario's new arena project?

- I don't like it, I don't like it at all. It really bothers me because one day there will be a 2nd NHL club in that area. Whether it be in Hamilton or the Toronto area, because the market has space for 2 teams. But there just is so much work to be done, there are zoning and territorial rights, naming rights, TV negotiation rights. We are far from it being cake there. But I will say, it bothers me that there will be a new arena in that area around Toronto.

In short: get off my lawn, bitch

Doesn't she realize that the revenue the team brings in is offset both by the subsidy and by the fact that higher sales taxes will chase people away?

Guys! The most pro-Coyote council member has a twitter! She takes shots at Canadians, those evil "naysayers," the mayor, and then asks "How do I do private response on this thing?"

http://twitter.com/#!/clarkjv

Gary's big ideas are stupid but let's not pretend he isn't an expert dissembler.

The best thing about that Phil Lieberman quote is that if you've ever heard him talk, he sounds just like the time that Eric Bischoff dressed up as a minister to marry Billy Gunn and Chuck Palumbo.

I tried wearing high socks this year and I love it. I feel more like a baseball player now. It's pretty cool.

The best part is he's not even on the team!

Byron Schlomach, chief economist at the institute, said the proposed management fee to the team is too high, because comparable facilities garner around $10 million.

Why stop there? Some places don't even pay "arena management fees" and in fact collect money for the right to manage the arena, like Quebec City.

Right. The socks match the undershirt, or if not in color (the Red Sox looked best with navy undershirts and red socks), at least in the idea of having supplemental color beyond where the white/grey terminates. I didn't word that very well but hey.

Unlike the NFL and LA, MLB has no markets to use to black male anyone. Portland A's? Charlotte A's? Montreal A's?

Compton A's

They're the Presidential Seal colors, which I guess is even more Washingtonian than straight red/white/blue (which plenty of cities have an equal claim to), but also maybe less so because it could be too esoteric for its own good.

That was their best set up there, but they went through Identity Rot with the black third, which had that terrible Capitol crest with the wacky-looking stars, clunky rectangle with team name, and requisite hockey sticks. What they have now could be their best with a tweaked Weagle as the primary on a more traditional sweater instead of the hideous "capilals" update and Edge-By-Numbers template. And stop wearing that throwback.

Actually, a disaster that destroys the Jobberdome might be the best thing that could happen to that city.

The team has nowhere to play, the league will be forced to sell them, the city would collect on some type of insurance (then use the money to make a parking lot), and their budget deficit would be reduced by $25M.

I wonder what the Professional Rioters™ from last June are up to. Probably making it prohibitively difficult and unpleasant for me to take the train downtown on a nice day.

I admit, I'd love it if Hamilton could somehow get a team. It would be great to have a Canadian NHL team within driving distance that I could actually get tickets to. Thing is, MLSE would never allow it. Yeah, the Leafs could probably continue on as the juggernaut of southern Ontario even with a Hamilton team, but they still won't allow it.

This is just more evidence of my theory that the people who want a Hamilton team the most are not this fictitious Great Unaffiliated spanning across the peninsula, but just good old Maple Leafs fans. Whether it's "I'd love a team in Hamilton so I could actually afford to see the Leafs," or "I'd love a team in Hamilton so that they can give some healthy competition to the Leafs," or "I'd love a team in Hamilton because the huge encroachment fee they'd pay could really help the Leafs," the desire to see this area get a team is almost entirely informed by somehow improving the fortunes of the Maple Leafs. It's a fantasy. Everything as far as Windsor belongs to the Leafs.

- Everything the maple leaf touches will be yours.

- Everything?

- Yes.

- What about that shadowy place?

- That's Detroit. That's beyond our borders. You must never go there.

- I thought MLSE can do whatever it wants.

- ...there's more to being king than buying players all the time, Burkie.

I'm sure that Southern Ontario Not Toronto Or GTA But Just Whatever Southern Ontario is lovely, but they're not going to have an NHL team because it's very much the Maple Leafs' territory, if not de jure than de facto. And you can't say it's not. There are many Leafs fans, too many Leafs fans, from coast to coast to coast. They were the "home team" for all of English Canada until like 40 years ago. And yet apparently you drive to Kitchener and people say "who are these 'Mapled Leaves' you speak of?"

Yeah, I don't think anyone really wanted anything more than the eight teams that were in the league before (except for maybe the Hamilton Is A World Unto Itself lunatic fringe). I'm fine with eight, nine if Halifax explodes in a good way but the likelihood of that is infinitesimal at best. The whole "you people want every team in Canada" strawman is dumb. I don't think anyone sensible is even arguing for Saskatoon, let alone Yellowknife, so put it away already.

It is refreshing that the Leafs fans here are on board with a Quebec City team. Elsewhere on the internet, there seem to be Leafs fans who get upset over any Canadian team other than Montreal being in the NHL. Maybe it's because they still think the Edmonton Oilers are horning in on their turf. More likely, having to attend sporting events with teams from Ottawa and Winnipeg peskily reminds Leafs fans that Toronto is still in Canada.

That's how teams had to make money then. Keep inventing new teams to buy into the club and distribute the found money accordingly.

The idea that Phoenix has to be saved now so that Quebec City (and with it, I dunno, Seattle or Markham, they say) can be saved for expansion is ridiculous. Put this corporate socialism fire out and go back when the smoke clears, if you really have to be there. Which you kinda don't.

I remember thinking the original powder blue third was pretty neat. Then the team thought it was too neat and let their whole identity spiral out of control, Minnesota Wild-style. I liked their original road sweater, but hated the crest.

Also, wow, those blue stanchions were really ugly. I think Raleigh still has red ones. Why would any place do that?

Lights Out: are those Hawks uniforms intended to be black or midnight blue?

Well, if Stillman already had 15% of the team, some quick math would say that the Blues/Scottrade/Opera House/Rivermen package is then valued at a hair under $153 million. That's still a much better deal than the Coyotes and just the Coyotes for $170 million, which makes you wonder just how incompetent Hulsizer was to have bungled both deals.

Good. Glad that's finally settled and the Blues will be on solid ground. First order of business for Stillman should be to see what kind of prices the market can bear; I've suspected that they've been leaving money on the table for years.

At that price, though, like with Tampa, you're buying real estate with a free hockey team thrown in.

You know, I don't think it was Greg Jamison who joined the Indiana Pacers in 1987 and made them a stable, successful franchise. I think it was someone else.

That said, if passed, those who live in Glendale will just go to a neighboring suburb to shop for groceries and many other items; teams will still take a bus and stay in Scottsdale over the Glendale Renaissance.

Looking at a map, Glendale is basically a giant backward L. An _|. It looks really easy to leave city limits to buy things.

Closer to home, I can see how people will choose not to pay sales taxes they feel are too high. Far northern Cook County is Detroitishly covered with vacant commercial real estate while far southern Lake County is dotted with new strip malls and lifestyle centers and such. And Lake County taxes aren't much better!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304363104577392403708180314.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Under the proposal that the NHL has laid out for city council members, the city would continue paying an arena-management fee that would average about $14.5 million a year.

On top of the city's average $12.6 million in debt service, that amounts to annual expenses of about $27.1 million?to be offset by anticipated Coyotes-related revenue of $14.2 million, according to projections by Glendale's city management department. That adds up to a projected annual loss for Glendale of $12.9 million.

By the time the new ownership deal ran its course in 2033, Glendale would have paid $271 million?nearly $1,200 for each of its 226,721 citizens?to keep the team.

These expenses outweigh Glendale's Coyotes-related revenue by such a degree that Moody's has downgraded the city's bond rating twice in the last 18 months, citing the city's ongoing hockey payments.

pear

I don't think leaving the city and pretty much abandoning West Gate is going to do anymore good for the City of Glendale in the long run than keeping them here as long as there is an owner who is willing to buy in.

Wrong: it costs more to subsidize the tenant and pay down debt than it does to pay down debt (as proven by the formula x + y > x), unless you're postulating that quality of life is so improved by having the #4 sports league that the tax increase and loss of services is worth it.

I like you, elliott, so I'm not going to be a total mahdeddit to you.

I don't know if those are facts or not to be honest, I'd like to see a source. I'm fairly sure that the Coyotes made money in their first 5 years in the desert.

No. They've lost money every single year. Additionally, the Jobberdome's most profitable season as a venue was 2004-05, when a grand total of zero NHL games were staged there. I think all this came out in bankruptcy court. Someone else can dig it up.

The coyotes happen to be an extreme case of unprofitability, but the fanbase is there, the population is there, and what I would cite as ineffective marketing over a long period of time can be turned around. Also consider that the Westgate area is very nice and suited for hockey and a large amount of fans. It's built to accommodate hockey and if utilized to its maximum could be profitable in the long run.

And also consider that Westgate has been foreclosed on because the developer ran out of money before he could finish it and nobody is renting there. I don't know how a lifestyle strip mall can be "suited for hockey" any more than the Hartford Civic Center Mall was, though. Like we've been saying for a while, suburban Phoenix is flush with patently idiotic real estate speculation predicated on realities that aren't realities anymore, like cheap gas to drive too far for things we don't need. You can't throw good money after bad down all these holes, and you shouldn't throw it down this particular hole because sports.

Basically, what they're looking at here is raising their sales tax to subsidize billionaires to own a team in the #4 sports league, in hopes that people will spend enough money at and around games--while being taxed more, mind you--that said increased sales tax will pay for the subsidies while also servicing the debt on the arena construction. This is like building a house and paying someone to rent it instead of them paying you like a normal landlord-tenant relationship, while you still have to pay for having built the house in the first place, in hopes that if they buy their groceries from you, you'll make everything up somewhere down the road, because if you didn't have someone to sell food to, you'd never pay off the contractors. How is this sane? It isn't, and neither is this Coyotes thing. At some point, you have to throw up your hands and admit the sunk cost. This is the logical, analytical thing to do. All this logic is confounded, however, by intangibles like "civic pride," where people will make terrible decisions based on a threat as superficially inane as "not being a four-sport major league town with the prestige that accompanies that distinction." Haha, what prestige. No one really cares. It's like the kid who only plays with a toy he doesn't like when another kid asks to borrow it.

And even all that is a false dilemma, anyway! Clown College has not-so-cleverly framed this as either conducting the aforementioned tenant-subsidizing-tax-raising-debt-covering pretzelf-ck, or just boarding up the windows and paying off the debt. With competent arena management, which the NHL has not been, you can figure out a way to make money on the building, which our HedleyLamarr has hinted will cost considerably less to run in the first place without a full-time ice plant. Or you can sell it for pennies on the dollar like Toronto sold the Skydome. Or just default on it, which, with the way their credit rating is plummeting, they might do anyway.

As the hundredth person for the hundredth time, I don't see any way this works at league-average prices and without illegal subsidies. It's just not a stable pro sports market, and the NHL is a, if not the, low rung on that ladder.

Why would the NHL have a press conference announcing the intention to go through with an illegal deal?

As has been postulated, to 1) keep selling tickets, 2) forestall relocation controversy for a playoff team, and most importantly 3) agree to a deal "in principle" with a prospective owner so that they can claim good faith efforts were made all along until An Unelected Watchdog Group We Stress Unelected Because Unelected People Never Ought To Do Anything Ever intervened and held up the corporate-municipal complex's "good-faith" deal, which shifts blame from the NHL (who sold the team away) and the city (who bungled everything as a matter of course) to some third-party bogeyman.