MVN - Most Valuable Network

Team not Bidding? The NHL Still Entertains

If, like me, your favorite team has pledged to lie low in the free agent market, worry not: The NHL rather considerately continues to entertain with drama far away from the ice.

Take the general manager’s box. In Tampa, you have a GM who’s been cuckolded by his new, fast-talking, fast-moving owners, who are — for the moment, anyway — on the same page. In Vancouver, you have a respected GM fired by his owner in favor of a former player agent who, the NHL GM club being what it is, can’t find any fellow GMs to return his calls.

We’ll get back to Tampa in a moment. But the new Canucks GM, who came in mouthing off about the regime he replaced, is desperate to back up his words with action. So he’s reportedly throwing around $20 million offers for a guy who might retire — and thus leave them on the hook — at any moment. And he’s tossing money at a marginal power forward because, hey, you gotta spend it somewhere. Before this, the target most figured he’d have a chance at getting is an undersized converted winger who used to be his client.

Perhaps You Prefer First-Class

Or take the owner’s suite. (Punchline: “Please.”) Just last week I riffed about how, despite our numerous complaints about keystone commissioner Bettman, he is just the figurehead for a bunch of rich puppetmaster owners, who don’t always want the same thing. Then, as if on queue, comes news that Bettman had no idea that two of his closest owners loaned money to a third, now-indicted minority owner so he could purchase said minority stake in the Predators.

Boy, stuff like this, you couldn’t make it up. But if you did, wouldn’t you add a kicker, to bring the farce to another level, about the one reclusive owner (Anschutz) managing the empty Kansas City arena where he no doubt hoped his loan recipient (you may call him Boots) would eventually relocate the franchise? Oh, and the other (Leipold) is the one who sold the Predators in the first place before buying the Wild?

“Tell me another,” you say? You’re on!

Hall of Famer in-waiting Luc Robitaille, who has an executive position with Anschutz’s Kings, apparently helped introduce Boots to this elite circle.

In the NHL, you might say incest is best.

I’m grateful that James Mirtle is keeping tabs on this case as each new basket of dirty laundry emerges. It’s entertaining and keeps me grounded about where my fan financing of this league goes. And it helps me understand it’s just par for the course when yet another owner, Henry Samueli of the Ducks, pleads guilty in a stock options fraud case with the company he founded.

Islanders fans, stop me when you start to get Spano flashbacks.

Tampa: Where the Really Fun Owners Go to Play

But fret not, NHL fans. Just a few bad apples. The NHL ownership fraternity is indeed an exemplary circle of well-meaning folk. Captains of industry, sure, but also self-made men. Like former NHLer-turned-real estate baron Len Barrie, who bought the Tampa Bay Lightning with Hollywood “Saw” guy Oren Koules after a year of dragging out the process and lining up creative financing.

The financing for Barrie’s big development in B.C. came in several parts from … other NHLers. Which goes to show, the destiny of players who squeeze owners to squeeze us for their millions is to … well, become one of them in their world of tycoon frivolity.

I’m sure everything is sound in Tampa, and fans there have nothing to worry about. Trust us. The new Lightning owners may be playing fantasy GM with their new leveraged toy — that’s their right, I suppose — but they love hockey and want to buy something exciting.

While Mirtle is understandably critical of the new owners as a sideshow from the start, I’m trying my best to reserve judgment. But their lust for excitement does give me pause when I see them trade picks and buy up every forward they can grab (Prospal, Malone, Roberts, Vrbata, almost-Rolston, and counting…). It’s still early, but the lesson of the previous regime may have eluded them: You can buy all the forwards you want, but you don’t have squat without defense and goaltending. (And please! Seven years for Ryan Malone is just stupid — even if you did just hire his father away from Pittsburgh to help grease the wheels!)

Mullet resurrection Barry Melrose, who last coached before defensive systems became so sophisticated, will need quite a bit of luck coaching this group — and that’s if they hang on to Dan Boyle.

Each day, it seems, the peers of Islanders owner Charles Wang make him look less and less odd. Speaking of Wang — no stranger to corporate controversy himself — the 15-year deal he arranged with Rick DiPietro is again a news topic because NHL legend Bobby Orr, DiPietro’s former agent, says he deserves a commission on it.

The wheels on the league go round and round, round and round…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 4:14 pm and is filed under Lightning, NHL, offseason. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.