An Actual Hockey Person

Don't know what's going to happen with Jim Balsillie's longshot bid to put an NHL team in Hamilton over the next few days.

But he's finally got a bonafide hockey man and NHL insider on his team.

Doug MacLean confirmed to The Star this morning that he has joined Balsillie's organization as a hockey "advisor." MacLean has extensive experience with NHL expansion clubs and started the Columbus Blue Jackets from the ground up. The likelihood is that he would become a senior executive with a Hamilton team, but he wasn't speculating on the future this morning.

"I'm an advisor, that's it," he said.

For the first time, then, Balsillie's group has an actual NHL insider on its roster, an individual who has been to NHL board of governors meetings and personally knows most of the movers and shakers at the highest level of the league. In fact, MacLean almost became part of a group that was going to buy the Tampa Bay Lightning several years ago before the tandem of Oren Koules and Len Barrie took on that particular project.

MacLean has spent the last few seasons working on television with Sportsnet and on the FAN590, co-hosting an afternoon show with Jack Armstrong. 

Some might quibble with his hockey credentials - although what he left behind in Columbus looks pretty darn good now, doesn't it? - there's no question the affable and quotable Prince Edward Island native would be a perfect front man for hockey in Hamilton.

That, of course, may still be a distant dream. But at least instead of suits and lawyers, there's an actual hockey man associated with Balsillie's push to take the Phoenix Coyotes and move them to Canada.

How High Will He Go?

This is Jim Balsillie's trump card. And a measure of how much he wants this to happen.

All along, throughout the slow, molasses-like bankruptcy process of finding a new owner for the Phoenix Coyotes, the unsaid issue behind the scene has been Balsillie's deep pockets and the limit, if there is one, to how much he might be willing to pay for the Coyotes in an open auction.

Of the three bidders left, none seem likely to out-bid the Waterloo billionaire on a dollar-to-dollar basis. In theory the NHL could, but there have to be real limitations on the price NHL owners would be willing to pay to buy this team through auction. It's one thing to bid $140 million with the out being selling the team in order to move it elsewhere after one year.

But let's say Balsillie, who upped his offer to $242 million last night, would be willing to go as a high as $400 million to get the Yotes and move them to Hamilton. That price might even make sense for a franchise in lucrative southern Ontario, but the NHL would be facing a major loss if it wanted to try and match that offer and later sell the team to Las Vegas or Kansas City or wherever.

Open Ice Holdings, meanwhile, has $150 million on the table, but there are lots of conditions on that, certainly enough that the NHL felt it had to put its own bid in.

So how high would Balsillie be willing to go? Assuming this auction finally goes ahead on Thursday and Friday, we may finally find out. More specifically, we'll find out if he's willing to try to blow any and all other offers out of the water.