A tale of two NHL headlines: Faith and dysfunction

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/06/2017 (3078 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two headlines caught my eye this week.

The first one — several variations, actually, of Nashville Proves Gary Bettman’s Expansion Plan is Working — represented the NHL as the league wants you to see it: a growing, successful, cutting-edge circuit that all the stars and starlets are lining up to sing the anthem for.

The second one — Arizona Coyotes Ownership Changes Again — told you all you need to know about the NHL as it actually is: a dysfunctional loop in which every day is Groundhog Day and the problems never get fixed because the guy at the top won’t even admit there’s a problem.

Loosely tying both stories together, interestingly enough, is the Winnipeg Jets.

The Coyotes, of course, were the previous incarnation of the Jets, and the news this week that a Philadelphia hedge fund manager named Andrew Barroway bought out his former partners and is now the sole proprietor of the moribund Coyotes franchise is, by my count, the one millionth change of ownership for the Coyotes since they left Winnipeg in 1996.

So yeah, congrats on that milestone.

Barroway has promised he is committed to keep the Coyotes in Arizona. That’s what they all say in Glendale — until they don’t.

If you think it’s purely coincidental the news the Coyotes ownership is changing yet again comes less than a week after news that a US$564-million arena renovation is being proposed for Seattle — an arena where there is presently no major tenant to play in — then I have a bridge on Arlington Street to sell you.

The only solution for what ails the Coyotes is a new location anywhere other than Arizona. You have to figure a shrewd guy such as Barroway — he manages more than US$1 billion in holdings — is betting a small investment in the Coyotes today will be worth exponentially more when the time inevitably comes — and it will come, sooner than later — that Bettman finally throws in the towel on his dopey “hockey in the desert” project and allows the Coyotes to move to Seattle. Or Quebec City. Or Markham. Or Hamilton.

To see the wisdom of Barroway’s simple business plan you need look no further than True North Sports and Entertainment, whose ownership has parlayed a US$170 million purchase price of the moribund (there’s that word again) Atlanta Thrashers in 2011 into a Winnipeg Jets franchise that Forbes magazine today values at precisely twice that amount — US$340 million.

There’s money to be made in today’s NHL all right — and it’s in picking through the ashes of Bettman’s hubris.

The Thrashers were one of four teams the NHL announced on the same day in 1997 as expansion teams. The other three were Minnesota, Columbus and (told you we’d get back here) and Nashville.

The Thrashers couldn’t make money until they moved to Winnipeg, and of the other three expansion teams announced that day, it’s no surprise the only one that has been consistently profitable since Day 1 has been Minnesota, which has deep hockey roots and wasn’t a true expansion location anyway given that the North Stars had played there from 1967-93.

Columbus has been a consistent money loser for years and you can safely wager that a 10 per cent jump in attendance this season — fuelled by an early season 16-game winning streak — will fizzle just as surely as the Blue Jackets did down the stretch.

Then there’s Nashville, where the original ownership recorded losses of US$70 million before finally bailing in 2009. Attendance has risen steadily in recent years as the Predators got more competitive, and then caught fire the past couple of months as the Predators came within two wins of authoring what for my money would have been the most unlikely Stanley Cup championship of all time.

But what does the Nashville experience really prove, other than fans everywhere will cheer a winner?

While you’re pondering that question, ponder this one: do you really think Faith Hill and Luke Bryan are going to be trampling over each other to sing the anthem next season when the Preds revert to their very ordinary selves and it’s Game 50 against the Carolina Hurricanes?

There’s a reason NBC’s cameras caught Bettman fawning all over Hill during Game 6 Sunday night, and it’s because Bettman knows it could be a very, very long time before hockey attracts that kind of star power again.

The test of whether hockey is working in a market isn’t how well the fans support a winning team — that’s the easy part. The real test is how well they support the local side when they’re losing.

What do you think the crowds in Nashville would have looked like this season if the Preds, like the Jets, were mired in another lost season and in the midst of missing the playoffs for the fifth time in six years?

Fans in Canada and a tiny handful of American markets cheer for hockey; the rest cheer for winners.

There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but to make breathless pronouncements about how what we saw in Nashville the past month is vindication of Bettman’s southern strategy is to miss the forest for the oversized belt buckles.

Yes, the catfish were fun, but it’s worth remembering fans of the Florida Panthers had a gimmick too, tossing rats on the ice during the Panthers’ Stanley Cup run in 1996.

Remember those delirious scenes of a packed house in Miami? Hockey had arrived in South Florida, we were told.

These days, you can buy a ticket to a Panthers game for about the same price as a Mocha Frappucino from your local barista.

You just have to have faith, Bettman has been telling us for decades now. And, for a brief shining moment last weekend, we all had Faith.

But Faith has now left the building — and the Coyotes may be right behind her.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek