Hoping to Stop a Capital Offense

To stand on the frozen Rideau Canal, which dissects the city, is to have feet firmly placed on hockey history.

Here, on what is billed during the winter as the longest skating rink in the world, drunken Ottawa players, celebrating a championship, kicked the Stanley Cup into the canal in the 1920s. It was retrieved, in a big chunk of ice, the next day.

Here, on this ice, skaters will stop today -- the day before the NHL All-Star game at Sunrise, Fla., of all places -- and contemplate the Ottawa Senators’ troubles, wondering if their debt-ridden NHL team can be retrieved. The concern is that the Senators, an expansion team in 1992-93, will be gone by the time the canal thaws in spring.

From frozen Cup to frozen assets, Ottawa’s professional hockey fortunes have been sinking in one way or another. Everyone in Ottawa who cares about hockey -- and the sport is the opiate of the masses in Canada -- hopes for the best but fears the worst.

“If this team leaves, people here are going to mourn and grieve,” said Janet Berkley, a longtime Ottawa resident and Senator fan.

Civic panic set in Jan. 9, when the Senators were granted protection under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, which is similar to Chapter 11 bankruptcy regulations in the U.S. A refinancing scheme to cut the team’s substantial debt had crumbled on New Year’s Eve and the players went unpaid the next day.

Another Canadian team moving to the U.S. was too grim to ponder.

It’s one thing to exile the Montreal Expos to Puerto Rico for part of the summer, but Canadians have been through this painful hockey exodus before. Quebec’s team was sold south to Denver in 1995, and Winnipeg’s fled for Phoenix in 1996. This, though, seemed worse. The Senators are not only the top team in the Eastern Conference, they play in the nation’s capital.

Team owner Rod Bryden played to those nationalist feelings, demanding fans come out and support the team when it returned from a swing through western Canada. Fans gave the Senators their second sellout of the season, and there since has been a third.

They were rewarded not only with a 7-0 victory over Tampa Bay but with the news that Bryden had made a bid, with the backing of a New York co-investor, to reacquire the team and keep it in Ottawa. Negotiations continued into the All-Star break and a decision is expected soon.

If his offer is accepted, Bryden will have pulled off a slick maneuver to wiggle from beneath a $360-million debt on the team and the Corel Centre, with the help of Long Island billionaire Nelson Peltz.

“This is not a national museum we have built here,” Bryden said. “The deal is intended to make the team a permanent asset to the city. This is a well-run organization. The players have delivered.

“The fans have been passionate in making a commitment this week. That needs to continue. They can’t put this team on the shelf and go back to watching television.”

Ottawa’s TV generation took a commercial break for a ticket-buying frenzy. It helped that the Senators slashed ticket prices.

“It’s unfortunate that fans needed a little push here,” Senator defenseman Chris Phillips said. “Maybe this opened some eyes to how bad the situation is here.

“We have six teams left in Canada and it would be tough to see any of them go. But this is the capital. Hockey has to be here.”

Some fans have gone to extraordinary lengths to keep the Senators in Ottawa.

Tony Kue and Robert Shahrasebi, who own and operate a small car-wash chain in Ottawa, shelled out $10,000 (Canadian) for 20 season tickets for the rest of the season. They handed tickets to every 50th customer.

“As soon as we heard the Senators were in trouble, we decided that someone has to do something,” Shahrasebi said. “The tickets are going like hot cakes. We were hoping they would last until February. They [didn’t] and we’ll probably buy some more.”

Ottawa fans have no qualms about an American owning a majority of the team, as will be the case if Bryden’s sleight of hand works out. Another potential buyer has surfaced. Eugene Melnyk, a Canadian billionaire, told Canadian Press on Friday that he is interested in the Senators.

Melnyk, however, may not have the background that would appeal to Ottawa residents ... he was born in Toronto.

Local media went into crisis-mode covering the Senators’ mess, even to the point of blaming the legions of Toronto Maple Leaf fans who live in Ottawa and never go to games ... except when “their” team is in town. Ottawa Mayor Bob Chiarelli, meanwhile, blamed the province for not offering financial help ... and the Toronto media for opposing such arrangements.

Others, too, have tried to make this a tale of cities. That Toronto, which is a five-hour drive away, eliminated Ottawa in the playoffs the last three seasons left those in smaller Ottawa seemingly more insecure than ever.

“We used to be in Toronto, but it is much better up here,” Shahrasebi said. “Ottawa is catching up to Toronto. We’re not a village anymore, and the team is the city’s identity.”

The Senators’ problems really have nothing to do with attendance or payroll, which, at $30 million, is low by NHL standards.

The Senators have averaged 16,500 fans, a number that would please nearly every NHL team. There is even enough civic interest to support a minor league team, the Ottawa 67s, as well.

It is the franchise’s debt that has fans fearing the Senators will make a run for the U.S. border. Like all Canadian teams, they are hurt by the exchange rate between the U.S. and Canadian dollars. But there were extras that kept the franchise in the red.

Besides paying for the Corel Centre’s construction, the Senators had to pay for the freeway off-ramp and overpass to get to the arena, which Chiarelli calls highway robbery.

“When Ford or GM build a plant in Toronto, they aren’t required to pay for an interchange on the highway,” Chiarelli said.

Anticipated revenues were never realized when the area’s high-tech industry rebooted after a financial crunch in the late 1990s, leaving the Senators dangling and Ottawa officials concerned.

“It’s important to Ottawa’s economic development that we be seen as being in the big leagues,” Chiarelli said. “When CNN posts the scores, we get seen worldwide. A lot of people around the world know Ottawa as the home of the Senators.”

Of course, some might also know it as Canada’s capital. But hockey supersedes such things. That the Senators’ troubles became a national emergency is another example.

“Hockey is our religion,” said Steve MacKenzie, a bartender at a restaurant owned by Don Cherry, the broadcaster responsible for TV’s “Hockey Night in Canada.” “It’s like maple syrup. It’s ours.”

These weren’t the woeful Buffalo Sabres, who filed for bankruptcy days after the Senators had. Nor could the situation be compared to other NHL teams that had already gone that route, Pittsburgh in 1975 and 1998, and the Kings in 1995, because those teams were not contenders.

This was a team that could win the Stanley Cup this season, something a Canadian team has not done since Montreal in 1992-93.

“It would be just awful to see them leave,” said 69-year old Bob Desrochers, who was a stick boy for Ottawa’s minor league team in 1946-47. “This is the capital of Canada so this is the capital of hockey. You take away one of our teams, you’re tampering with our national identity.”

When the Expos were threatened with elimination last year, people shrugged. When it was hinted that the Senators might have to move, people were ready for action.

Support came even from Lynsey Bennett, Miss Canada.

Others, who hope to retain their titles longer than Bennett, swung into action.

Chiarelli formed a committee of business and community leaders to “communicate to potential investors that Ottawa can support an NHL franchise.” As to whether the city would help out financially, Chiarelli said, “We haven’t been asked yet.”

Eugene Bellemare, an Ottawa-Orleans Liberal member of parliament, even suggested that the Canadian teams leave the NHL and form an All-Canadian league.

That idea seems fine to Senator fans -- as long as one of those teams is in their city.

“Before the Senators, this city was divided, half for the Montreal Canadiens, half for the Toronto Maple Leafs, and I don’t want to go back to that,” said Janet Berkley, before returning to her skate down the Rideau Canal.

Such are the concerns in a city where hockey fortunes always seem to be sinking.