D Day for Balsillie

Looks today like Jim Balsillie's dreams of bringing an NHL team to Hamilton will likely end today with Judge Redfield Baum not allowing him to bid. One can't be sure of this, although the judge would probably rather not open all the cans of worms of allowing Balsillie to take possession and move the team to Hamilton. If he was going to move the team to a non-disputed territory (like KC or the Peg) there would have been much less impetus for the judge to not allow him to bid, considering the NHL has already acknowledged the team will be moving and Ice Edge has already rented ice in Saskatchewan. Still this may not end. Balsillie may pursue an anti-trust suit against the NHL, more for the kicks of bleeding the NHL and their owners of more time and money. The domino that is the Tampa Bay franchise looks like it is falling with allegations that the one of the co-owners bought the team with money illegally taken from another business. There are still weak franchises teetering into bankruptcy as we speak, and the full pain of this recession may not be felt for NHL teams until this season is done and all the salaries have been paid out (or not paid out as the case may be).

In Cat news, it is good to see the team is already above 25,000 tickets sold for the Labour Day tilt against the double blue. Hopefully that will lead to a sellout this year (last year's attendance was an anemic 25,911), as the Cats certainly have an excellent shot of beating the Argos and are even six point favourites.The last time the Cats beat the Argos on Labour Day was 2006, 33 to 30, although they did lose the next week in Toronto 48 to 0.