Drinnan column

From The Daily News of Thursday, Aug. 9:
Sooner or later, the members of the Kamloops Blazers Sports Society are
going to gather and vote on whether its assets are for sale. Again.
More than a year has passed since they last held a vote on that very matter.
That night, the members who bothered to show up voted 49-38 not to put even
one hockey stick up for sale.
At that time, the WHL team was coming off a season in which it had fired its
head coach and didn’t make the playoffs for the first time in franchise
history.
Now, coming off its first 40-victory season since 1998-99 and with a future
that looks as bright as a Prairie sunrise, there are those in Little
Montreal who believe a sale is imminent.
River City Hockey Inc. (RCH), the group that is headed up by Vancouver
businessman Tom Gaglardi and includes ex-Blazers Shane Doan, Jarome Iginla,
Mark Recchi and Darryl Sydor, is, for the second summer in a row, attempting
to purchase the WHL franchise. Unlike last summer, when it pretty much let
its $6-million offer do the talking and wound up being rebuffed, the RCH
gang is being aggressive in its approach.
It has in its employ a public relations firm. It has a website on which is
posted the $6.1-million offer it has made for the franchise. Gaglardi, who
would own 60 per cent of the team, and three of the players have broken
bread with the media.
On Wednesday, outside a Vancouver courtroom, after RCH had received a
favourable ruling over the society in a constitutional matter, Gaglardi
approached society president Murray Owen and suggested they could negotiate.
“Yeah, they are (being aggressive),” Owen said later. “But then that’s
(Gaglardi’s) style.”
Gaglardi left Owen and headed to another courtroom where the president of
Northland Properties, which owns, among other things, Sandman Hotels, Inns
and Suites, Denny’s Restaurants and Moxie’s Restaurants, is embroiled in a
lawsuit from which he hopes to emerge as an owner of the Vancouver Canucks
and the NHL team’s home arena, GM Place.
Gaglardi and Owen spent some time together later in the evening, too.
Presumably, they weren’t talking about the B.C. Lions’ quarterbacking
situation.
At the same time, and even though the Blazers aren’t officially for sale,
the team’s board of directors has received a second offer, this one from
Mike Priestner, the president of the Edmonton-based Mike Priestner
Automotive Group.
And the two offers couldn’t be more diametrically opposed.
RCH wants the whole enchilada. It wants to own everything and to operate it
with its own people. It hasn’t given the present coaching staff, especially
general manager/head coach Dean Clark, anything remotely resembling a vote
of confidence.
“It is the goal of River City Hockey, and my personal goal for the Blazers,
that the Blazers be rebuilt,” Recchi said in a statement released by RCH
this week. That statement would seem to ignore the signals emitted by a
young team’s 40-victory season, the fact that most of its recent draft picks
are under contract, the fact that the team has stockpiled assets in the form
of draft picks, the fact the team has become a force in the B.C. Division.
Priestner would buy 55 per cent of the franchise, leaving shareholders in
control of the rest. He would have the society play a role and would leave
virtually all of the present structure, including the coaching staff, in
place. While Clark now is general manager and head coach, it is believed he
would become something akin to a managing partner under Priestner’s
proposal.
Owen described Priestner’s offer as being “more conciliatory . . . it’s
quite different.”
And don’t think for a moment that, should the members vote to sell, there
won’t be more offers. No, despite what you may have heard from those who
deal in rumours, Oprah’s good friend Jim Pattison won’t be submitting one.
Geez, with a yacht like that why would Pattison be interested in the
Blazers?
But we digress . . .
One of the interesting things that comes out of an exercise the likes of
which the Blazers are going through now is the disinformation that surfaces.
Like the individual who wrote in a letter to the editor that “in spite of
the best efforts of our scouting staff and coaches . . . a high percentage
of the top players decide on the college route.”
Actually, the Blazers haven’t lost a player to the NCAA since Brock
Bradford, a 2002 bantam draft pick, chose to attend Boston College.
Far more society members have chosen not to attend important meetings.
Last summer, when the society’s board held a vitally important meeting,
fewer than 100 of 194 members showed up.
This time, the meeting will be even more critical. There now are upwards of
200 members and you would hope that all members would see fit to put in an
appearance.
Because should the members vote to sell their franchise, there will be no
turning back.