And in the end, everyone lived happily ever after.
The fans in Pittsburgh, who got their first look at the National Hockey League way back in 1925 — and their first look at professional hockey 21 years before that — can now rest easy knowing that the Penguins will remain in town thanks to an arena deal that was to be announced Tuesday night.
On the verge of big things thanks to Sidney Crosby et al, the payback for a series of dreadful, hopeless seasons, the Pens may well add a third Stanley Cup banner to the two already hanging from the rafters of the rink once known as The Igloo, or from the rafters in the new digs beginning in 2009.
The NHL commissioner, Gary Bettman, has achieved his stated goal of keeping the team where it was, overcoming a long list of political and financial obstacles. He also must privately feel secure knowing that the Pens will continue to play in an American market where there are actual, honest-to-god hockey fans.
The local and state politicians likewise save face, not having to explain how a professional sports franchise with a bright future bolted town on their watch.
And Mario Lemieux will finally get his money, one way or another, at last out from under a terrible contract signed years ago that tied his personal financial fate far too closely to that of the club.
The collateral damage caused along the way, perhaps permanently alienating a potential owner in Jim Balsillie, was for the league an acceptable price to pay. And even if, taking the long view, Pittsburgh and especially the state of Pennsylvania seem like remarkable patsies, having now anted up public funds to underwrite five teams in three professional sports (the Steelers, Eagles, Phillies and Pirates all got a piece of the action), that's their problem, or at least their taxpayers' problem.
For hockey fans, it's all good news.
What's not so good was what the surrounding drama suggests is looming in the not-so-distant future.
In their quest to create leverage, the Pens' ownership allowed itself to be courted by all potential suitors, and once Balsillie sailed into the sunset, found a couple of live ones in Kansas City and Las Vegas.
In Kansas City, there's a publicly funded arena nearing completion that is in desperate search for a big-league tenant of some sort.
In Las Vegas, a gambling boom town, there's an aggressive, ambitious mayor hoping to overcome the stigma that goes with betting with the lure of potential riches for whichever sport gets there first.
Hockey, in either case, would be no sure thing. In another time, another world, it failed miserably in K.C., and it's hard to make the case that the sport is better positioned to expand its footprint right now.
And though the unspoken truth is that the NHL would love to have more people betting on its games to increase interest, Las Vegas is entirely unproven as a potential market. It has sporadically supported college sports and minor-league teams in baseball and hockey, and is great for big events (championship fights, the National Finals Rodeo, the National Basketball Association all-star game, the latter with an asterisk attached).
But for a team to thrive in the long term, Las Vegas would need to both convince casinos that they'd be happy to lend out their betting customers for an hour or three when they might otherwise be losing their shirts, and to draw from a working population, two-thirds of which isn't locked into a 9-to-5 schedule.
Those fine points, though, fall by the wayside when it comes to the bottom line: There are at least two cities where franchises may be moved, or much better, peddled at an exorbitant price. The league that gets in first, wins.
Yes, expansion, the proceeds from which, under the new NHL collective agreement, don't need to be shared with the players. For the owners, it would be a pure cash grab, a way to artificially increase their own franchise value, all without having to add one dollar to the cap. It's a horrible idea, as any hockey fan could tell you, for a host of reasons. And after the last few weeks of test marketing by the Pens, it's almost certainly coming.
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