CALGARY AND THE COMMISH
THIS NENSHI GUY SURE IS GETTING ON GARY BETTMAN’S NERVES
It must get tiring for Gary Bettman to put up with rubes like the ones he’s stuck with in Calgary.
Hicks, hayseeds, bumpkins. For a slick lawyer from the big city, Cowtown is just another bunch of yokels fresh in from the sticks and just begging to be taken to the cleaners.
Bettman has been dealing with towns like Calgary — with their backwater mayors and excitable councils — since Methuselah was in short pants. Local big shots who think they know which way the world turns, basically begging to be fleeced. He’s seen it in ’ burg after ’ burg, across the National Hockey League. He barely has to leave his hotel room to peddle his magic elixir ... the poor suckers are so eager they’re virtually pounding on his door demanding to give him their cash.
The NHL commissioner visited Sticksville a f ew months back to confer with the mayor, fellah named Nenshi. His message was simple: the l ocal hockey team, the Flames, wanted a new arena and they wanted big bucks from the city to pay for it. All he had to do was make clear the NHL’s requirements, ensure the money would be forthcoming, then head straight back to New York.
Unfortunately, this Nenshi guy right away started making trouble. The Flames proposal was simple: they’d put up some of their own cash for a $ 555 million rink, and the city would cover the rest via a “community revitalization levy.” That’s a nice way of saying a tax. Nenshi, unfortunately, wouldn’t bite. Maybe he’d been reading the papers or something, or had done some homework; in any case, he seemed to think that, just because practically every other major sports project in the history of the world has gone grossly over budget, there was a chance the Flames were underestimating the hit the city might take. He offered to cover a third of the cost if the Flames would also pay a third, with the rest to come from a ticket surcharge.
Nothing bugs sports moguls like jumped- up elected officials who think they know math. And this was the second time Nenshi had got in the way. The original Flames plan was for a megadevelopment with a football stadium, field house and all sorts of other shiny doo-dads along with the arena, which the mayor also wouldn’t buy into, suggesting the team’s costs estimates were off by a billion dollars or so.
Flames CEO Ken King has let it be known he is deeply unhappy with Nenshi. The mayor, he says, is not only refusing to hand over the free money, but wants the hockey team to pay property tax as well. When the city’s position became clear, he and his colleagues marched right on out of negotiations. Next thing anyone knows, Bettman is on the phone, letting it be known that this Nenshi clown is really gumming up the works.
Bettman told a Calgary reporter last week the deal would never fly as long as Nenshi was around. In a “theoretical conversation” with the mayor, he said, he asked what the end result would be if the Flames didn’t get the arena they desire, and were forced to move. Nenshi, to Bettman’s dismay, didn’t collapse into a quivering mass of pliant jelly. “Then they’ll have to move,” the mayor responded.
This was not the answer Gary Bettman desired. Nor was it the level of compliance to which he is accustomed.
When Bettman l et Las Vegas know they’d need to build an arena before an expansion franchise could possibly be considered, lo, it was built. When the authorities in Edmonton, just up the road from Calgary, realized t hat billionaire Daryl Katz couldn’t possibly be expected to pay the full freight for an arena to house his hockey team, they duly came around.
It’s not like Calgary is Phoenix, where the NHL has spent millions on life- support for the Coyotes. Phoenix doesn’t have an arena, can’t sell enough tickets and doesn’t earn enough money to support i tself. At one point they were taken over by the league when Bettman couldn’t find a wealthy owner willing to pour more millions into a losing prospect.
But that’s Phoenix. The Coyotes, says the commissioner, are there to stay. Calgary, where they earn a prof- it and were playing hockey when Phoenixians were still chasing tumbleweeds, is another story. “They’re not moving this season, but I don’t know how long they can hang on,” he said.
For Bettman the strategy now is clear: there’s an election coming up and of course this Nenshi guy wants to get re- elected. So the thing to do is to let Calgarians know their mayor is entirely to blame for the Flames’ problems, and that he will be the go- to villain if the team decides to leave town.
When Edmonton was debating its arena, “the fact of the matter was I was in constant contact with Mayor (Stephen) Mandel and Daryl, and I always believed that would get done,” he told the Calgary Sun’s Eric Francis. “This couldn’t be more opposite.”
Mandel, you see, is a good mayor. Nenshi is a bad mayor. Nenshi’s ideas are “just not from the real world.” Calgary needs a smarter mayor, one from the real world. Someone who knows when to go along with clever businessmen and hockey team owners. If Calgary voters aren’t smart enough to provide that… well, sure would be a shame if something happened to their hockey team, get my drift? They might just pack up their shin pads and toddle off to someplace that appreciates them more, like maybe Seattle.
Yeah … Seattle. Or Kansas. I bet they don’t elect troublemakers like Nenshi in Wichita. I bet they elect smart fellas, the sort who know how to reach a deal. And who understand that, when Gary Bettman comes to town, he expects to deal with people from the real world. Come election day, he’ll be watching. Don’t let him down Calgary. Rubes never do.
NOTHING BUGS SPORTS MOGULS LIKE ... ELECTED OFFICIALS WHO THINK THEY KNOW MATH.