For those that didn’t hear, after the deal fell through with Isle of Capri Casinos because they didn’t win the Pittsburgh contract, Mario Lemieux took the Penguins off the market. He decided to look into other options, meaning relocating the team, since he has tried for seven years to get an arena deal to keep the team in Pittsburgh with no success.
Well, he was goin’ to Kansas City (and might have even sung the song) earlier this week. The city has a new arena under construction, scheduled to be ready for business on opening day of the next NHL season. The Sprint Center, the arena name, however doesn’t have a full-time tenant. So the city made an offer that will be hard to refuse: the Pens would get to play RENT FREE, and would even get a stake of arena ownership, meaning they could make money off of non-hockey events held there.
The meeting seemed to go very well, and the officials for Kansas City and the arena were very happy. But they get the feeling that Mario still doesn’t want to move the team if he doesn’t have to. Though if Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh don’t come up with a better deal, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. More then likely too, Mario will sell the team to a business partner of his, William “Boots” Del Biaggio III.
Given the nature of the deal, it would be hard for the NHL not to approve that move. It would create a stink with Jim Basillie since he backed out of the deal when the NHL said he couldn’t move the team, even if the Isle of Capri deal fell through. But I heard a rumor, and I can’t find any article stating as such, that Basillie wanted to move the team to Kitchener, Ontario, not Hamilton. Now both are close to Buffalo and Toronto, so it makes sense that the NHL wouldn’t want so many teams so close. But Kitchener?! I have driven by Kitchener, there is nothing there. It’s a farming area with a junior team playing in a very small arena. Sure, being a Canadian town they would probably still be able to get a goodly amount of fans to see the games. But the novelty of having an NHL team in a very small city between Toronto and London, Ontario would wear off. To me, even a move to Hamilton would be stupid. Not that I am opposed to Canadian cities, on the contrary. I wish the Penguins, if they move, would end up in Winnipeg. But the new arena up there is too small by NHL standards.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. The NHL is seriously looking into refiguring the schedule, and even a possible re-alignment of divisions, going back to four, two per conference. And if the Penguins move west of Detroit, that means the NHL’s promise of moving the Red Wings to the Eastern Conference would kick in. And that is something many, many Wings fans would be for.
You can read the ARTICLE from ESPN’s web site concerning the meetings Mario and his associates had with the people of Kansas City, and government officials in PA.
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