Seattle reportedly getting close to getting another pro sports team
In NHL history, we’ve seen some teams with long Stanley Cup droughts finally break their curse and win one.
The New York Rangers had a 54-year drought between 1940 and 1994. The Chicago Blackhawks broke a 47-year drought in 2010.
And if a new report is true, the city of Seattle, which last won a Stanley Cup way back in 1917 as the Seattle Metropolitans, might just get a chance to join the NHL and bring the Cup back to Seattle for the first time in more than 100 years.
New Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan met with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman in New York on Tuesday and even tweeted a bit of smack talk at their NHL neighbor 280 miles to the north in Vancouver.
Thrilled to share Seattle’s excitement for the @NHL with Commissioner Gary Bettman. We’re ready to bring back a team and the Stanley Cup. Ready for us @Canucks? pic.twitter.com/MVzGx5YV8i
— Jenny Durkan (@MayorJenny) January 23, 2018
Durkan, unlike her predecessor Ed Murray, seems intent on getting indoor sports to Seattle. As any American city grows, one of the marks of its prestige is to be a so-called “four-sport city,” including baseball, football, basketbal and hockey.
Cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and New York take a great deal of pride in being big enough to support any sport a local fan would care to watch, and Seattle could join them as four-sport cities — five if Major League Soccer is counted — and those rumors about the Supersonics coming back to the NBA eventually bear fruit.
But the NBA is somewhere between a rumor and a pipe dream. The NHL has an actual hard-evidence plan, and the league is actively considering expanding into its 32nd city after adding the Vegas Golden Knights this season.
An ownership group in the Emerald City that includes Hollywood mogul and “CSI” franchise creator Jerry Bruckheimer and private-equity CEO David Bonderman was authorized by the NHL last month to file the paperwork for an expansion application.
“The good people in Seattle who are in pursuit potentially of an expansion franchise have told us that they are working on an expansion application and anticipate being ready to file in the not too distant future,” Bettman said. “The timetable in terms of filing an expansion application, doing a season-ticket drive, is largely up to them. We can respond to the extent that we’re getting the information on a timely basis, whatever that timetable is, so we can go through the processes that we have to.
“I don’t want to project on a timeline because then the clock is running and this is more about process than time.”
Durkan crafted a carefully worded statement that was designed to excite fans and calm the fears of taxpayers.
“Bringing the NHL to the new Seattle Center Arena is an opportunity of a lifetime for Seattle,” Durkan said. “There’s no doubt that Seattle is the best sports town in the country with passionate hockey fans. I’m looking forward to working with the ownership group and the NHL to help bring a team — and the Stanley Cup — back to Seattle. We will continue to protect taxpayers and seize great opportunities.”
JUST IN: Seattle @MayorJenny meets with #NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman pic.twitter.com/Bvf3c1l7fS
— Chris Daniels (@ChrisDaniels_TV) January 23, 2018
That last bit — protecting taxpayers — is an important element in Seattle’s quest. One reason Seattle lost the NBA was that King County voters refused to open their wallets in 2008 to fund a new arena for the Sonics, and the city only recently paid off the public financing of the Kingdome, which was demolished in 2000 after only 24 years in service.
Seattle, at 10.1 percent, has one of the highest sales taxes in America, so any talk of using that method to help finance a new arena won’t fly well in a city that already has a massive cost of living.
The political environment in Seattle might be the greatest factor arguing against more professional sports there.
A “new” Seattle Center Arena — Durkan used the old name of KeyArena, home of the WNBA’s Seattle Reign, before Key Bank bought the naming rights — would have to be privately financed. There is a great deal of debate in the city whether the plan, which will put the upgraded arena in service in time for the 2020-21 NHL season, makes sense considering that Seattle Center is a traffic-choked morass virtually impassable thanks to Amazon’s overloading of the infrastructure in nearby South Lake Union.
The neighborhood is served by buses on a two-lane road and the nearly 60-year-old monorail that was built for the World’s Fair in 1962, neither of which cannot serve anything close to the passenger volume going into and out of a 20,000-seat arena event.
Bettman has authorized the ownership group to start pre-selling season tickets as early as February, while the expansion fee to the league appears to be set at $650 million.
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