A hockey team in CANADA? How peculiar...

There is a short list of things that I dearly love in my life, and hockey and my Blackberry are up there in the top five. Imagine then, my gleefull, girly squeals at the very thought of Jim Balsillie marrying, in a sense, two of my loves. The fact that he wants to put a team back in Canada was just the icing on the puck.

I'm a Michigan girl at heart, and grew up in the era where the Red Wings were more often referred to as the Dead Things, and Lord Stanley's namesake coming to reside in the Great Lakes state was little more than a fond memory. The loyalty never wavered though, and while Wings fans always knew that we'd have our turn again someday, there was always the Saginaw Gears to keep that love alive. Seats could be had in Wendler Arena, thoughtfully furnished with seats in tangerine and turquoise to match the team's colours, in the glory years when the Turner Cup meant as much to the small town fans with ice in their blood as the Stanley cup did to the state as a whole. The well known joke around Michigan that we have two seasons - construction and hockey - is well earned, and well deserved.

Wings fans share the elite and sometimes snobbish honor of being part of the Original Six. As the league expanded, there were mixed feelings of glee that hockey was taking hold across the country and abject horror that teams were popping up in places where ice will never occur naturally. I'm transplanted to Utah now, and even so if I had my selfish way. one of the requirements for a franchise team would be that it be in a place where kids grow up playing pick up games on the local pond all winter.

Hockey is Canada. Canada is hockey. There's a reason why more people in the States know the words to "Oh Canada" than likely any other anthem but our own. The money, the legalities, and the feelings of the snowbirds aside, the league should be jumping for joy at the idea of one of Canada's power players wanting to rescue a failing team and bring them to a city, any city. where they can thrive. Yet once again, Bettman is proving with every stubborn, dug in step that he cares less about the fans and the sport than he does about his own agenda. Sadly, it's impossible to really guess what that agenda is, since he keeps demonstrating that his grasp on what the sport means is sub-Bantam, at best.

Bob McKenzie of TSN said that "Bettman and the NHL will take a beating in that court of public opinion in Canada". Add Utah to the list. Anyone care to join us?