Hockey and Nationalism in Canada

In Canada, hockey is both inevitable and inescapable. Once the summer ends, professional and amateur seasons begin. As much as this correspondent loathes the sport, he is certainly a minority voice in Toronto, which fashions itself the hockey center of the universe. Roughly 65 kilometers west of the downtown is Hamilton, the city of shattered hockey dreams. Jim Balsillie, the co-owner of Blackberry-maker Research In Motion, attempted to relocate the bankrupt and unsuccessful Phoenix Coyotes to Hamilton. The Arizona bankruptcy judge, Redfield T. Baum, thwarted the Balsillie bid, rejecting it with prejudice. But the billionaire produced at least one result. He stirred a sense of national pride in Canadians who want a seventh National Hockey League team for the country, naming his campaign Make it Seven. Balsillie’s notice of surrender adroitly exploited the sentiments of Canadians.

From the beginning, my attempt to relocate the Coyotes to Hamilton has been about Canadian hockey fans and Canadian hockey. It was a chance to realize a dream. All I wanted was a fair chance to bring a seventh NHL team to Canada, to serve the best unserved hockey fans in the world. I believe I got that chance. I respect the court’s decision, and I will not be putting forward an appeal.

Nobody can deny that we are now a big step closer to having a seventh NHL team in Canada. It doesn’t matter who owns that team. When that day comes, I will be the first in line to buy a ticket to the home opener.

I want to take this opportunity to thank my family for all their love and support. I also want to thank the more than 200,000 fans who supported the bid online and the countless others who contacted me personally to show their support. This bid always was about the game we all love.

Yet the relocation of an American team to Canada is severely in doubt, according to Damien Cox.

On six occasions over the past 40 years, including Jim Balsillie’s unsuccessful attempt to buy the Phoenix Coyotes and move them to Hamilton, the American-dominated league has been faced with attempts to move teams from the U.S. to Canada, and five times the NHL has aggressively rejected and blocked those attempts….By contrast, the NHL has never blocked an effort by a Canadian-based team to move south to a U.S. market. It was allowed decades ago when Hamilton moved to New York and became the Americans and Ottawa shifted to St. Louis, and more recently when the Winnipeg Jets became the Coyotes and the Quebec Nordiques moved to Colorado. An interesting double standard, wouldn’t you say?

Fortunately, Cox answers the question by pointing out the curious strategy of NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.

…it’s a strange reality, this aggressive insistence of the NHL on trying and re-trying flimsy and flawed hockey markets and refusing to put teams where the game is most loved. Its reward in this case is control over the ongoing disaster in Phoenix, the option, according to the mega-lame prose of Judge Baum, to “take another shot at the sale net.” Good luck with that nightmare. Not a single Canadian will shed a sympathetic tear.

They are still lamenting what they see as a lost birthright to the game they love. The sale of Wayne Gretzky to the Los Angeles Kings by the Edmonton Oilers is not forgotten.