Hockey News

The Pittsburgh Penguins are back on the market…again. For unspecified reason, Canadian businessman Jim Balsillie has withdrawn his offer—presumably because of problems with the NHL. Although,

"The Penguins organization will reevaluate our situation after the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board makes the decision on the awarding of the Pittsburgh gaming license," he said.

The gaming license issue will have a lot of impact on whether a new arena can be built. Without a new arena deal, the Penguins are free to relocate after June. So, it still does not look good for keeping them in Pittsburgh.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to get off the basement steps, Phoenix has experimented extensively with different line combinations. What they have created has been dubbed the “OMG” Line by the media. Personally, I’m with Laraque…

"But the Oh My God line? Of all things."

I think the Flyers are starting to rearrange their roster. Being just one game out of the basement, and only winning 3 of their last 10, the Flyers have to do something. With the season just over a third of the way gone, look for some more moves pretty soon.

The NHL is still fighting major attendance problems. Small wonder. I was writing some thoughts on this a couple weeks ago and got a comment that made a lot of sense:

A major drawback to televised hockey is the poor image. The cameras are of a much higher quality for the NFL, which plays less than a dozen games per year in each stadium, than they are for the NHL with almost four times as many games. I am glad that they are at least working on improving the television viewing experience for hockey games.

All I know is they need to do something to improve audience appeal or a lot of small market teams will still fail financially.
(…revenue sharing and all that is wonderful, if there is enough revenue to share…)

And, sadly, one of the minority owners of the Washington Capitals, Joshua M. Freeman, 42, of Gaithersburg, Md., was killed Friday along with the pilot in a helicopter crash. The thoughts and prayers of our household go out to their families.