Jim Kelley

Jim Kelley writes regularly on the NHL for Sportsnet.ca and can be heard on Primetime Sports on the FAN590.

If Cynamon and Sokolowski get the Coyotes it won't be because they want to keep the team in Phoenix.

Argonauts owners David Cynamon and Howard Sokolowski.

"There's something happening here

Telling me I got to beware"

From "For What it's Worth", a now ancient Buffalo Springfield tune covered by everyone from Dave Matthews to Ozzie Osbourne

Now, National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman does not, to the best of my knowledge, carry a gun. However, when he's over in Phoenix telling me that the current owners of the Toronto Argonauts could be the next owners of the Phoenix Coyotes, well, I've got to beware, and so should the good people of Phoenix. (Well, the few there who are actually hockey fans and maybe even the folks in Toronto.)

For something surely isn't clear if David Cynamon and Howard Sokolowski are frontrunners for a franchise Research in Motion co-founder Jim Balsillie was deemed unsuitable to own.

After all, what's needed in Phoenix, at least according to Bettman, is ownership that is committed to keeping the team in Phoenix, ownership that has deep pockets, a deep-and-abiding love for both the sport and for making the sport succeed in a market that hasn't ever known stand-alone hockey success. The Coyotes need owners that understand that risks must be taken, money will be lost and, preferably, the new owners won't be tied to any other owners or any kind of land-development deal.

If you live in Toronto or follow the fortunes of the Argonauts from anywhere in the country, you quickly come to realize that Cynamon and Sokolowski have no track record when it comes to the above qualifications.

Quite the opposite appears to be the case.

So much so that one can't help but wonder why Bettman even mentioned their names in a deposition he gave to the bankruptcy court in Phoenix. Grey Cup championship aside, their history with the Argos has been anything but inspiring once the truth started making its way out.

It can also be stated for the record their first contact with Bettman regarding owning a hockey team was with the idea of buying one, likely the Coyotes but Tampa Bay and even Atlanta were said to be in the mix, and eventually moving it into the Southern Ontario market with the league's permission.

The rumoured plum they dangled in front of the commissioner was that they would operate an existing but struggling franchise until they completed the construction of a new arena in the Downsview area in the northern part of the city. That deal hung on getting development rights to a choice piece of real estate currently controlled by the Canadian government. The two are known to have had talks with government officials about the property though other sites would also be in the mix.

Make no mistake, the pair want to own a hockey team and are known to have even considered making a bid for the Montreal Canadiens when they went to market. Like Balsillie however, it appears they want to eventually own and operate a team in the most coveted hockey market in North America. It's also known they presented that scenario to Bettman even before Balsillie seduced Jerry Moyes with the Coyotes-as-bankruptcy-fodder plan. From the start, their plan hinged on the Downsview-land-development deal

One might point out here that an ambitious land -evelopment deal is one of the primary reasons the Phoenix operation ended up in bankruptcy.

Then there is Cynamon and Sokolowski's record as sports moguls.

This has been documented in several publications, the most recent being Forbes Magazine which had this to say about Cynamon and Sokolowski:

Deep pockets? If they have them, it sure doesn't show by the way they run the Argonauts. The pair bought the CFL's most storied team out of bankruptcy in 2003 for only $1.5 million. Still, they weren't willing to stomach the paltry purchase price on their own and borrowed (without notifying the league) half the money from the owner of another team, the B.C. Lions' David Braley, to complete the transaction.

If the pair moves forward and is successful with a bid, at least one good thing could come out of their owning the Coyotes. Their smoke-and-mirrors routine would be a great opening act should they ever decide to move the team to Vegas.

Now just to clear up a couple of things:

For one, it's been widely reported in Toronto that Cynamon and Sokolowski did their Braley dealings without the knowledge of the commissioner of the CFL. Regarding current commissioner Mark Cohon, that may be true, but sources tell sportsnet.ca that the CFL, under a previous administration, was fully aware of the duo's plans with Braley and had a hand in bringing the deal together.

I suspect Forbes is also guessing on Vegas, but there could be a link. In order to make a Cynamon and Sokolowski deal look as legitimate as the initial purchase of the Argos, one could see a scenario where the two do Bettman a major favour by operating the Coyotes and taking on both the $140 million fee accepted by the bankruptcy court judge and also shouldering the further expected losses of upward of $60 million.

That would give Bettman the opportunity to tell the league's board of governors that the Phoenix problem, at least in terms of the owners carrying the debt, is off their books. Over time, especially if the City of Glendale doesn't cave to further lease demands, Cynamon and Sokolowski could petition Bettman to move the team, perhaps via a sale, to persons interested in settling it in Las Vegas.

Cynamon and Sokolowski's reward would be first dibs on that new expansion franchise in Southern Ontario, a veritable license to print money (and recoup their Phoenix investment) while paying off a reasonable sum in expansion fees that would appease the board of governors who floated the Phoenix franchise in order to keep it away from Balsillie AND a sum that will persuade the Leafs owners to go along with the deal.

Pricey? No doubt, but coupled with the land-development deal, a deal far more lucrative than just an arena project and the GTA location, they'll make it all back and then some.

Added bonus for Bettman: He gets a failing franchise into a market he's coveted for years and though he might have to settle only for a relocation fee in Vegas, he gets a lucrative expansion fee for the Toronto market and he opens that market to a second team in an underserved marketplace without opening the door to the hated Balsillie. Neat, tidy, profitable and, well, confirming the message that Balsillie should have worked with the NHL and not against it.

Is it a reach? Well, not in the way Boots Del Biaggio reached for Nashville or the current owners of the Tampa Bay Lighting are reaching for each other's wallet or the way the minority investors with the Florida Panthers have "reached" an accord with principal owner Alan Cohen.

In fact it's all rather neat and tidy assuming the Leafs go along with the plan and Cynamon and Sokoloski actually scrape together enough of other people's money - and we're told they have lined up some major real estate developers to make that happen -- to pull off the land deal.

It's only one scenario and though it's hard to imagine there are "six prospective owners" interested in the Coyotes (there may be one or two other than Cynamon and Sokoloski), the important thing to know is that these two have been playing a hand here from the beginning and that the focus has been a mega-land deal in Toronto, one that just happens to have a hockey element to it.

It's why they showed up in Bettman's deposition way back when Phoenix was in a courtroom and it's why they are on the brink of pulling away from an Argos franchise that hasn't produced the spinoffs they hoped for when they first got involved in several failed development deals, including attempts with York University and later with what turned into BMO field.

That could be something of a down view regarding how their bid comes together, but it's reasonably safe to assume that if they emerge as owners of the Coyotes it won't be for the sole purpose of keeping hockey afloat in the desert.

But then one has to suspect that the NHL, like the CFL, already knew that.

Or to put it another way:

It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound,

Everybody look what (may be) going down.