After all, conventional wisdom tells us the history of start-up leagues both in North America and Europe is written far more often in the red ink of failure no matter how well off and well intentioned the founders may be.

One need only look at the XFL in North America and the World League of American Football in Europe as the most recent examples. The XFL was the brainchild of wrestling maven and showman extraordinaire Vince McMahon and was financed in part by a major television network in the U.S. It took the fall fast and hard.

The World League had the money and marketing muscle of the U.S.-based National Football League behind it and while it lived longer and died a less painful (though certainly expensive) death it was a failure nonetheless. This despite the fact that NFL football has a genuine following in Europe.

But there are several real and one speculative reason why I believe a European Super League has a chance.

Let's deal with reality first.

The proposed league does have some financial backing in several Russian entrepreneurs who have recently come into massive fortunes in the oil and natural gas industry, and who seem willing to spend their newfound wealth on something as legitimate as bringing highly skilled Russian and European players back to their homelands.

Now that would normally sound like a pipe dream given the riches of an NHL salary even in a salary-capped league, but it was the dream of fast money that gave life to the World Hockey Association and a part of that lure - the part that got it off paper and onto the ice - was that NHL players of that era could make more than they were making in the NHL and play for a team or a city of their choice. For many that meant a homecoming of sorts and that was no small factor in the league's initial success.

Ask any North American player in the NHL today and they will tell you that Russian-born players talk openly and proudly of the country of their birth and if the money were right, would have no qualms about returning there. The same can be said for most European-born players, the majority of whom come to the NHL for the money and to test themselves in what's perceived to be the best hockey league in the world, but also long to play again closer to home.

The second factual item has to do with arena rights and television contracts. There are enough arenas of size scattered throughout Europe and Russia to make a Super League with European and Russian stars a viable and profitable gate attraction. They aren't at the NHL level in most cities, but then what's the point of having huge capacity if you have a franchise in Phoenix, Florida, Long Island, Washington or one of the other struggling NHL franchises. Perhaps more importantly (and European football has shown the way on this) there is enough of a television audience, linked by satellite systems to provide a source of revenue equal to or greater than the amount of cash the NHL receives for its broadcasting ventures in North America.

A third fact is that former National Hockey League Players Association executive director Bob Goodenow is involved. I spoke to Goodenow earlier this week and though he downplayed his role in the European venture, he did not deny that he had been doing some work on behalf of the interested parties. For Goodenow, who has a sharp fiscal as well as legal mind, to engage himself in a project like this would lead one to believe that he has at least a passing interest in its chances for success.

(There are probably few things in life that Goodenow would like to do more than help start a league that cornered a market left undeveloped by his longtime nemesis, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, but that's a column for another time.)

Then there's the talent pool and the aforementioned salary cap.

Europe produces a great deal of NHL talent. Overall, Europe/Russia surpasses the United States and is second only to Canada in terms of filling NHL rosters. Given that all of the European hockey-playing countries have pulled out of the transfer agreement with the NHL and aren't in any particular hurry to sign a new one, there's an opening for players to stay home and develop their talents in Europe. At the end of that process, should there be a league that pays close to what the NHL pays but is home-based and likely includes fewer game, fewer goons and more opportunity for local endorsements (there are virtually none here for any non-North American) it has to be enticing.

Then there's the NHL's salary cap. There's only one way a cap truly works in pro sports and that's with the absence of any real competition. The NFL has no competition and it's had a salary cap for years. The NBA has a looser cap than most leagues, but also no real competition. The NHL just recently got a cap and one could argue that in so doing it opened a fiscal door for a competitor to entice a player limited in what he can earn. It doesn't take a ridiculous amount of money, just enough to garner one or two primary gate attractions per team. Since each NHL team only has room for one or two (and in some cases one or none) it wouldn't be all that difficult or expensive to populate a smaller league with a scattering of elite players whose NHL clubs can't satisfy their demands even if they wanted to. Sign them and fill in around them with homegrown talent and you have at the very least an interesting team. In a sense, that's what the 30-team NHL does now; parceling out the superstars across the league and then filling in with journeymen down the line. Even when an NHL team manages to assemble more than the usual amount of talent, it is a short-lived affair. Witness what happened in Buffalo with the loss of co-captains Daniel Briere and Chris Drury to free agency. Pittsburgh could have the same problems with Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal, what with so much money already tied up in Sidney Crosby. Look how many teams are at the cap simply because they locked up their younger players in long-term deals, reducing their chances of making any kind of play on the free-agent market.

In Russia and some European markets the sky would be the limit in bringing home a star or two and the money might well be there even if the individual club can't make the dollars work. Pooling for superstars is not a foreign concept even in foreign lands.

Then there's the speculative part.

To build a new league in pro sports today you don't just need money; you need vision.

You need people with a passion to bring life to an idea whose time isn't certain, but with the right people and the right funding, could well come to pass.

We haven't seen a lot of that in hockey or in the business of hockey in a very long time, but we have seen it regularly in the fortunes that Google, YouTube and FaceBook envisioned when they got underway.

Smart people with resources, a plan and a passion for success usually find a way and in today's world, most of them come from outside the conventional schools of business thought.

All of which leads me to believe that when it comes to Europe, the NHL needs to be either proactive or at least a little bit afraid.

It can't afford to be anything else