Here are some stories you may be hearing more about in the near future. The Phoenix Coyotes, without a sudden avalanche of season ticket sales this season, will most likely move to Winnipeg in 2011-2012, now that it’s clear that the incredible playoff run for the desert dogs, did not lead to a boost at the box office in Glendale. Reliable rumors ( my source) suggested to the latenightvampire.com, that the Coyotes may have around fifteen hundred, to two thousand season ticket holders. This means that the league owned team, needs huge walk up crowds, just to get a respectable turnout at the games. There is still no local ownership on the horizon in Arizona. So after this coming season, Canada will quite likely, have its seventh NHL franchise. Too bad Jim Balsillie didn’t play by the league’s rules, or he might have been the owner of the team, although it never would have been relocated to Hamilton, Ontario, as has been stated many times, in latenightvampire.com. The American owners would object, fairly or not, that they can’t sell tickets in their arenas with the name Hamilton on them, because it is not familiar to fans in most of the United States. Names like Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver, are apparently not good draws at NHL stadiums in the U.S., whereas Toronto, and Montreal are reliable at the box office, because fans south of the 49th parallel are well aware of those cities and the original six teams. Winnipeg has a history with the league, so that’s why the owners are ok with the relocation to Manitoba, even though the arena is not at the seating capacity the league would prefer. The franchise will have to charge higher prices for their tickets, to compensate for the smaller capacity, in order to make a profit there.
If in fact the Coyotes do move to Winnipeg, you can count on a handful ( you can figure out that number easily ) of games being played in Saskatoon. The details have already been worked out, according to reliable rumors. The visiting teams for those games in Saskatchewan, as logic would dictate, will be Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver.
So why did Devils president and general manager, Lou Lamoriello sign Ilya Kovalchuk to a 17 year, $102 million contract ? Very simply, the owners of the Devils are worried about the renewal of their TV contract with MSG, if their ratings were to drop because of a poor season, and of course, they don’t want a 40 goal scorer walking away for nothing, because that kind of talent is very difficult to replace. New Jersey has not done as well at the box office as expected in Newark, so the owners are concerned about empty seats, as well as what they gave up to get the former Thrasher. In that February 4th deal, New Jersey also received defenseman Anssi Salmela, in exchange for blue liner Johnny Oduya, winger Niclas Bergfors, as well as prospect Patrice Cormier,and Jersey’s first round pick in 2010. The teams also swapped second round picks in the 2010 draft. The Devils are willing to endure the wrath of Gary Bettman over this deal, because the owners feel that strongly about needing to keep Kovalchuk. Lamirello doesn’t usually get in trouble with Bettman, but the Devils ownership insisted on Lamoriello keeping Kovalchuk in a Devils uniform, even if they had to manipulate the salary cap, as teams like Detroit and Chicago have done previously on their long term deals. Gary Bettman was also angry with the Hawks and the Wings over their similar contract moves, and let them know about his disapproval. In fact, he will probably change the CBA, the next time the agreement with the players is up for renewal, to try and limit contracts to a maximum of 5 years, to stop these long term deals from manipulating the hard salary cap, and basically making it a soft cap in its impact.