Thrashers moving to Hamilton ... yeah right ... and I'm dating Elisha Cuthbert

May 10, 5:04 AMAtlanta Thrashers ExaminerPhil Foley

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Any day I can sneak in a photo
of Elisha Cuthbert into a
Thrashers piece is a good day.
(AP Photo/ Stuart Ramson)

ATLANTA (Examiner.com) -- “Group wants to move Atlanta Thrashers to Hamilton,” screamed the local Canadian newspaper of the Ontario city of 505,000.

Wow, another headline of many in the Hamilton Spectator leading the effort to bring hockey to a town that will appear to do anything to get a team of its own.

The newspaper goes on to reveal that the esteemed mayor of Hamilton is going to meet with a second group that wants to relocate a Sun Belt hockey franchise to their town.

That group, according to “sources” is lead by Vancouver developer Tom Gaglardi.

His claim to fame? He tried to buy the Vancouver Canucks a few years ago and owns the Kamloops Blazers of the Western Hockey League.

Yep, this guy is going to buy the Thrashers, move them from the eighth largest television market in the US to a market one-eighth of its size and have the deal done for the 2010-11 campaign.

And I have a this nice bridge I’d like to sell you in Brooklyn. I own it, really. It’s got a great view of lower Manhattan. Any takers? It’s going fast.

If you also believe that, I have a hot date with Elisha Cuthbert next week, too. (Heck, I don’t care about sloppy seconds).

Yeah right. Her heart is taken by a guy a lot younger and richer than I.

Sorry Mr. Gaglardi, you can’t move something you don’t have either.

And last time I checked, that “For Sale” sign has not been put up on the Thrashers just yet.

I broached the subject with Atlanta Spirit co-owner Michael Gearon, Jr. after the Atlanta Hawks disappointing 97-82 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers on Saturday night.

He had no comment for the record and referred me to General Manager Don Waddell. I will reach out to him through the proper channels over the next few days.

As to what privately may or may not have been said, let’s just say I am not waiting for Don’s response before posting this blog entry.

I don’t care what the hype is about the so-called Sun Belt teams bolting for the cold of Canada’s ninth-largest metropolitan area.

The Thrashers aren’t leaving anytime soon.

Here are 10 reasons why:

1) Let me say it again: the Thrashers are just not for sale. Nor can they be right now. The nine owners can’t agree on whether to order Chinese or Italian in for lunch or what the team is worth to buy out renegade partner Steve Belkin. Do you really expect them to be able to agree to sell the team to anyone until the legal saga is settled?

Seriously? The same group of fueding owners who couldn’t agree on whether to trade for Joe Johnson?

2) Hamilton? Why not just move to Akron, Ohio instead? I don’t care how much fervor and passion Canadians have for the sport of hockey, but Hamilton is not a big market. In fact, if placed in the United States, Hamilton’s metropolitan area would rank 73rd overall behind such “major league” towns like Columbia, South Carolina, Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Rochester, New York.

Do the economics really work? You’re going from a metropolitan area with a population of 5,376,285 to one of just under 700,000. Akron, Ohio is similar in size. Would you seriously consider moving a team to Akron?

If you’re going to move a franchise, why not at least to Las Vegas, Houston, Seattle or Portland? All those markets boast well over 1.8 million people, a large corporate base and, with the exception of Sin City, a world-class sporting venue that is as good or better than Hamilton's Copps Coliseum.

3) Coyote ugly. Let’s face it, the Phoenix Coyotes are in a lot worse shape than the Thrashers. If any team is destined to move to some tiny town in Canada, it’s the Coyotes. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman’s arch-nemesis Jim Balsillie – you know the Blackberry guy – has plenty of money and a score to settle with the commish for not letting him move the Nashville Predators to Hamilton. (My money is still on Bettman in that one).

4) It’d be a nightmare on Marietta Street. Untangling the Thrashers from the Atlanta Hawks and the Philips Arena operating rights would be troublesome for the Atlanta Spirit almost to the point of being economic suicide.

5) It’s all about the name “P-H-I-L-I-P-S.” There are $9.25 million very good reasons why the Thrashers are staying here.

When the arena was completed in time for the 1999-2000 campaign, Royal Philips Electronics signed a 20-year, $185 million naming rights deal. The Thrashers and Hawks are required to both play in the arena or Philips can walk away.

Gee, do you think they would bolt in this economy?

Finding a replacement won't be easy.

The Washington Nationals still haven’t synergized with a corporate partner for their new ballpark. (They still haven’t found a way to win yet either).

The Miami Dolphins signed a one-year deal to name their digs Land Shark Stadium (a terrible beer by the way).

Simply put, that market ain’t what it used to be.

6) What will Brown Do? The Atlanta Spirit’s other signature corporate partners: Delta, Home Depot, UPS, etc. will most likely be able to weasel out of their sponsorships, which again were signed at the height of the sponsorship boom. Good luck finding corporations willing to fork over similar monies in this economy.

7) Living in the lap of luxury. Philips Arena has a ton of luxury boxes that are under long-term leases to corporations, which were entered into during the boom times at the turn of the millennium. Most of those leases were signed for -- you guessed it -- both the Hawks and the Thrashers. Lose the Thrashers, you may give belt-tightening corporations a chance to get out of the deal and save some ducats.

8) Fill that operational void. Keep in mind that the Atlanta Spirit not only owns the Hawks and the Thrashers, but they also own the operating rights to Philips Arena (a great way to claim that your hockey and basketball teams are losing money by the way).

Lose the Thrashers and you lose 45-50 dates on that schedule, forego rent, concessions and parking, etc. on those days. That’s a lot of Miley Cyrus concerts. There aren’t enough tweens out there to make that model work.

9) The Thrashers are not the Flames. Yes, the Thrashers average attendance of 14,626 was worse than any team not named the New York Islanders in the 2008-09 campaign. However, the Atlanta Flames woes were much worse.

The Omni, which housed the Flames from 1972-1980 sat 17,000 people. The arena did not have the revenue generating luxury suites that Philips does, nor did the team have a local TV contract to rely upon. The Thrashers have the benefit of both.

Attendance sagged for the Flames and Tom Cousins, the real-estate mogul owner of the team, sold it to the Canadian consortium for $16 million, double what any local group was willing to pay for the club.

10) Gary Bettman won’t let it happen. It was Bettman’s pet project to expand the league to the Sun Belt and there’s no way Mr. Bettman will let his experiment go awry, just yet.

Phoenix is in turmoil and litigation abounds as to whether the team’s owner had the authority to declare bankruptcy in an end-around attempt to move the franchise to Canada. However, the league has put the kibosh on any relocation request since the Hartford Whalers became the Carolina Hurricanes in the 1997-98 campaign and has come out swinging against the Coyotes.

Bettman gave the following test for any likely future team relocation to Hockey Night in Canada Radio (as reported by Yahoo Sports’ Puck Daddy).

"The biggest litmus test ultimately was that no one wanted to own the team there,” Bettman said referencing the moves of the Quebec Nordiques and Winnipeg Jets. “When the marketplace decides that they don't want to own a team there, it has no future.”

Using the Coyotes as an example, the league would rather find an owner to keep the team in Glendale (rumored to be Jerry Reinsdorf of the Chicago Bulls and White Sox fame) than to move it elsewhere.

The Thrashers haven’t even been offered for sale on the open market more or less offered to Atlanta-area investors.

Sorry Hamilton, the impending sale of the Thrashers appears to be just plain tabloid fodder.

I guess that date with Cuthbert isn’t looking so good, either.