Traditionally, sports team owners love move threats, because they scare the bejeezus out of city officials, but hate actually making them themselves, because they get fans (and potentially those same city officials) really mad at you as a carpetbagger and possibly make it harder to sell tickets once you get the new stadium or arena or renovations or whatever you were trying to shake loose with the threat. It’s a big reason why sports commissioners exist, to go around dropping relocation threats so that owners don’t have to.

The Calgary Flames owners already tried that gambit, and it didn’t go too well. Now, they seem to have hit upon, inadvertently or not, a new tactic: Have one of your team execs make the threat, then disavow all knowledge of anything he said.

Ok. Brian Burke just said the thing that the Flames said they wouldn't say. Told season ticket holder the Flames could leave w/o new rink.

— CTV – Chris Epp (@CTVchrisepp) June 7, 2017

Burke also says Flames would be able find a place to relocate to.

— CTV – Chris Epp (@CTVchrisepp) June 7, 2017

And:

At the end of the luncheon Burke was pushed on whether the Calgary Flames have any options other than staying in Calgary.

“You don’t think we could find a place to go? Let’s see, Quebec. They have a new building that meets NHL standards.”

Burke is the Flames’ president of hockey operations, and has previously been dispatched to disparage the team’s current arena in the middle of a nine-season sellout streak (“the finest state-of-the-art 1988 building in the league”), among other tasks. (He’s also memorable for saying of hockey labor talks when he worked for the Toronro Maple Leafs, “My theory is, make the first meeting as short and unpleasant as possible. Sometimes it’s better to just punch the guy in the face.”) So he’s totally the guy you want out there demanding that the city revive the $1.2 billion stadium-plus-arena subsidy plan that it previously declared dead, then threatening to move the team to Quebec City if you don’t get it — and best of all, since he’s just a flunky, when the media freaks out you can just do this:

Ken King, Calgary Sports and Entertainment Corporation President and CEO made a statement hours after the luncheon that indicated Burke did not speak on behalf of his organization:

“Brian Burke runs Hockey Operations for the Calgary Flames and he and many Calgarians have strong views about this topic. However, he is not our spokesperson regarding a new events centre for our city. We remain committed to our dialogue with the City and very optimistic we will get to a positive conclusion. We admire everyone’s enthusiasm on this subject.”

Now that’s some weapons-grade plausible deniability right there. No idea whether Burke ran his mouth off without permission and King (who still isn’t the team owner, mind you, but speaks more directly for the oil barons who actually own the team) slapped him down, or if this whole two-step was part of the plan from the start, but either way, well played, Flames management team! (Except that Quebec probably wasn’t the best threat location to pick, given that the owner of that arena would want to own any NHL team that played in it, but hey, you can’t have everything.)

Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, meanwhile, refused to take the bait, as usual:

“We will continue ignoring all of this stuff in the media and trying to come up with a deal that makes sense for Calgarians, that makes sense for taxpayers and makes sense for the team,” Nenshi said.

Makes sense for taxpayers and makes sense for the team is usually a tough nut to crack, which is largely why the Flames still play in an arena built in 1983, which omigod that was more than 30 years ago, had they even invented ice then? We’ll have to wait and see whether Burke’s outburst has any lasting ripples in either the media or the city council, but for now, let’s just enjoy it for the perfect performance art that it is.

The Calgary city council was presented with a new city report on the “Plan B” option for a new Calgary Flames arena just north of the Saddledome yesterday, and, um:

The report doesn’t include renderings, or information about cost or funding, and city administration refused to answer questions about the report ahead of Monday’s meeting.

Also:

The new centre, for which there are no plans yet, would include an NHL-level arena along with other “ancillary services” that are yet to be determined, the report says.

“Preliminary site planning and architectural investigations have determined that there is sufficient site area for an event centre with the same specifications and details as the event centre included as part of the CalgaryNEXT design,” the report said.

So basically, this report says, hey, there’s a big empty parking lot near the Flames’ old arena, bet you could fit an arena there. That’s nice and all, but wake me when somebody actually has some idea what it would cost or who would pay for it. Meanwhile, here are some Flames fans debating the new site. (Don’t click the link for the report, it’s broken.)

Almost 20 years ago, Joanna Cagan and I coined the term “non-threat threat” for the common practice of sports team owners warning that their teams would leave without a new stadium, while simultaneously saying that that was the last thing they wanted. (We could have gone with the “paratrooper gambit,” but in the days before hotlinking we weren’t sure everyone would get the reference.) But until now I’d never seen a team owner actually levy a move threat while explicitly claiming he wasn’t making a move threat — until now:

“There would be no threat to move, we would just move, and it would be over. And I’m trying my level best to make sure that day never comes, frankly,” [Calgary Flames CEO Ken] King said during an interview on Sportsnet Fan 590 in Toronto on Wednesday.

So I sort of know what he’s saying — “There won’t be any warning, we’ll just be gone, boom” — except that saying that on the radio is actually pretty much the definition of a threat. That last bit about “trying my level best to make sure that day never comes,” meanwhile, is straight out of the Vercotti brothers playbook, or concern trolling if you prefer.

The goal of this non-threat threat, of course, is to shift the terms of the Calgary Flames arena debate, from “Why should the city give your team $1.2 billion?” to “How are we going to keep the team in town?” (The timing, coming two days after Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi declared the Flames owners’ previous arena plan “dead,” was surely not coincidental.) And with that “hey, we don’t want to move” element, King simultaneously gets to introduce plausible deniability, which both keeps fans from descending with torches and pitchforks and also sidesteps any questions about exactly where the team is threatening to move to — since it’s not really a threat, see?

Whether this is a real non-threat or a fake one, though, depends on exactly that: What other options do the Flames owners have? The team currently sits smack in the middle of the NHL as far as team valuation, according to Forbes, and turns about a $20 million a year profit. Would oil sands tycoon N. Murray Edwards and his fellow owners really move the team to, say, Seattle (if that city built a new arena) or Quebec (which would require selling the team to local owners there) in hopes that it would catapult them into the upper tier of NHL franchises? It’s not impossible, but it also doesn’t seem very likely, compared to the more plausible interpretation that King is just dropping idle threats (sorry, sorry, non-threats) in order to panic Calgary fans and elected officials into not caring about that $1.2 billion.

And so how’s that panic going, anyway? Mayor Nenshi seemed unperturbed, or feigned unperturbation at least:

“The owners of the Calgary Flames have repeatedly assured Calgarians that they would not threaten to move the team, and I assume that they have not shifted from that position,” Nenshi said. “I plan to enjoy the playoff run while letting the conversations continue.”

The Calgary Herald, meanwhile, scoured social media to find that some people are made at Nenshi (“nenshi do u work as much as u tweet???if flames leaves calgary,you should leave yyc”) while some are mad at King (“If this is such a great idea, then why don’t these well-off business people pool their resources and build one?“), which should surprise no one who’s ever been on social media. (No reports yet on whether the threat has moved the poll numbers on an arena subsidy plan.)

Over the weekend, King tried to clarify things, or at least forestall some pitchforks, by issuing a statement on the Flames website that read in part:

In response to a question, are you going to use the threat of moving as a tactic, I said we would not. I also said we would “just move.” The facts are we need a solution and if it is deemed that there is no made in Calgary solution we will have to make a decision at that time, which logically could include deciding to move the team. It is merely one out of a few possible outcomes if we are unable to reach a deal with the City that will work for both sides.

To which one Flames fan replied on Twitter:

Dear #Flames fans. I said what I said but I didnt say what I said. Sincerely Ken King. #KenKingLetters

— angry sport fan (@jayrlocked) April 2, 2017

Yep, that about sums it up. Though if it ends up working as a savvy negotiation tactic, King will surely be able to live with the Twitter ridicule.

Look out, Calgary! NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has come to talk at you about why you should build the Flames‘ wealthy oil-executive owners a new arena whether you want to or not:

“I actually spent an hour this afternoon with the mayor. We had a very cordial, open, candid conversation,” Bettman said. “I’m hopeful that the city and the Flames can be on the same page so this can move forward as quickly as possible.”

And what message did Bettman bring to Mayor Naheed Nenshi? If you had “I will not be shackled to a rusty girder,” you win the pool:

Calgary’s Scotiabank Saddledome is an “old, antiquated, inefficient building” that “doesn’t hold a candle to what has been done in new arenas,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said after touring the facility Wednesday.

Speaking to reporters ahead of Wednesday’s game between the Flames and Boston Bruins, Bettman repeated his comments from a day earlier, when he said the city is in need of a new arena.

“In terms of amenities, in terms of facilities, in terms of egress and the like, for all the events that go here, this building was built in the 1980s, they don’t build buildings like this anymore,” he said. “It’s a grand old building, it’s got a great roofline, it’s historic in many ways, but … these aren’t the facilities our hockey teams typically have.”

And for good measure, he dropped in the “arenas cause unspecified good economic things” argument:

“I’m not sure that people that focus on the deal in the appropriate way would say no taxpayer money,” said Bettman. “If in fact, a new project with development creates new revenues and new taxes that didn’t exist before, reinvesting it in the city, reinvesting it infrastructure, reinvesting it in quality of life, seems to make a lot of sense to me.”

Whether it makes sense to Nenshi — who has shown an admirable dedication to actually doing the math on a Flames arena project to see if it would work for the city — is going to be another story. But Bettman got his message, or the Flames owners’ message if you prefer, across in the media, and that’s what this game is all about at the moment. At least until the CBC website starts up an Actually Doing The Math section.

Ever since the city of Calgary shot down the Flames owners’ plan to build a $1.2 billion combined arena-stadium complex (after discovering it would actually cost $1.8 billion, and the public would be on the hook for the difference), we’ve been waiting for someone to announce next steps. And it sounds like the next step is … to figure out a next step:

In a letter that season ticket holders received Monday, CEO Ken King said the company “accepted an offer from the City to examine a Plan B.”

The less ambitious Plan B would see an arena and event centre located on the Stampede grounds, a separate field house in the northwest, and some renovation to McMahon Stadium.

How much would such a scaled-back (but still sizable) plan cost? Nobody knows, which is what “examine” means. The Flames owners are supposed to provide a response to the city’s report later this month, but even that doesn’t guarantee that an actual plan or price tag will be in place — it’s a fair assumption that we could be here awhile as the details get worked out, which when hundreds of millions of public dollars are at stake isn’t a bad thing at all.

The Calgary Flames have responded to last week’s damning city report on the projected costs of their stadium-arena proposal, and it looks like both sides are going with “everybody smile and hope things will somehow work out so that everyone is happy.” Flames CEO Ken King said that he’s “thrilled” city officials want to meet to discuss possible alternate sites, while Mayor Naheed Nenshi made a classic hey-always-willing-to-talk statement:

“Calgarians have been pretty clear that they would like to see better facilities, but they’ve also been pretty clear that public money has to go for public benefit and the real issue there is to square this circle and see if we can put those two things together,” he said.

Of course, King also ruled out putting in any more of the team’s own money (“Our financial proposal stands for CalgaryNext”), and Nenshi said that bit about how public money can only go for public benefits, so this may be less a question of squaring the circle than of getting two non-intersecting Euler diagram circles to meet. Talking is always good, though! Maybe either King will find some more money in his other coat pocket, or they’ll figure out how to build an arena out of staff — if they’re just going to replace it 20 years later, it could sort of work.