As long as Portland doesn’t have an NHL team, there will always be talk of Portland getting an NHL team. But as long as the NHL is Arizona, that talk will be serious and routine.
In 2013, if you believe reports, Paul Allen almost bought the Arizona Coyotes and moved them to Portland. In the end, Arizona kept the team with a new lease on Gila River Arena. Last week, the Glendale City Council voted to terminate that lease, sending the franchise back into uncertainty bordering on purgatory before a move.
Gary Bettman, who probably still has stock in Freddie Mac, doesn’t want to give up on Arizona. Bill Daly, the league’s deputy commissioner, said on Monday that the league is committed to Phoenix, and the Coyotes would enjoy more support if only they had more stability.
Basically, he accused the Glendale City Council of trolling the team. It’s a bad situation. Earlier Monday, the Coyotes’ majority owner announced he was selling. The best-case scenario for how this ends if you’re a Coyotes fan is fifteen more years of bad teams and empty seats in Arizona.
It’s simple. Some big cities in this country are bad sports towns. Miami. Tampa Bay. Atlanta. Yes, Phoenix. The NHL should know. Its team in Florida is an albatross; its team in Atlanta moved to Winnipeg.
Portland’s record of supporting its sports teams is clear; both the Trail Blazers and Timbers enjoy support that is almost unrivaled in their respective leagues, and with the city’s sports portfolio not matched by its recent and continuing growth, there is plenty of oxygen for a third major team.
Let’s hope Paul Allen wants it. Because let’s face it, Portland isn’t exactly the NHL’s first choice. If it were, hockey would be here already.
The league is still interested in the untested horizon of Las Vegas – for reasons passing understanding – and Seattle still seems to be the preferred Northwest destination.
That’s a shame. It’s Portland that has the arena setup in place right now, and it’s Portland that has plenty of room for more pro sports.
Seattle’s problem is tied up in getting an arena built for the NBA team they perpetually hope they’re getting. Allen, of course, has no part in the NBA to Seattle movement – so if the mogul wants hockey, despite his roots, it will be in Portland.
For Allen, there don’t appear to be any real drawbacks. Considering that he already owns the arena, bringing in an NHL team isn’t a particularly high-risk venture. It’s much more a slam-dunk.
Philosophically, hockey works in Portland. It’s off-beat enough, lends itself to the kind of rabid support that this city has mastered in basketball and soccer, and there is strong existing support for the WHL’s Portland Winterhawks – who lead their league in attendance.
Trail Blazers President and CEO Chris McGowan is well-respected in NHL circles from his time at AEG where he was heavily invested in hockey with the wildly successful Los Angeles Kings.
In McGowan, Allen has a point man for hockey that he can trust. This is a gaping opportunity. Hockey works in markets much smaller than Portland, where a perceived lack of cooperate support is the only real knock on an impressive NHL application.
The NFL isn’t coming here. Neither is baseball. Hockey is the only game we can get, and out of those three, the only one that would be a smashing success.
Allen won’t break the bank for the NHL. The feeling around the situation is that Allen would like to buy a team, but only at the right price-point. The reported figure for an expansion team before this season was $350 million. That’s a deal no one is eager to do, and could be a major reason why there hasn’t been any traction on expansion this year.
The NHL is greedy, but that’s not unusual for a business. The real problem is that Commissioner Bettman isn’t anymore competent than Roger Goodell – he’s just a lot less famous.
There’s a blueprint in place for success in the Pacific Northwest. The Vancouver-Seattle-Portland rivalry has been a boon for MLS. Problem is, Bettman’s baby is hockey in the south – which has mostly been a disaster for the league – not the Northwest.
Arizona won’t last. Hardly anyone, outside of their nightly paid attendance of just over 13,000, will miss them if they take off. Glendale is losing a ton of money on the team yearly, which is why it pulled the plug on the arena lease. The city of Uniondale ran the Islanders out of town for much the same reason – and those people actually like hockey!
Portland has something of a perfect storm here for an NHL team. Allen, who would immediately be one of the league’s richest owners, a city starved for another sports team and ready to appreciate a sport that, along with soccer, is the most refreshing and exciting in the country, and an arena that is NHL-ready today.
For now, we wait. Last night, the Stanley Cup was handed out to the Chicago Blackhawks. Coincidentally, or maybe not, the Blackhawks share the same jerseys and logos as Portland’s Winterhawks.
We’re ready. Seems like the hockey world is too.
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