Big surprise here…
I can’t understand why nhl.com is reporting this as news. Noone is really surprised are they? Bettman has been opposed to the Balsillie bid from the very beginning because he has some problem with him personally. It looks like Balsillie will have to wait until the NHL does the right thing and gets rid of Bettman and his buddies on the board of governors before he’ll be able to own an NHL team.
Bettman says judge made right decision on Coyotes
Thursday, 10.01.2009 / 5:57 PM / News
NHL.comNHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said Thursday that he believed U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Redfield T. Baum made “the right decision” when he rejected two multimillion-dollar offers for the Phoenix Coyotes.
Bettman said that as a result of the decision, “we’re actually starting to get calls from people who are expressing interest in the franchise.”
Baum’s decision to reject a bid by the NHL and another made by Canadian electronics entrepreneur Jim Balsillie allows the League to amend its offer in terms of paying creditors but, in Bettman’s words, “disqualifies” Balsillie’s effort to buy the team from current owner Jerry Moyes and move the team to Hamilton, Ont.
“We got an important decision from the judge yesterday, in effect disqualifying the Balsillie bid,” Bettman said. “It’s the decision that we believed was the right decision and the one we hoped for because the two most important decisions that any sports league can make is who it wants to allow into membership as an owner, who the partners will be, and where the franchises will be located.
“That’s not something that should be abdicated to the courts because someone decides to file a bankruptcy petition. While the court disallowed our bid on some technical basis, in terms of how we treated the creditors, we’re looking at it and we will be reacting.
“We’re deciding how best to amend our bid. Since the overhang of the Balsillie bid seems to be removed, we’re actually starting to get calls from people who are expressing interest in the franchise. We’re going to have to follow up on those as well. Our belief is, despite all the damage this process has done to the franchise over the summer, and I think it’s going to take some time for the franchise to rebound, it can work with the right ownership and the right management.
Bettman made his remarks during the NHL Hour, his weekly Thursday afternoon broadcast, from the Pepsi Center in Denver prior to the Colorado Avalanche’s season-opening game against the San Jose Sharks. Longtime Avalanche captain Joe Sakic will have his No. 19 retired in a ceremony at 8:45 p.m. ET that will be streamed on NHL.com and seen on the NHL Network.
Bettman said he was relieved for the Coyotes’ players and their families, who have been in limbo since May when Moyes announced his intention to sell the team to Balsillie through the bankruptcy process.
“I’m glad for the players’ sake, that they now have a little bit more certainty that this is where the franchise is going to be this season,” Bettman said.
Broadcast partner Ed Olczyk asked Bettman if the League was now in control of the Phoenix franchise.
“Not exactly,” the commissioner replied. “From Day One, we have been in a hybrid situation, supervised by the bankruptcy court. The debtor, as the term is used, is technically Jerry Moyes, who was the owner, and we. So we are kind of in joint control. But that gets overblown because the day-to-day operations are being run by Doug Moss, the president. (General Manager) Donnie Maloney, who I think has done a very good job with putting the team together and keeping things stable, is making the hockey decisions.
“Extraordinary decisions involving spending lots of money or the like have to be approved by both the Moyes group and by us, but it’s not like we are in there actively running the club right now. It’s not our desire to ever really run the club. We put in the bid as a last resort to get control of the situation.
“Hopefully, with the process being simplified with the Balsillie bid now gone, that overhang, and I think, whether or not intentional and I won’t throw stones in that regard, a lot went on this summer to further destabilize that franchise, perhaps in the hopes that nobody would want to bid on it and the team would have to move. And, that was something that we resisted mightily and it probably cost a lot of money.”
Bettman said the NHL will continue to try to buy the Coyotes from Moyes, then sell it to a qualified buyer.
“First, we’re going to try to continue to buy the club. Once we own the club, even if it’s going to be for a short period of time, we will control the club so we won’t have to be checking with anybody else in terms of what moves Doug and Donnie make. And we’ll control the sale process which we think will expedite the sale process and make it more efficient and, hopefully, more successful.”
Tags: bankruptcy, Gary Bettman, Hamilton, hockey, Jim Balsillie, National Hockey League, NHL, Pheonix Coyotes
Seal Skin at the Olympics
Parliamentarians unanimously agree on something. Too bad it was this.
OTTAWA – Canada’s Olympic athletes will be wearing seal skin on their 2010 uniforms to protest an international ban on the product – that is, if the country’s parliamentarians have their way.
The federal Parliament voted Wednesday to use the Vancouver Games to protest a European Union ban on seal products.
Parliamentarians from all parties agreed unanimously to a motion from the Bloc Quebecois that says the Games should be used to promote products from the seal hunt.
The motion suggests one possibility: that Canada’s Olympic uniform include at least one seal product, likely skin.
Fisheries Minister Gail Shea applauded the idea, while wondering whether it might be too late.
“I would imagine the Olympic clothing is all designed and probably made by now,” Shea said.
“But I think it’s a good symbolic suggestion – to add something to the outfit of our athletes. I think it would be a good statement for the Canadian sealing industry, and Canada’s support of it.”
Parliamentary motions are non-binding on either the government or the Canadian Olympic Committee, but are an expression of the will of Canada’s elected politicians.
The European Parliament voted massively in favour of a seal ban, which could have a dramatic impact on Canadian hunters and exporters.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said he does not want the ban to scuttle separate talks on Canada-EU free trade.
But Canadian lawyers are already considering a legal challenge, while the EU council of ministers considers whether to implement the ban.
Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe said the Canadian government was outmanoeuvred on the public-relations front and that it should have been more aggressive defending the seal hunt.
Duceppe singled out one country that had no business lecturing Canada on animal rights: Spain, where fights with bulls in front of cheering spectators is a national sport.
“I find it completely abnormal to see protests (against the seal hunt) in Spain – the country that holds the bullfights,” Duceppe said.
“We need a campaign. Our adversaries conducted one heck of a campaign, and Canada did not conduct a major one on the promotional level. …
“The Olympics aren’t a trivial thing. We could use this event to shed light on this, but we need to use other events, too.”
Duceppe shot back at one questioner who asked whether Olympic athletes might bristle at the idea of being forced to wear animal pelts to make a political statement.
“I don’t know what my shoes are made of – but if they’re not made out of plastic, they’re not made out of straw, they come from an animal.”
I’m glad our members of parliament want to support the seal hunt and the workers who will suffer becase of the EU ban, but I really don’t think this is appropriate. I’m not a big fan of the olympics, but I think it should be about sport and not spoiled by political protests. If members of parliament want to protest the ban they should do it in the political or legal arenas not at the Olympic games. Besides, their proposal completely ignores the opinion of the athletes. I’m sure many of them don’t support the seal hunt.
It’s too bad the government and the seal hunters hadn’t done more to promote the seal hunt or to educate the public about it before it came to this point. The tree-huggers and PETA et al are very good at getting their message across even if it’s inaccurate or incomplete. Those who rely on the seal hunt to live had better start putting out a counter message now before they lose their livelyhood forever.
Tags: Canada, European Union, Olympics, parliament, protest, seal hunt
Only in Canada!
Fighting premier gets three-game suspension
By Andy Blatchford, THE CANADIAN PRESSFew will mistake him for Dave “The Hammer” Schultz, but opponents may think twice before dropping the gloves with Northwest Territories Premier Floyd Roland.
The hulking Roland, who spends evenings patrolling the blue-line for a “B” division hockey team in Yellowknife, squared off Sunday with a feisty forward on the opposing squad.
The Yellowknife Rec Hockey League had no choice but to come down hard on the territorial premier – it handed him a three-game suspension.
“The game got a bit aggressive,” Roland admitted to The Canadian Press in an interview from Edmonton on Wednesday.
“I did my job as a defenceman, separated a fellow from the puck a couple of times and he took exception to that. He got aggressive with me.
“I kept playing my game, which means when things got a little more heated, I stayed in the battle.”
Roland, 47, who joined the Black Knights at the start of the season, thinks of himself as more of a puck-moving defenceman rather than a goon.
Still, he’s never been afraid to dance.
He rumbled on occasion during his days in the chippy men’s senior league in Inuvik, but said this was his first fight in more than a decade.
In fact, Roland, who stands nearly 6-4 and tops 200 pounds, said this was his first hockey bout since being elected to the territorial legislature in 1995.
“I’ve been into the heated discussions and the shoving going back and forth, but this is the first time that I’ve actually dropped the gloves,” said Roland, who doesn’t plan to appeal his mandatory three-game suspension.
“It’s the rules of the game.”
The modest premier tried to play down the clash and wouldn’t say if he won the dust-up.
“I didn’t come away with any bruises, it wasn’t much of a fight, it was more of a skirmish,” said Roland, who was en route to Ottawa for this week’s first ministers’ meeting.
He also doesn’t think his antics will intimidate his rivals in the political arena.
“It may get a few laughs at my meetings coming up,” he said. “I don’t think it will cause any more than that.”
The president of the local referees association said Roland’s tussle has been the talk of the town in Yellowknife, which is home to about 20,000 people.
“Being the premier, everyone’s surprised that he did drop the gloves, but he’s a hockey player, so it’s not a problem,” said Greg Cameron, who filed the official suspension request to the league.
“It was just a little hockey fight, that’s all.”
Cameron didn’t see the fisticuffs, but said he heard Roland won the decision over his smaller, younger opponent.
The last-place Black Knights (1-13) will have to take to the ice without the premier until at least Jan. 28, but that doesn’t mean the league hasn’t given the premier some preferential treatment.
The league’s website lists the names of suspended players, but instead of Roland’s name, officials typed in ” 66.”
“He’s the premier, they’re just giving him a little bit of a break there, I guess,” said Cameron.
“But everyone knows about it. It’s a small town, word travels pretty quick. It’s hockey, that’s all it is.”
The suspension list named Roland’s opponent as Jeremiah Donahue of Talbot’s Maple Leafs.
The Canadian Press contacted Maple Leafs captain Dean MacInnis for the team’s side of the story.
In an e-mail response, MacInnis said he didn’t want to comment on the fight.
“What happens on the ice – stays on the ice,” he wrote.
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Politics/2009/01/14/8025821-cp.html
Via Shayne on Facebook.
Tags: fight, hockey, North West Territories
Quebec and the Olympics
Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois is complaining that Quebec athletes competing at the Olympics can only wave the flag of the country they’re representing and not the flag of their province. Quebec’s Minister of Education, Recreation, and Sports, Michelle Courchesne, responded to those complaints, which the PQ puts forth every two years, by saying “I am very disappointed in the Parti Quebecois, which instead of encouraging (Quebec athletes), wants to politicize the games and provoke a battle of the rags, a battle of the flags.” Now Marois says she’s outraged that Courchesne would compare the province’s flag to a rag. Courchesne later made a statement saying she didn’t mean to call Quebec’s flag a rag, saying she had committed a “lapse.” While I agree that Courchesne’s original comments were poorly worded, I feel I should point out that her words also call the Canadian flag a rag, and I don’t hear anyone squawking like a raped seagull about that!
Personally, I’m getting quite tired of the PQ’s insistence that athletes should be able to wave the provincial flag while representing their country abroad. Why can’t the PQ understand what everyone else in the world seems to understand, that the Olympics are an international competition between countries not provinces?
Marois thinks Quebec Premier Jean Charest should protest the fact that Quebec athletes can’t wave the Quebec flag. He’s obviously not going to do that, so why don’t the athletes who find this offensive take their concerns to the International Olympic Committee? Now, that brings us to the question: Are there any Olympic athletes who have a problem with this? I’ve heard this complaint in years past, and it always comes from the separatist party. I’ve never heard an Olympian from any province, or from any country for that matter, complain that they can’t wave the flag of their choosing. Where are all these upset athletes and why are they staying silent on a matter that is so important to them?
Tags: athletes, flag, Jean Charest, Olympics, Parti Quebecois, Pauline Marois, Quebec
NHL
By the way, I’m predicting that we have seen the last of the NHL. The way things are going right now it looks like the league is dead, and there’s little chance of reviving it. 
