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.”