AHL Franchise Shake-Up

The word out of Winnipeg is that the group that owns the Manitoba Moose has purchased the NHL's Atlanta Thrashers and will be moving the team to Winnipeg.

The Thrashers have long been one of the NHL's failing franchises, and they've been propped up by an ownership group that, along with owning the team, also owned the arena and were willing to keep them so as to keep the building occupied. But the losses have just been too much, and nobody in Georgia has expressed any interest in buying the team, thus the Winnipeg group has swept in and purchased the team.

The deal isn't official -- there's no announcement from the NHL yet -- but Gary Bettman will probably be banned from Canada should he attempt to stop this deal. It's also not sure when the team would actually move to Winnipeg, whether to start the upcoming 2011/2012 season or if they would hold off for the 2012/2013 season.

This does, of course, mean that the AHL could be down a franchise at some point, kind of like how the Edmonton Oilers held onto the ownership rights of their Edmonton AHL franchise but refused to actually put a team on the ice until placing their franchise in Oklahoma City this past season. So the Manitoba group could just not field a team, they could move the Moose to another city since they will still own the rights to the franchise, or they could sell the rights to another group.

The odds are the Moose will be relocating, it's just a question of when or where. And once that happens, we'll probably see more division and conference shake-ups.

UPDATE: Okay, according to True North, the group that is supposedly buying the Thrashers, this is not a done deal.

Gary Bettman Steps In It: More On The Strange Case of the Phoenix Coyotes

I've been a bit slack on updating everybody about the Phoenix Coyotes situation, so here's a quick update. First, the parties are all in court today, arguing before the Bankruptcy Court whether or not Jerry Moyes actually has the power to put his team into bankruptcy. I'll have more on that later tonight.

But this little bit from yesterday's Toronto Globe and Mail is really interesting, especially to our friends from Winnipeg who might be in town for the Moose/Aeros playoffs series. It seems that early last month, while the NHL was attempting (and failing) to help the Coyotes find new ownership, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman sent an e-mail to people at the Coyotes updating the situation. Bettman makes it clear in the e-mail that it's proving to be nearly impossible to find a new owner to take over the team and keep it in Phoenix, and that "if we don't have an alternative, I will have to start looking at the moving option."

And just where does that moving option start? Well, it starts with Winnipeg, the original home of the Coyotes. And as for Hamilton/Southern Ontario, Bettman essentially writes that he just wants to string them along.

Nice going, Bettman.

What you have here is Bettman and the NHL saying that the team probably has to move because it can't find a buyer to keep the team in Phoenix because it's not financially viable to keep the team in Phoenix, and you also have Bettman saying the best option is Winnipeg while the folks in Hamilton are just strung along as suckers. And Moyes did what Bettman said the league would probably do: he found a buyer in Canada, but because of lease problems, he had to go through bankruptcy court.

(Oh, and one thing I haven't made clear in the past: the NHL is not objecting to the Coyotes going into Chapter 11. They're objecting about who is sending the team into bankruptcy.)

But we should have a better idea of what's going to happen with Phoenix later today, when the court hearing is finished.