The Potential Death of the Buffalo Sabres

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↵I don’t live anywhere near southern Ontario, so all the geographic wrangling concerning Jim Balsillie’s desired transplant of the Coyotes from Phoenix to Hamilton flies over my head. I understand Toronto is big and adores hockey, and that the Phoenix market really isn’t working. As such, the troubles of this idea escape me.
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↵But Jeff Z. Klein of the New York Times makes things ultra-clear for a dunce like me in a post on the paper’s Slap Shot blog. In short, the move could murder the Buffalo Sabres.↵↵⇥But the Sabres are always in a very precarious financial position, given Buffalo’s shrinking size and awful economy. The Sabres depend on the roughly 15 percent of their business that comes from the Niagara Peninsula, all the way up the Golden Horseshoe to Hamilton. [...]
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↵⇥It would take an enormous indemnification payment to the Sabres to make them give up as much as 15 percent of their annual business — an amount that Balsillie is trying to get out of paying by trying to strike down the N.H.L. territory rules in a Phoenix court. Unless the Sabres — who were themselves being operated by the league and at risk of folding before Golisano bought them in 2003 — get that kind of big money, they will never approve a Coyotes move to Hamilton that could easily drive them out of business.↵↵Klein suggests building a new Hamilton-area rink further north -- closer to Toronto proper and farther from Buffalo -- would help mitigate the problems. Again, I’m not well-versed in that population corridor. But I do agree that it’d be horrible to lose a small-market team with such a rabid following just because another across the continent couldn’t stay afloat. The NHL would be cutting off its right hand to save the pinkie. It doesn’t make sense. At all.
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↵On a different but similar thread, this is why anyone who suggests the Indiana Pacers will be moved to Vancouver needs to be committed to an institution.↵