Canucks win - I told you LF

I told you

Looks like the Canucks/Jets rivalry might not be too off in the distant future:

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Sports business analyst says NHL’s return to Winnipeg is a ‘no-brainer’

By Paul Friesen

Howard Bloom has never lived in Winnipeg, never seen a hockey game here and hasn’t set foot inside the new, downtown arena.

But that doesn’t stop the Ottawa-based sports business analyst from making a bold prediction about the possible return of the NHL to this prairie city.

“There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that hockey will return to Winnipeg in the not-too-distant future,” Bloom, founder of SportsBusinessNews.com, told The Sun. “It’s a no-brainer. The NHL will return to Winnipeg. Much sooner than people anticipate.”

Probably within the next two to three years — five, at the most, Bloom says.

That’ll be music to the ears of hockey fans here, many of whom must be watching the hyped-up return of the new-look NHL with envy.

But is it realistic?

As little as a year ago, there would have been little point in even debating the issue.

Two major developments in the last 12 months, however, have changed that.

One was the opening of the $133-million MTS Centre, a comfortable and perfectly functional, if not glitzy, 15,000-seat sports and entertainment facility that opened its Portage Avenue doors last November.

The building’s primary tenant is the American Hockey League’s Manitoba Moose, farm team of the Vancouver Canucks.

The group that owns and operates the arena and the Moose, True North Sports and Entertainment, promotes its own concerts, ice shows, monster truck extravaganzas, wrestling — there’s even an NBA exhibition game coming later this month.

So business in Year 1 has been very, very good.

Still, it isn’t good enough to even entertain the idea of paying a team of hockey players some $40 to $50 million US a season.

Which brings us to the second major change to the landscape — the NHL’s new collective bargaining agreement, which includes a per-team salary floor of $21 million and a cap of $39 million US.

To paraphrase True North chairman Mark Chipman: now, we’re talking.

“It’s within the realm of possibility,” Chipman said. “A couple of the big variables that were necessary, arguably, are in place.”

Chipman, part of the failed save-the-Jets campaign a decade ago, has crunched the numbers.

He knows, for instance, that in 1995-96, the team’s last season in Winnipeg, the Jets posted a staggering $25 million operating loss. And that was with a payroll of $17 million US.

Of course, the average ticket price was just $27.

Still, that’s an awful lot of ground for the new rink to make up.

“Lots of it can (be),” Chipman said. “It’s a very different model now than what they operated under. For the next several years you’ve got some certainty in what it’s going to take to operate a team. You’ve got a building that can generate considerably more revenue than the old one did.

More at: http://www.winnipegsun.com/Sports/Columnists/Friesen_Paul/2005/10/04/1248470.html

It could happen

I just got home; how was it? Was Gretzky freaking on the Coyotes bench?

AS usual