Carolina Hurricanes
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CAROLINA HURRICANES NEWS CLIPPINGS • July 21, 2021 Here’s when the Hurricanes will play their 2021 NHL preseason games By Justin Pelletier The Hurricanes will then play a home-and-home series against the Nashville Predators, hosting Nashville at PNC A pair of recent playoff opponents highlight the Carolina Arena on Tuesday, Oct. 5 and visiting Bridgestone Arena on Hurricanes’ preseason schedule this fall as the NHL returns Saturday, Oct. 9. to a more familiar schedule. The NHL regular season schedule is expected to be The Canes will play four exhibition games, two at home and announced in the coming days. two on the road, against playoff foes nashville and Tampa Bay. Canes exhibition schedule The Hurricanes will open their 2021 preseason schedule Tuesday, Sept. 28: vs. Tampa Bay, 7 p.m. against the defending Stanley Cup Champion Lightning at PNC Arena on Tuesday, Sept. 28. Carolina will travel to Friday, Oct. 1: at Tampa Bay, 7 p.m. Amalie Arena to face the Lightning on Friday, Oct. 1. Tuesday, Oct 5: vs. Nashville, 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 9: at Nashville, 8 p.m. How a failed NHL expansion bid in Raleigh led to the Carolina Hurricanes’ existence By Chip Alexander Sabates, ever loquacious and often outspoken, was the perfect guy to represent and do most of the talking for the On the eve of the NHL’s latest expansion draft, meant to prospective ownership group. Ebbers, who died in 2020, was stock Seattle with enough talent to compete as the league’s more quiet and reserved, staying in the background, a 32nd entry, a fun tidbit: Canadian by birth who had played basketball at Mississippi Raleigh, this could have been you. College and would become a major player — if only for a few years — in the then-burgeoning telecommunications Raleigh nearly entered the National Hockey League with an business. expansion team in 1997. No, it would not have been named the Carolina Hurricanes. It’s a stretch to believe it could have “I’m a very competitive business person,” Ebbers said in a won a Stanley Cup by 2006. Peter Karmanos would have 1997 interview with the News & Observer. “I think some of moved the Hartford Whalers elsewhere. Rod Brind’Amour that is from my sports background.” might never have come to Raleigh, either. Ebbers, then 55, had become CEO of WorldCom, which And, the team may not have lasted all that long. acquired MCI Communications and made a failed attempt on a $115 billion acquisition of Sprint Corporation. Antitrust One of the top money men in the prospective ownership issues put an end to that bid, but the rapid growth of group, Bernard Ebbers, entered federal prison in 2006 after WorldCom made Ebbers a very rich man. one of the most extensive security fraud and conspiracy cases in U.S. history. That came after three years of highly Ebbers likened obtaining an NHL expansion franchise for the publicized indictments, charges and court appearances. Triangle to completing a standard business deal, with Imagine the ramifications of that on a hockey team. networking, relationships slowly built, differences settled and cooperation obtained to achieve the end goal. “That would have been a disaster because our franchise owner would have ended up in the hoosegow,” former “I’ve spent a lot of my time doing mergers and acquisitions,” Raleigh mayor Tom Fetzer said Monday in an interview. Ebbers said in the 1997 interview. “I’m not a newcomer to the political workings of how things get done. You start out With the Kraken set to begin play, it’s a good time to flash and you court each other. We courted the city and the city back to 1997. In a matter of months, a strong expansion bid courted us. Then you get down to each group and by the Ebbers group fell through and Karmanos soon had a representing their interests. There’s not always going to be new home for his team. 100 percent agreement but the overriding feeling is that the “Fate smiled on us,” Fetzer said. community wants it.” Looking to expand At the time, the NHL expansion fee was $80 million — or about $135 million in 2021 dollars. The Seattle Kraken’s The front man for the expansion group was Charlotte expansion fee was $650 million. The Vegas Golden Knights businessman Felix Sabates, a NASCAR team owner and the paid $500 million in 2017. owner of the Charlotte Checkers hockey team, then in the ECHL and the league champions in 1996. CAROLINA HURRICANES NEWS CLIPPINGS • July 21, 2021 “The NHL is on the rise,” Ebbers said in ‘97. “History will “Little did we know we were paving the way for someone show how much it costs to get a franchise today and how the else,” Sabates told the N&O in 1997. value of franchises increase.” Falling through The Whalers sold for $47.5 million in 1994. The Hurricanes franchise, now owned solely by Tom Dundon, was valued at The Sabates group had taken a memorandum of $440 million in the most recent Forbes valuations of sports understanding on a proposed arena lease to the NHL franchises. presentation. Organizational plans were under way. The late Carl Scheer, who had been general manager of the Making their pitch Checkers and was a former GM in the NBA and ABA, headed up operational plans for the Sabates group. So, why Raleigh? And why then? But in the next month, the expansion bid began to crumble. With plans under way for building a new arena near Carter- Finley Stadium, the belief was that an NHL could share the The arena lease negotiations were contentious. Sabates, building with N.C. State’s men’s basketball — and share the increasingly frustrated, believed the Centennial Authority, an costs of the construction. The NHL was looking to expand, appointed group formed to oversee the arena, was more and a newly formed group, the Research Triangle Sports concerned about N.C. State interests than the hockey team’s Council, joined the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce interests. There was a lot of haggling, much of it publicly. and Fetzer in promoting the effort and pushing for someone to enter an expansion bid in the fall of 1996. “The lease was an Achilles problem throughout,” Harvey Schmitt, former CEO of the Greater Raleigh Chamber of “We had a practical situation and needed someone to help fill Commerce, said in an interview Monday. “We were always at up that building 40 or 50 nights a year,” Fetzer said Monday. risk because the arena deal wasn’t closed during that “We needed another anchor tenant and it just so happened process. My feeling was we were always hopeful but we also the NHL was going through an expansion phase.” understood the risk.” The Sabates group jumped in and made the bid. In January On Feb. 17, 1997, Sabates withdrew the expansion bid, 1997, the Sabates group joined 10 other applicants bidding calling it a “crying shame for the region.” Others said the for expansion teams in making formal presentations to the market would continue to be attractive for a major-league NHL’s executive committee in New York. The Sabates group team — and it was. invited Fetzer and others along for a united front of what had been often bickering parties, all the better for the optics. Enter the Hurricanes “I sensed the mood in the room with the (NHL) governors In May, Karmanos announced the Whalers were moving to was very positive, very favorable about the presentation, the Raleigh and would be called the Carolina Hurricanes, a content of the presentation,” Ebbers said in 1997. “Not to name he said he picked because it was one people would brag, but I haven’t been involved in a making an acquisition “remember easily.” on behalf of my business that I didn’t get done.” “Things moved so rapidly,” Schmitt said Monday. “We went Sabates was confident. The day before the presentation, he from chasing an expansion franchise and losing the deal in looked at a map featuring NHL cities, pointed to the Triangle February to wining and dining Karmanos in March.” and said, “Look at the NHL footprint. We would be smack- The new expansion teams were the Atlanta Thrashers, dab in the middle of the Eastern seaboard. The NHL is Nashville Predators, Columbus Blue Jackets and Minnesota looking for TV markets and areas with growth. We have that. Wild. In the expansion drafts to follow, NHL teams were And we have 90,000 college students in the area. The NHL allowed to protect one goalie, five defensemen and nine is a youth-oriented league, with much of its licensed forwards; or two goalies, three defensemen and seven merchandise geared to youth.” forwards. Atlanta and Nashville were considered locks for new Canes forward Jeff Daniels, now a Carolina assistant coach, expansion teams. Ted Turner was backing the Atlanta effort, was taken by Nashville in the 1998 expansion draft, and the Sabates quipping at the time, “He can pull a sheet of legal- Thrashers took goalie Trevor Kidd from the Canes in the pad paper and write ‘I am Ted Turner, give me a team’ and 1999 expansion draft. he will get one. The rest of us have to spend all this money on our bids.” In June 2000, the Blue Jackets and Wild drafted their teams. The Hurricanes lost forward Robert Kron to the Blue Jackets NHL commissioner Gary Bettman had shown interest into and defenseman Curtis Leschyshyn to the Wild. further expanding the league into the Southeast — the Tampa Bay Lightning first began play as an expansion team Ultimately, better off in the 1992-93 season — the Triangle had a lot to offer.