Um... what?

If we get the Coyotes, they play in Key Arena. If they don't want to play in Key Arena, and we don't get another arena, they leave. That's cool by me.

I couldn't care less about basketball.. BUT GIMME GIMME GIMME NHL HOCKEY NOW!

I'll take an NHL team for a year or two over no NHL team at all. One step at a time!

Seattle has to be the best basketball market in the USA that doesn't have an NBA team, and Seattle has to be the best hockey market in the USA that doesn't have an NHL team. I have no doubt Seattle would embrace the transplanted Coyotes. And just imagine the Seattle-Vancouver hockey rivalry.

Having said all this, Seattle doesn't need the NBA or NHL. More the other way around. And the Hansen MOU provides a nice template for greasing the skids of economic development without giving away the store.

Ugh, this is the one with the puck, right?

I'll be one of the 11,000 at Key Arena

@7, I'll be another one:)

The prospective hockey owners touched base with McGinn, so I would think that they are aware of the MOU if they are astute businessmen. If so, have they communicated with Hansen's camp about putting some skin ($$$$) in the game to facilitate construction of the arena for NHL use since that's probably the only way it's going to get built in the short term? I did recall reading a blurb of an interview with Hansen where he said he's open to construction of the arena without an NBA team in hand provided the Hockey people put equity up.

@7, I'll be there too. Especially when it appears at this very minute the Canucks are about to make the Avalanche's choice of a coach look reasoned by comparison.

what obstructs the other 4,117 seats for ice hockey?

i never noticed obstructions at Sonics games...

Oh for fuck's sake. The Coyotes should have moved to Southern Ontario two years ago. And now the league is just going to hand them over to Seattle which - let's face it - appears not to really care much one way or the other?

Gary Fucking Bettman is the worst thing ever to happen to hockey.

Backyard Bombardier, do you honestly, seriously believe that Seattle would greet a Seattle NHL team with indifference? Come on. By your standard, San Jose would be a bad NHL market, and lo and behold, the Sharks have a terrific fan base there.

More to the point, there's something to be said for the civic pride of Seattle sports fans. You see it with the Seahawks and Sounders and, to a lesser extent, the Storm. Put the name "Seattle" on a sports team and we'll come out in force to support it. Seattle has been a nice soccer hotbed, but no one could have anticipated the outpouring of support for Sounders FC in MLS.

Goldy, continuing the myth: "Through the existing MOU, Hansen's ArenaCo guarantees revenue sufficient to cover the city and county's annual bond payments"

The MOU diverts what should be tax revenues into our general fund instead to the debt service. Net over the life of the deal is $260M.

I was and remain absolutely against stealing the Sacramento Kings. (Yes @2 it is stealing. Maybe not from an ownership perspective, but absolutely from a citizenship perspective.)

On the other hand, fuck Arizona and all those fucking Jan Brewer voting assholes. I can't wait to see my first NHL match.

Do Arizonans even know what hockey is?

What @1 said.

I'll be there too with season tickets

@13 I don't dispute that there would be some substitution, particularly at the county level. But the arena would bring a lot of discretionary spending into Seattle that would otherwise be spent outside the city. Furthermore, the city isn't the only entity that collects taxes; for example, Metro and Sound Transit would collect their share of every dollars spent. Furthermore, the arena would generate business at properties surrounding it, generating even more revenue for everyone, including the city general fund.

So no, your numbers are not correct.

@12 Oh I am sure that is true. Really, I believe you.

But Bettman has been screwing Canadian hockey fans from day 1. Jim Balsillie's group had a good plan to move the Coyotes to the Golden Horseshoe, and the league basically said "Yeah, it's a good offer. But we don't like you. So, no.'' A few years and a lot more red ink in Phoenix and the team is moving, as everyone with an ounce of sense knew it would.

@18, the NHL and NBA have done the 'we don't like you' thing. I don't understand why Bettman and Stern don't end up in court for antitrust violations. Wasn't there a time where the 'the law doesn't apply to me' types ended up in court learning to pretend to be humble?

"More to the point, there's something to be said for the civic pride of Seattle sports fans. You see it with the Seahawks and Sounders and, to a lesser extent, the Storm. Put the name "Seattle" on a sports team and we'll come out in force to support it. Seattle has been a nice soccer hotbed, but no one could have anticipated the outpouring of support for Sounders FC in MLS. "

1) The Seahawks and the Sounders are both very good right now. Civic pride is nice, but it's nothing compared to having a winning record. Look at the 30,000 empty seats for Mariners games for proof of this.

2) Seattle was absolutely primed for MLS success. King County has a ton of immigrants, soccer had been spreading like mad for decades prior, there were a couple of successful college teams in the area, etc. The idea that it was lightning in a bottle is just silly.

@10 Key Arena was designed for basketball, with minor league hockey as a possibility. A hockey rink is a good bit larger than a basketball floor, so to put ice in Key Arena the entire south lower bowl seats have to be removed and the ice is shifted off center to the south. This puts the south goal nearly under the overhang of the upper bowl, so you can't see that end of the ice from the upper bowl. So, for hockey in the Key, the fans are on 3 sides of the ice. On the 4th side the seats are either removed or suck. I saw hockey in there once, and it is a truly weird and stupid compromise!

I will go to hockey games. Then I will vote against the inevitable asking of the citizens of King County to pay for a shiny new stadium, because I believe corporate welfare is corporate welfare, whether it's Boeing or antitrust entertainment zillionaires. Then I will go to hockey games in the shiny new stadium that is somehow built over my (and the rest of the population's) express objections. It's the Seattle way!

@12 like the incredible support the Sonics had in their last decade in Seattle? Or were you being sarcastic? I couldn't tell

@18, Bettman didn't do it out of spite for Balsille... having a billionaire owner who was head of, at the time, one of the most valuable technology companies in the world? He was drooling at the prospect. But Balsille and Moyes went at it in the most backhanded way possible... the NHL owned the team at that time because Moyes couldn't cover the finances associated with the team, ergo, the NHL was in control and Moyes did not have the authority to file for bankruptcy protection.

So the scam for turning this from a privately funded scheme into a publically funded one begins.

Suddenly we have "have to" make this extrodinary one time deal.

And as much as Chris Hansen, Super Investor and Private Citizen...tried and tried and tried he couldn't get an NBA team.

So he doesn't have to build a stadium.

So we do.

And pay for it.

Because...wait a minute...what am I signing again??!?!

Ian @23, the Sonics had solid support up until Clay Bennett and gang pulled the rug out from under us. I should know, I went to my share of Sonics games in that last decade. Now, was it a mob scene the way the Seahawks and Sounders games are? No, but some of that was that the Sonics just weren't winning, and most of it (dare I say) was that KeyArena is in a lousy location for a sports arena.

Now, considering the transplanted Coyotes would be playing in KeyArena, which is (A) in a lousy location to begin with and (B) ill-equipped for hockey, am I not then contradicting myself about the level of fan support? I think the team will be able to get by for a couple years at KeyArena just by the sheer novelty of NHL hockey in Seattle, and the pent-up demand for it*. Long-term they need a real arena in Sodo. If that's not part of the eventual equation, then all this will end badly.

But provided a new arena happens, does anyone really doubt that Seattle will prove to be a viable and successful NHL market?

* In answer to TheRain @20, I'll allow that the pent-up demand for the NHL in Seattle is not the same as the pent-up demand for MLS, but it's there. And there are going to be thousands of NHL converts at the games, just as there are thousands of MLS converts at the Sounders games.

#26

Well heck if Dow Constantine is involved then it's a King County issue, not a Seattle one. And if that's the case and if Hansen isn't building the stadium, then I see no reason at all to put it in one of the most inaccessible and decrepit places in the region like Sodo! A place which will only increase congestion on the worst bottleneck in transportation. (We are paying a congestion reduction fee, right?)

Let's get a stadium built in a place where everyone can access it easily from North, West, East and South using both highways and transit. Some place like Renton.

Goldy, you are correct, my numbers are "not correct".

I said $260M of tax revenues from the arena go to paying the debt service (instead of the general fund). It is $259M.

http://clerk.seattle.gov/~public/meeting…
Pages 16-18.

57% of the debt servicing comes from tax money diverted from the general fund.

money spent at nearby restaurants in no way makes up for that fraud your are promoting...

@27 If you live by Bremerton, on Bainbridge, north of Seattle and in Seattle itself, Renton is not easily accessible as compared to SoDo.

Goldy; where is the county's economic study that was promised in April? You are not an economist, you are a pundit, and you know nothing about how economics works outside of your narrow polical agenda. No one cares how much you are in the tank for Dow's political machine.

Genius @2, and Goldy saying much the same thing:

The greater good is raising more revenue, and I think (sans an economic degree) that professional sports adds more to a city than detracts.

Shame that every study by an actual economist ever has shown no positive economic effect. None. Zero. Get that through your thick "I think, therefore I opine publicly" heads.

Every cent of tax revenue diverted to debt service is tax revenue that would have landed in the general fund from similar discretionary expenditures elsewhere in town.

Please stop making idiots of yourselves.