Nhl Has Devil Of Time With New Jersey
Two years ago, when word leaked out that the Minnesota North Stars might leave the Land of Lakes for Dallas, the team with the sixth-best record in the league plummeted and did not make the playoffs. Uncertainty about their future was cited as the North Stars’ reason for futility.
The New Jersey Devils have no such problem.
While the possible move of the Devils to Nashville, Tenn., is challenging the Stanley Cup as the biggest story in the NHL right now, the Devils are wearing blinders to it all. They quietly go about their business of winning games and saying they have no clue whether owner John McMullen will accept Nashville’s lucrative offer to relocate the Devils or remain in New Jersey.
But the distraction is real to everyone else. Commissioner Gary Bettman and New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman wish it would go away.
They profess as much ignorance about the possible move as do the Devils’ players. On a radio show Friday, Whitman said she didn’t know what would happen with the Devils because the team keeps asking for the state’s best offer and then rejecting it. She said the Devils never counter-offer, thereby forcing the state to, in effect, negotiate against itself, a practice she won’t continue.
Bettman said that “if you put a gun to my head” he could not predict what McMullen would do. “I do not know their desires,” Bettman said, adding that the Devils refuse to discuss the issue until after the Finals. Fine, Bettman said, but it better be concluded soon after that.
Even in Nashville, there is uncertainty. There are reports that the city is in the dark and feeling a bit used as McMullen tries to get a better deal from New Jersey.
This has been an embarrassing distraction. The Stanley Cup Finals is a time for the league to shine, not wonder about the future of its rank and file.
Bettman, who has made it his priority to have 26 teams financially stable and to deter relocation, says it is unfair to single out the NHL in the discussion of teams moving. He said the NFL has had its problems with franchise relocation (see Al Davis and the Los Angeles/Oakland Raiders) and “I couldn’t recite all the times” baseball teams have moved.
Bettman said he is not sure what form of league approval the Devils would need to move to Nashville. At the very least, they would need a simple majority.
The entire matter could wind up in court (likely) or be handled quickly by McMullen (unlikely). In the greater scheme of things, whether the team remains or moves doesn’t matter much to the NHL.
But there are 19,040 fans packing the Brendan Byrne Arena now. And they, too, are in the dark. They could see a championship banner lifted to the ceiling in October. Or they could be the first set of fans in NHL history to see their team win the Stanley Cup and move that same summer.