Column

From The Daily News of Monday, Aug. 13, 2007:

Take a letter Maria. Address it to:

Mr. Murray Owen
President
Kamloops Blazers Sports Society
Etc., etc.

Dear Mr. Owen:
Please allow me to present to you an unsolicited offer for your Western
Hockey League franchise. It comes from me and my boys. Just call us Little
Montreal Hockey Inc.
We would love to post it on a website for all to see but, well, we don’t
have a website. Instead, you should feel free to make copies and give it to
whomever you want, or post it on the bulletin boards at Coopers, Safeway and
Jimmy Pattison’s food store. Or simply distribute it to your bored of
directors and I’m sure it will get around. After all, your bored has a leak
in it big enough to drown New Orleans.
For the most part, this offer, when you and the bored choose to accept it,
will allow the organization to maintain the status quo. Most importantly, it
will allow the bored to remain bored directors and we all know how important
that is, don’t we? Heck, we’ll even throw in a fancy leather team jacket for
each of you.
While we don’t have our own website, we have surfed over and read the offer
you got from that Gaglardi bunch.
That Gaglardi gang? Geez, the only guy missing from that wild bunch is Sam
Peckinpah. They’ll dump the billet system for sure because they’ll have your
players staying at the Sandman Inn and eating at Denny’s, at home and on the
road, and skating onto the ice at The ATM to the strains of Enter Sandman by
Metallica. Metallica? I’m sure you and most of your season-ticket holders
have them on your iPods.
By the way, one of the clauses in our offer will allow your sound crew to
continue using Takin’ Care of Business even though, ahem, well, that’s all
in the past, isn’t it?
We’re told the Gaglardi gang includes four ex-Blazers. You should know that
there are eight ex-Blazers in my Little Montreal group. Uhh, no, none of
them live in the Shuswap, Sun Rivers, Pittsburgh or in Kelowna. No, in our
group we’re talking Trailer Park Boys, grinders, cornermen, guys your — soon
to be our — season-ticket holders really can relate to.
And, believe me, my Magnificent Eight know how to work the phones. We’ll
have them calling potential players. Our scouting staff will identify those
players in novice or even earlier, and we’ll have our guys phoning them
before they get to peewee.
Oh, and another thing. We’ll set up phone boards for those thin years when
the results aren’t there and the fans abandon ship — that happens, you know
— and we’ll run telethons to benefit the hockey team. Yeah, we’ll do it
every weekend with all the proceeds to your favourite charity, the Blazers.
Can’t you just picture Earl Seitz, the silver fox, as the host? Wouldn’t be
long before we lost him to The Price Is Right.
As for ticket prices, well, the Gaglardi gang says it won’t increase them
“except to potentially offset normal increased costs due to inflation.” The
offer from Little Montreal Hockey guarantees, absolutely guarantees, that
ticket prices will never, ever be increased, except for games that are
played on days ending in the letter ‘y.’
We have heard that you also received another offer, a little something from
some Mike Priestner guy. Someone said he owns an Arctic Cat dealership in
Yellowknife. Beautiful. Your coaches will look good driving those things
around Kamloops.
Also heard that his kid is one of your goaltenders, which immediately has
people talking about a guy buying a team to make sure the kid has a place to
play. If you’ve done due diligence, as I’m sure you and the commissioner
have, you will know that Priestner already bought the whole Edmonton minor
hockey association — lock, stock and whining parents — to make sure the kid
had a place to play. Legend has it there were some nights when the kid
played for both teams in the same game.
Oh, and about your coaching staff. You don’t have to read between the lines
on the Gaglardi gang’s website to realize those River City guys aren’t
giving your guys any props. None at all. So don’t go loaning those coaches
any money, you know, just in case. And we understand that Mr. Arctic Cat not
only would leave the three coaches in place, but might even make Dean Clark
a managing partner, like Wayne Gretzky in Phoenix or Al Davis with the
Oakland Raiduz. Now that’s powerful.
That Priestner guy’s business plan — yes, a business plan; is that a novel
idea, or what? — also includes profit-sharing. A profit? He’s forecasting a
profit? Does he know something you guys don’t?
Anyway, here’s what Little Montreal would do. When you accept our offer, we
will keep everyone in place. Not only that, we will give them all lifetime
contracts. Yes, the bored of directors, too. No problem. But we’re thinking
y’all have some people out of position, not really working to their
strengths. Spike Wallace, for example . . . he should be the general
manager; hey, no one has been here longer than he has, so he has seen it all
and will know how to deal with every situation.
By now you’re wondering when you will see our offer in its entirety,
including its monetary value.
The offer, sir, is in the mail.
But we also hear there may be another offer in the works. Rumour has it —
no, not Jimmy Pattison — that a woman who claims she used to work for the
Blazers is said to be putting together an offer. Seems it would have been
done earlier but she has been indisposed.

Yours in hockey,
Etc., etc., etc.