In the near term, the biggest single difference in the Nashville Predators’ operating strategy will involve the National Hockey League team’s budget. Had owner Craig Leipold been unable to sell his team to Canadian gazillionaire Jim Balsillie – or if the deal falls through at the 11th hour, pending approval of the league’s board of governors – chances are, the Predators' payroll would have been slashed significantly from the $38.2 million total they operated with for the majority of last season.
Leipold made two things clear at Thursday’s press conference – one, that he was tired of losing money on his operation; and two, that he was frustrated by his inability to coax a local ownership partner into helping him stem the bleeding. The Predators have a number of possible unrestricted free agents on their roster – from Peter Forsberg and Paul Kariya to Kimmo Timmonen and Scott Hartnell – all of whom could have bolted to other NHL cities. Some may anyway – the suspicion is that if Forsberg plays at all next season, it’ll be with either Modo, his former Swedish league team, or the Colorado Avalanche, his long-timer NHL employer.
Still, with the salary cap scheduled to rise to about $48 million, if the Preds’ payroll had been set between $30 and $35 million, not only would that have limited their ability to make competitive bids for any of their potential unrestricted free agents, they might have had to dump some signed players as well. Now, with Balsillie waiting in the wings, the odds are good that general manager David Poile will get permission to operate with a more realistic budget, which will heighten the chances that Kariya, for example, might return to Music City (where he enjoyed his first two years with the franchise).
Ultimately, the Predators are at least one or two years (and maybe more) away from shifting to the great Canadian north. In the meantime, the fan in Balsillie will want to see the team stay competitive, rather than stripped to the bone because of budgetary considerations - or the prospect of spilling even more red ink in a football-crazed market where the corporate community has shown little interest in supporting the hockey team.
