Okay, I've Made You Wait Long Enough...

...here's my take on the whole "Thrashers-to-Ontario" thing.

Will never happen.

Why?

Well, here's a big ole list of other people's research & opinions:

-Falconer @ BWA: Thrashers tied to arena deal, and, oh yea, you can't buy something nobody owns.
- Craig Custance @ SN: Seconded! And, oh yea, fans like winners.
- Mortimer & Co.@ the Chronicle: A fantastic angle to consider - Press? Responsibility? Nahhhhh!
- Vivlamore @ the ajc: Donnie says "Nu-uuuuh! We got dibsies and wrote it down!"
- Phil Foley @ the Examiner: A great list of reasons that just about boil down to "It's the economy, stupid."

Now, here's just a little bit of my own research.

I did some digging, (not much digging - I didn't want to strain myself) and looked at the populations of the two cities in question. (These numbers come from Wikipedia, so we can assume they're reasonably accurate.)

	City Proper	Metro Area
Hamilton, ON	504,559	692,911
Atlanta, GA	519,145	5,376,285

So, let me get this straight: you want to take a franchise out of a metro area of over FIVE MILLION PEOPLE and move it to a metro area that is almost EIGHT TIMES SMALLER?

Tell me again how that makes sense.

Granted, the Hamilton population is much more hockey-mad. Granted, with Toronto & Buffalo you would have 6 all-but-guaranteed sellouts. Granted, the rivalries would be intense.

But a difference of 4.5 million people?

That's a lot of Tim Horton's & bagged milk, folks.

Let's be honest here: as teh Chronicle pointed out, journalism ain't what it used to be. What sells papers? Headlines - or rather, peoples reaction to headlines. What red-blooded Canadian isn't gonna snap up a paper that loudly trumpets the possibility of one more Canadian NHL franchise (e.g. one more chance to fail in the playoffs)? Oh, in case you weren't aware, this is CANADA'S game after all - they just let us borrow it from time to time. Just like we let them borrow three quarters of the league's revenue. Like it or not, them's the facts. The NHL has a lot of money and potential gain tied up in American markets. And let's be clear here: I'm not blaming your average-everyday working-joe Canadian for being excited enough to buy said paper with said headline. That's his thing - he's Canadian. What's life without at lease a little civic pride? What I am doing is blaming journalists who don't fact-check, don't cite sources, and don't bother to hold enough integrity to not write a story without at least some shred of factual basis. And I'm also blaming these billionaire fanboys that play on the sensibilities of your average hockey fan to get the great new toy they've had their eye on. But, back on point...

Yes, if you're running a "simply numbers" game, it makes sense to move the Coyotes to Hamilton. I mean, you're talking about a city with NO hockey history whatsoever. But Atlanta does. Know what it also has? A population that is equal in size and greater in economic stability than Detroit. Oh yeah, and a huge Yankee-transplant population. What does that mean? A lot of potential hockey fans. Once someone with some actual assets figures out what a potential moneymaker this franchise could be and puts a quality product out on the ice (or at the very least, some quality marketing behind what's already there; have you seen that 10th Anniversary logo? I'm too ashamed to even post it here.) Atlanta will be a hockey town. Again.

So... a franchise in Atlanta is a bad idea why?

Oh yea. Forgot.

One more thing: this whole MakeItSeven.ca thing smacks louder of populist opportunism than one of Don Cherry's magnificently calamitous suits. To all those red-blooded Canadian citizens, make sure Jimmy B. leaves the money on the dresser on his way out.

HEY oh!!!

EDIT: Think I'm off my chump with this theory? Well, Lyle "Spector" Richardson hit this idea four days ago.

In Other News:

- In honor of tonights' game 6, we give you this: Christensen fails again, Selanne barely keeps head attached.

- I heart Adrian Dater. Why? Here, and here, for starters. You almost don't know what to do with all this honesty coming from a journalist. Sort of the Atlanta Spirit with hockey. (See what I did there? Full circle, baby.)

- Mike Modano decides for one more year. That sound you heard was... wait, you didn't hear anything. Mike Modano hasn't made any post-season noise for years.

- Have I mentioned Down Goes Brown lately? If you aren't reading this blog, you need to be.

Whaddaya know... Marty IS a party...

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I do not gamble. I prefer my money in my wallet. For all of your hockey prognosticative needs, may I direct you to one Mortimer Peacock, Chronicle scribe & scary good future teller.

Mike Knobler has bonus features up from his Levenson interview. I believe I've officially changed my stance on Levenson. What I read in this and the original article tells me he's a guy who knows how to run a business, and is learning how to run a hockey team. Understanding that this whole interview thing is probably the brainchild of some PR person, there is still a tremendous amount of contrition and owning up to mistakes here; it takes some stones to go to a major print publication and say "hey, I screwed with stuff, found out that wasn't a good idea, and now we're trying to fix things." From the first article:

"I think you’ll see most teams be fiscally prudent because of the uncertainties of the economy. Just as we have done in past years, including right before this season, if there are opportunities that we think justify us increasing our spending, we’ll do that."

I read: this season is an anomaly as far as payroll is concerned. The ASG wanted to build a contending club, and then the realities of the Belkin situation caught up with them. In hindsight, I'd be in a pretty bad mood if I were in a similar situation; maybe even a bad enough mood to call a contentious STH a not-nice name. But hey, that's me. I'm a jerk like that. From the second article.

What kind of hockey team do you want the Thrashers to be? Do you want it to be a 2-0 team or the kind of team it was trying to be at the start of the year, when it was a little more open?

“I want them to win. That’s what I want. It’s the coaching staff’s job and the GM’s job to match the talent to the style of play. That’s another interesting mistake we may have made in the early days. Coming out of the lockout the rules were changed. It was going to be faster. It was going to be higher scoring. My thing was, let’s be the fastest highest-scoring team. It sounded good on paper. That’s not necessarily the right recipe for success.”

Either Brucie's copping to being the sous chef that spoiled the main course, or he drew the short straw in the fall-on-the-grenade lottery. Either way, I give him props. It doesn't take much of an active imagination to conceive of Levenson issuing orders to assemble a team he'd like watch, while Donnie's thinking "Are you kidding me??" Not to mention the absurdity of trying to build a team like that with Bob Hartley at the helm. Next year, the cap comes down, we lock Kovy up with a nice long deal, trade someone for someone else.... all is well in Blueland. Hey, we may even decide we want to keep Waddell around.

That sounded convincing, right?

Other Items of Note

They see me LoLin, they hatin....

John Anderson's comments on Kovy (AP Wire, via Yahoo Sports)

“We don’t want to say too much right now because we don’t know for sure,” Atlanta coach John Anderson said. “He’s day to day as we speak right now. He had a little problem yesterday and I didn’t practice him. He said he was OK to go today and obviously he wasn’t, but I’ve got to give him credit for trying.”

Scott Cullen over at TSN.com has a pretty comprehensive list of potential UFAs. Add that to your Armchair GM arsenal. (Hey Scotty, Re: Who has $12mil for two top-line players? Hmmm... lemme think about that...)

What?!?!?! A Canadiocentric media outlet reporting "Kovalchuk LIKES Atlanta"!?!?!? You made that up. (Thanks Wayne for hitting me up on that link).