Monday, July 14, 2008

Nashville's Portability

A lot of news over the fact that Boots Del Biaggio was partially motivated to buy the Nashville Predators for their Portability Value. Now that a man known as "Boots" (so much so that the legal documents even refer to him as William "Boots" Del Biaggio) who was financially backed by an organization with an empty arena in anther city had an interest in moving the team should come a surprise to no one.

Still looking at the numbers it's hard to say that Nashville is not portable. While they had a pretty good season last year, the team is not making it financially. A team not making it financially is bad for the league as a whole. It's going to become harder, and harder to ignore Jim Balsillie's money and the fact that Canada does love hockey more than Tennessee does. If the New York City area can support three NHL clubs there is no reason to suspect that Toronto would have any trouble at all with two. Furthermore this current mess is going to hurt AEG's standing in the league and reduce the possibility of a new team in Kansas City (which never really looked like a better option then Nashville).

Still the Nashville is still better off then the Florida Panthers, and the Phoenix Coyotes, but the NHL's expansion to non-hockey markets has to come to a decision sooner or later.

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