The partners will use the five games a year to prop up the franchise. They really have no intention of moving the team to Canada. They just want to take advantage of a market that will pay Canadian rates for NHL hockey.

Actually, I like the idea. Saskatoon is never going to get an NHL franchise – they’re too small and don’t have enough corporate support, I guess – but this way they get to see live NHL hockey in their backyards.

I do think that the Saskatoon games are part of an ulterior motive beyond simple economics, but I don’t think it has anything to do with relocation. I think it has more to do about showing the NHL in hard attendance and dollar figures (i.e. beyond “slam dunk” theorizing and hearsay) that Canada needs a seventh – maybe eighth – franchise sooner rather than later. Kind of a situation of, “See, we’re saving your franchise and keeping it where you want it – but CHECK THIS OUT, Gary…”

No. Ice Edge didn’t have enough time to negotiate a firm deal with Glendale although they did make significant progress (at least according to them and the city).

Exactly! Unless/until there is a concession from the city (and it doesn’t look likely) what has changed here?

I like the Mutts’ 3rd a lot better than a lot of the OTHER third jerseys out there – including the new Avs’ third jersey. Blech.

A couple of points:

• Gretzky didn’t make Bettman’s southern expansion dreams a reality. He made hockey in California popular because Peter Pocklington is a certifiable douchebag whose treatment of Gretzky makes the current situation pale in comparison. Bettman’s – and the BoG’s – dreams of southern expansion were spurred on by other factors.

• If Gretzky is a remnant, then he’s a Moyes remnant – not Balsillie’s.

• While I believe that Gretzky does not deserve the bashing and thrashing he’s getting, I’ll bet you forty cases of Coffee Crisp that NOT A SINGLE ONE OF YOU who are dumping all over the Coyotes for “kicking him to the curb” (even though he’s the one who resigned on his own recognizance) would want him within fifty miles of your own team’s head coaching job. In point of fact, a lot of the critics right now spent months (years, even) before the bankruptcy saying that if Gretzky was anyone else he’d have been canned long ago.

Maybe this is overly pedantic, but Gretzky chased the southern dream well before Bettman came along, and the NHL chased it 25 years before Bettman arrived. You might even say Gretzky’s initial success in L.A. helped convince the BOG they needed a forward-thinking leader to make the league more like that hot young NBA thing, so they went out and got a guy from the NBA.

Sometimes I think “Bettman” is Internet shorthand for “the government,” “anything that’s wrong,” and most importantly, “all the idiots who have owned NHL teams and run the place like a country club for the past 100 years.”

Maybe because Reinsdorf isn’t interested anymore now that his backdoor dealings and his requirements to close the deal have been made public?

Ask Boots.

I’ve got a couple K in the bank, I’ll go in with you.