Jim Balsillie wasn’t able to purchase the Pittsburgh Penguins, so he bought the Nashville Predators instead. There’s a good chance that after next year, he’ll relocate the team out of Nashville, to…….who knows? The rumour is that those of us here in K-W will be getting an NHL franchise. It may be plausible and here’s why I think it is.

This area consisting of Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge is currently hovering at a population somewhere over 500,000 and is expected to grow by 250,000 over the next 6 years. From the amount of traffic that’s here, I believe it. The universities (UW and Laurier), college (Conestoga) and high-tech companies probably have a lot to do with that. Take into account the other cities within a 90 kilometre radius of the area, like Guelph, Hamilton and London, and you have close to 2 million people – easily able to sustain an NHL team. And you can’t forgot about those in the GTA that face the pain of fruitlessly obtaining elusive Leafs tickets – I’d bet that many would drive the mere 80 kilometres to here to see an NHL game.

K-W is outside of Toronto (barely), Buffalo, Detroit and Ottawa enough that they wouldn’t have to pay “proximity taxes” to those teams.

Corporate luxury boxes can ensure a team’s success. Nashville had a hard time filling their luxury boxes, and this area could easily pick up that slack. The larger companies in the K-W area like RIM and Toyota could easily pick up a a box or twelve. Then there’s all of the other successful high-tech, manufacturing and insurance companies that could potentially purchase boxes: ATS, Dalsa, Agfa, Sybase, ComDev, Manulife, Google, Adobe, Meikle, McAfee, Sunlife, Desire2Learn (crossing my fingers 🙂 ) and many more.

There currently isn’t an NHL-sized arena in the area. The Kitchener Rangers will be moving out of the Aud in the upcoming years to a bigger arena that’s yet-to-be built. The land has been purchased next to the Aud, but I doubt this would be used for both an NHL and OHL team. So perhaps RIM’s recent land purchase in Cambridge may be a sign of things to come. Unless RIM really needs yet another building in addition to the ones they already have on Phillip Street in Waterloo…

In the post-lockout NHL, the small market Canadian teams can now compete with the bigger cities. The salary cap has levelled the playing field, and the Canadian dollar has bounced back in a big way from the doldrums of the late 1990’s – $1 Canadian is currently trading at $0.92 USD and the Loonie is continuing to strengthen. Combine that with good ol’ Canadian passion for hockey, and there’ll be no problem paying the players and staff of an NHL team in K-W.

So if the Predators do move here, and retain the “Predators” name, what would they be called? Kitchener Predators, since Kitchener is the largest of the cities in the area? Waterloo Predators, since RIM is in Waterloo? Cambridge Predators, assuming that the aforementioned recent land purchase near Pinebush Road becomes the home to an arena? Or perhaps area-type names like Kitchener-Waterloo Predators, Technology Triangle Predators or Tri-City Predators?

The Toronto Star outlines possible places for the Nashville Predators to end up. The upcoming years may be quite interesting. Stay tuned…