Conflict of Interests

This probably never would have happened if Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky were still active and dominating their sports.

In Chicago, where Jordan led the Bulls to six NBA championships in eight seasons during the 1990s, Madonna is booked for four shows next week in the United Center -- right in the middle of the NBA Finals.

In Edmonton, where Gretzky led the Oilers to four NHL titles in the 1980s, a children’s show -- “Dora the Explorer Live, Dora’s Pirate Adventure” -- was booked next weekend in Rexall Place, conflicting with the Stanley Cup finals.

For the United Center, it’s no big deal. The Bulls, after rallying to make the playoffs, were eliminated in the first round by the Miami Heat. (The Blackhawks, among the NHL’s worst teams, missed the playoffs altogether.)

Rexall Place wasn’t so lucky.

Its gamble to book “Dora the Explorer” next weekend backfired when the Oilers bucked long odds by becoming the first eighth-seeded team to reach the Stanley Cup finals. Game 6 is scheduled for Edmonton next Saturday night.

But the show’s producers agreed to move it to a facility across the street from Rexall Place and, happily for all, the wailing of thousands of Dora-deprived preschoolers will go unheard.

“We’re very fortunate,” said Ken Knowles, general manager and chief operating officer of the company that manages Rexall Place.

For Knowles and other arena managers across North America, late spring is the most stressful time of the year, when playoff schedules are in flux from mid-April to mid-June. Their mandate to keep revenue streams flowing through their buildings via concerts and other special events is balanced against the needs of their primary tenants, the NBA and NHL teams that sustain them through the winter and, depending on their success, might need their arenas until early summer.

“It’s a delicate dance that a lot of venue operators do,” said Gary Bongiovanni, editor-in-chief of Pollstar, a concert industry trade publication.

Take the management team at Staples Center, for instance.

Several months ago, Madonna was booked for a concert last Saturday night, Staples Center management apparently believing that the Lakers, Kings or Clippers would not need the building for a playoff game that night.

The gamble paid off, the concert unfolding without a glitch.

Twelve nights earlier, however, the Clippers were still in the NBA playoffs, playing the Phoenix Suns in Game 7 of a Western Conference semifinal series, and somewhere, Lee Zeidman probably was sweating through his shirt.

Zeidman, a senior vice president and general manager of Staples Center, undoubtedly was aware that, had the Clippers defeated the Suns and advanced to the conference finals for the first time in their history, Game 6 of that series would have been scheduled for Staples Center -- last Saturday night.

“I think any building operator would tell you that you never want to be in a position where you roll the dice and the dice don’t come up favorably,” Zeidman said. “It’s not worth the gamble because it’s a lot of headache.”

Not to mention a potential public relations nightmare.

Madonna’s show probably would have been moved to the Forum, which probably would have alienated the pop star and caused great distress for Staples Center.

So why take a chance?

“An arena’s like a hotel,” said Claire Rothman, who as general manager of the Forum booked shows there from 1975 to 1995. “The nights it stays dark, you never have a chance to rent again, or to have that income again. But your mortgage and your electric bill and your cleaning and everything else continues. There’s very little saved expense when it’s dark, and no income.”

In the 1980s, when the Lakers won five NBA titles, Rothman usually didn’t bother trying to squeeze concerts into the Forum during playoff time.

But in June 1992, after Magic Johnson had retired for the first time and the Lakers had lost in the first round of the playoffs, Rothman was offered a chance to book Neil Diamond for five consecutive nights in the spring of 1993.

The only potential conflict: The perennially downtrodden Kings reaching the Stanley Cup finals for the first time -- and having home-ice advantage.

Then-Kings president Roy Mlakar told her to book the shows.

Of course, the Kings did reach the Stanley Cup finals in 1993, but the series started in Montreal and the Neil Diamond shows were saved.

“That’s rolling the dice,” said Mlakar, now president of the Ottawa Senators.

Mlakar, though, didn’t believe he was taking a chance when “Dora the Explorer” was booked in Ottawa’s Scotiabank Place for five shows over two days last month, leaving the Senators locked out of their home arena for the first weekend of a second-round Stanley Cup playoff series against the Buffalo Sabres.

Instead of Saturday and Monday, games were played Friday and Monday in Scotiabank Place before the series switched to Buffalo’s HSBC Center, where Games 3 and 4 had to be played on consecutive nights because a Tim McGraw-Faith Hill concert and a lacrosse game were booked into the arena later in the week.

Mlakar said the financial benefit of bringing the “Dora” shows to Ottawa outweighed the inconvenience of the Senators not being able to play weekend home games.

“We would have had much more of a problem if I’d gone to the promoters and the ownership of ‘Dora’ and said, ‘I’ll give you X amount of money to cancel one show so I can play Saturday night, Hockey Night in Canada,’ ” he said. “We would have had 6,200 6-year-olds and younger absolutely crazy that they weren’t seeing Dora. And their parents would have been even more upset.”

Dora, of course, would intrude on the playoffs again.

Her four performances in Edmonton’s Rexall Place next weekend were booked last November, long before the Oilers’ unlikely playoff run.

“As venue operators, you do take a bit of a risk,” Knowles said. “But if you look back in history, the Oilers haven’t made it out of the first round since 1990 or 1991. We’ve had a history in June of not playing hockey in the facility....

“And the reality is, they barely squeezed into the playoffs.”

So did the Bulls, who won their last six regular-season games to finish at 41-41. By then, next week’s Madonna shows had already been booked.

“When the Madonna concert opportunity was presented to us, there was significant doubt as to whether we would even make the playoffs, much less get to the Finals,” Steve Schanwald, the Bulls’ executive vice president of business operations, said in an e-mail. “So I guess you could say we took a calculated risk.”

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Stanley Cup finals

CAROLINA VS. EDMONTON

Hurricanes lead series, 2-0.

All games are at 5 p.m. Pacific and on Ch. 4 (* if necessary).

*--* GAME 1: at Carolina 5, Edmonton 4 GAME 2: at Carolina 5, Edmonton 0 GAME 3: at Edmonton, today GAME 4: at Edmonton, Monday GAME 5: at Carolina, Wednesday* GAME 6: at Edmonton, June 17* GAME 7: at Carolina, June 19*

*--*