Hurricanes Sign Patrick Eaves

1) Yes, nice signing by the Canes. Very reasonable salary for a guy who might develop into a 20 goal player
2) On another note its laughable in retrospect how the NHL shunned Balisille and his money, yet eagerly embraced Boots in Nashville. Now we find out Del Biaggio is a con man/fraud. Hello,(tapping Bettman on the head) anyone in there??
Didn’t the NHL learn a thing with the John Spano fiasco with the Islanders a decade+ ago?

I am happy for the Eaves signing if we can keep him healthy.

Regarding a ‘Canadian article questioning the viability of hockey in the south’ – can you think of any non-southern hockey franchises where ownership is in question? Other Buffalo being willing to sell, neither can I. But when you look southwards, things start to get messy. Atlanta, however, has a murky ownership situation, Phoenix is losing a ton of money, Karmanos has actually publicly spoken about the money he loses with the Canes, and Florida has terrible ticket sales. There’s no bias here, but it’s no secret that some of the southern teams are doing poorly, and that in some cases owners have given indication that they might be inclined to hear offers.

also, it’s not easy to know this outside of Canada, but the National Post is a joke of a paper that is little more than a conservative rag in our country.

1) Ben non south franchises? Kidding? How long ago did we have Ottawa and Melnyk going into backruptcy? Edmonton’s issues weren’t that long that they have been forgotten, right?
2) Other than Toronto and Montreal, the other 4 franchises in the great white north had tenuous existences before the currency turn around.(they needed league assistance) If the Loony does a 180 we will be back there again!

fauxrumours: the article is talking about right now…obviously if you want to do a history of franchises with shakey finances, then by all means include a laundry list of northern teams like winnipeg, minnesota and quebec city which didn’t have a big enough fan base to support their existence. But the only northern team for sale right now, at the time the article was written is Buffalo.

Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if the next northern franchise added to that list was New Jersey.

1) OK, how about Pittsburgh, NJ, and the islanders. Also the teams we mentioned are not from 20-30 years ago, but within the last 5-10. The basis for the strength of the Canadien teams is from the currency. That is typically cyclical so we may soon see a return to issues up north

The Islanders are not going anywhere. Their owner has more money than God. Pitts is secure as well with the new arena and casino deal. You can’t fault a journalist for not writing an exhaustive exploration of the history of hockey’s finances…that wasn’t the point of her article. Can you deny that there are teams in turmoil in the south right now? I don’t think it’s an indictment of southern hockey that the owners in atlanta can’t see eye to eye.

This particular story seems full of bunk. She dosn’t reveal where she is getting her information from, (the 8 teams). She is including Dallas with her listing, which is the first time in ages that they have brought up as a “struggling” team in the south.

As a matter of fact, Stars owner Tom Hicks says that there is no truth to the report in this story.

http://starsblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/06/hicks-says-team-not-for-sale.html

So other than Buffalo, (which was reported upon earlier), it looks like the author just pulled some Southern teams out of a hat and said that Balsillie contacted them. Maybe she wasn’t aware enough to know that Dallas is one of the financially stronger teams in the league and including them in her listing did nothing but flush her credibility down the toilette.

hey, it’s the national post – it’s garbage journalism to begin with ;)