Long before this story turned into a soap opera, it was a long-running comedy.
They just don't tell them any more like the saga of the Ottawa Senators.
At one point, the Coast Guard even came in to determine if the ditch -- also known as the Carp River -- that trickles alongside the team's hockey rink was at all navigable.
Had it turned out to be so, this story might have ended in the spring of 1994 instead of, as it now may, by the spring of 2003, the end brought about by environmentalists instead of creditors.
The Coast Guard came with canoes and hipwaders and decided the ditch essentially went nowhere, allowing the hockey franchise to go ahead.
Nine years later, the Corel Centre stands to the east of the little creek -- conveniently covered in thin ice -- and the man who owned the team and built the rink, Rod Bryden, is setting out to navigate waters that will require far more than hipwaders to conquer.
He will try to persuade the bankers who repossessed his team to sell it at a firesale price to the only logical customer:
Himself.
In a move that some are describing as daring, some as outrageous, the Ottawa entrepreneur went to court yesterday and obtained protection for the troubled team under the Company's Creditors Arrangement Act.
Under the terms of the agreement, the hockey club will get an $8.8-million (U.S.) loan from the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and FleetBoston that will allow the club to continue operations and, significantly, pay the players last week's missed payroll.
Bryden, as majority owner when the banks moved in, is given the right to submit a bid for the team by Tuesday of next week, with the creditors having 10 days to decide whether or not to accept.
If Bryden decides not to make a bid, or the creditors reject one, the team will go to open bidding on whatever professional hockey market still exists -- with Bryden still able to bid.
His bet is that "the absolute supply of folks interested in owning a team has been reduced" to a point where he will emerge as the only option.
If it all sounds a bit like buying back your own car after the banks have repossessed it, it is. The difference being that other purchasers might be interested in a car and, of course, a car can be driven away. In 2003, it isn't quite so simple for an NHL franchise.
"What is it worth right now?" Bryden asks.
No one knows.
If the hockey market has indeed dried up, Bryden and a deep-pocketed partner -- said to be American Nelson Peltz, who made his billion on Snapple drink -- could conceivably buy the team for a fraction of what was owed on it as late as Thursday morning.
The Corel Centre is also up for sale following the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of Coventa Energy Corp., the New Jersey company that financed construction of the rink.
Total debt for team and building had reached $360-million, a figure that might shrink by half if the creditors are forced to take a hit, Bryden and his partner get the team and someone else assumes the rink.
It could also turn out that the team heads south and the seven-year-old building sits empty.
"It's my hope," Bryden told a press conference, "that I'll be part of the solution."
Another part of that solution, however, would have to be the Ottawa fans -- and here is where Bryden's daring scheme headed into unknown and, at times, very choppy waters.
Ottawa fans have lost count of the number of times that Bryden has pressured them to buy more tickets. It has both worked and failed in the past, and today the superb Senators regularly play in front of four to five thousand empty seats.
Bryden said that there is no doubt the Senators have loyal fans -- "but they're watching on TV."
In a move that some fans are calling "blackmail" and others are embracing, Bryden has called for no empty seats next Tuesday when the Senators play their next home game. It would be a signal, he says, to those potential investors who might still wonder if Ottawa fans truly want NHL hockey. "Ottawa has to make a decision," he said, "and take some action."
In a series of risky ploys, this may turn out to hold the highest risk of all. After a series of ticket drives across the Canada in recent years, there is a school of thought that says the next time an NHL team goes, hand out, to its fans, it had better be prepared to give something back rather than take more.
"The people of Ottawa have been empowered by the process," Bryden concluded. "They will decide."
And all of professional hockey will be watching. To see what direction that decision takes. rmacgregor@globeandmail.ca
Roy MacGregor