No NHL to Winnipeg announcement Tuesday

Tuesday will not mark the NHL’s official return to Winnipeg.

Word of the non-announcement came from multiple sources today — including NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly and a spokesperson for the group negotiating to buy the Atlanta Thrashers and move them to the Manitoba capital.

Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger made headlines over the long weekend by suggesting that, “Tuesday could be an interesting day.”

Edmonton journalist Dan Tencer reported this afternoon via Twitter that, “a source points to Wednesday,” as the new date for the press conference. Darren Ford, founder of the Return of the Jets campaign, had an interview scheduled for Tuesday morning on CTV. It has since been moved to Wednesday.

Manitoba Moose moving to St. John’s, confirms NHL to Winnipeg: report

The Manitoba Moose are moving to Newfoundland this off-season, according to a report in the St. John’s Telegram.

Sports editor Robin Short writes that the Moose would continue under the ownership of Mark Chipman’s True North Sports & Entertainment for at least next season. The club is expected to eventually be sold to former Newfoundland premier Danny Williams and Glenn Stanford, who served as director of hockey operations for the defunct St. John’s Maple Leafs, and is currently president and governor of the AHL’s Hamilton Bulldogs.

Short writes that the move is contingent on an NHL team relocating to Winnipeg. He confirmed in his article that a press conference announcing the Moose are moving to St. John’s is scheduled for Friday at 10:30a.m. Central time.

Speaking with a Winnipeg radio station this morning, Short said Glenn Stanford has quietly been negotiating for months to bring an AHL team to St. John’s. Short told sportsradio 1290 that, even more recently, Danny Williams has been in talks with the Manitoba Moose.

“I do know that Williams has been in contact with Chipman and his group — I think it’s Chipman specifically — for the past week or two, which tells me that the whole Atlanta to Winnipeg thing has been a done deal for some time.

“If you’re negotiating to get an NHL team to your city, the last thing you’re going to do is wonder what’s happening to your farm team.”

Short also told the radio station that his source confirming the St. John’s press conference is not anyone involved with city’s AHL-ready rink.

“That’s not coming from the Mile One people — that’s what we’ve been told. I don’t think it’s to announce Mile One’s rollerskating schedule for the summer.”

Neither Williams nor Stanford were available Friday to comment to the Newfoundland newspaper. A spokesperson for the Manitoba Moose this morning denied the St. John’s Telegram report.

The news comes on the heels of a Hockey Night in Canada report last night that the Moose would be the farm team of a new Winnipeg NHL franchise. The Vancouver Canucks would then be left to look for a new AHL partner.

St. John’s was previously home to the Toronto Maple Leafs’ farm team for 14 seasons. They moved to Toronto’s Ricoh Coliseum in the fall of 2005.

MTS Centre ready for NHL press conference: source

Winnpeg’s downtown arena is set for a press conference to announce the return of the NHL.

Space in the MTS Centre has already been prepared for the event, a reliable source confirmed this morning.

Most major hockey press conferences held at the MTS Centre have been staged using the ice, scoreboard and digital power ring as the backdrop.

That is not the plan at present, says the source.

A room has reportedly been set aside, and prepared, in part of the arena that is located backstage during concerts.

The Globe and Mail reported last night that a deal had been reached to sell the Atlanta Thrashers to True North Sports & Entertainment (TNSE) and relocate the team to Winnipeg.

According to the report, “sources confirmed Thursday night that preparations are being made for an announcement Tuesday.”

A concert featuring Kid Rock is also scheduled for Tuesday at MTS Centre.

The NHL, TNSE, and the Atlanta Spirit Group, who own the Trashers, have denied the Globe and Mail report to other media outlets across North America.

The Winnipeg Free Press is reporting that, “a high ranking True North official involved in negotiations to buy the Thrashers said the Globe story was ‘100 per cent untrue.'”

Balsillie lawyer wanted Senators in Hamilton: owner

Touches on NHL’s possible return to Winnipeg on radio show

A prominent lawyer for Jim Balsillie offered to purchase the Ottawa Senators out of bankruptcy and move them to Hamilton, says the team’s owner.

Sens’ owner Eugene Melnyk told a Toronto radio station last night that “the same cast of characters” trying to outbid the NHL for the Phoenix Coyotes made a similar offer for his team in 2003.  He specifically named lawyer Richard Rodier, who was also a major player in Balsillie’s failed 2006 and 2007 bids for the Pittsburgh Penguins and Nashville Predators.

“It took me 48 hours to think about it, and then I said, ‘No, this is not the way you bust into a party,'” he told The Fan 590.

Melnyk, who purchased the bankrupt NHL team and its arena in August 2003, said that Jim Balsillie was not mentioned by the group proposing the Hamilton move.  Melnyk told the radio station he had met with Balsillie more recently — having taken him to dinner and a Maple Leafs game two or three years ago — but Balsillie never asked for pointers on how to put a team in Hamilton.

Melnyk appeared confident the Steel City could have landed an NHL franchise by negotiating through the right channels.

“I would have given him a ton of advice on how to do it properly, and one of them is not taking a bulldozer and going through the door.  It would have been so easy.  But, you know, mistakes are made, and now everybody’s gotta live with it.”

He made reference to the city that lost its NHL team to Phoenix in 1996.

“If somebody came and said, you know, Winnipeg — I’d love to buy a franchise and start a team up in Winnipeg.  You know what?  They’d listen.

“They’d say: ‘Okay, what are we gonna do about the stadium?  It’s only 15,000 seats.  Can we expand it?  Can we do this?’

“You work the problem that you may have, and you have to have the financial wherewithal.  You definitely have a fanbase out there.”

The Manitoba capital made headlines in May, when the Globe and Mail reported that True North Sports and Entertainment Ltd. — which owns the American Hockey League’s Manitoba Moose, and a downtown arena constructed since the Jets departure — were in talks with the NHL about getting a team.

“We take a wholly opposite approach to Mr. Balsillie,” communications director Scott Brown told the newspaper. “We’re pretty sure it’s the right approach.”

The following week, an internal league memo seemed to confirm that notion.  Among the mountain of court documents submitted as part of the Coyotes’ bankruptcy hearing was an email sent by league commissioner Gary Bettman.  He wrote:

“If this team had to move, it should first be offered to Winnipeg.”

The intended recipients of that message were NHL vice president Bill Daly and David Zimmerman, a lawyer with the league.

Then came June rumours from ESPN and the Montreal Gazette that a Winnipeg group was looking into relocating the Thrashers.

As far as Hamilton’s NHL hopes are concerned, Melnyk would not speculate on how the city might have landed a team without stepping into bankruptcy court.

“Money talks, I can tell you that.

“There’s a lot of cash that is thrown around.  You don’t know where it could have gone.”