With New Arena, Seattle Proper Home For Nhl Team

The scenario is simple.

The Seattle city council approves Barry Ackerley's proposal to spend $100 million for a new arena.

Bill Yuill, the owner of the Seattle Thunderbirds, steps forth with the $50 million franchise fee.

The National Hockey League, mindful of an American landscape dotted with franchise failures, agrees to give Seattle an expansion team and stock it with enough quality players that it is no worse off than the new team in the San Francisco Bay Area and maybe even competitive with the rest of the league.

Seattle and San Francisco are put in the Smythe Division, joining Los Angeles, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton while replacing Winnipeg.

The Seattle team debuts in 1992, playing for awhile at the Seattle Coliseum, clearly better than the temporary home of the Bay Area team, the aromatic and 50-year-old Cow Palace.

And, most importantly, the new team in Seattle is called the Totems, conjuring memories of Seattle's grand tradition in hockey, including the 1917 Metropolitans who won, of all things, the Stanley Cup.

Does it make sense? Sure it does, for Seattle and for the NHL, which needs good American markets more than they need another sport.

Can it happen? Sure, if Seattle can find a way to take Ackerley up on his $100 million-offer and the NHL can see the wisdom in giving a team here the opportunity to be successful.

The given seems to be Yuill, exemplary as owner of the T-birds, who said yesterday that he represents six other Canadians with a net worth of more than $100 million and a willingness to spend half of it on a NHL team on three conditions: if an arena is built in Seattle; if through market research they are sure the overwhelming support for the T-Birds can translate into NHL support; and if the NHL itself is willing to give Seattle the same type of deal it has given San Francisco.

It is helpful to take a quick look at San Francisco or San Jose or Oakland or wherever the team ends up playing. The franchise will start at the Cow Palace, near Candlestick Park, in 1991 and then most likely move to San Jose where construction begins this summer on a $100-million arena financed entirely with public money and without the assurance of either hockey or basketball.

Seattle officials, on the other hand, are asked only to let Ackerley keep admission tax monies from tickets that won't be sold if the building isn't built. It isn't tax money out of pocket; it isn't tax money that could be used in housing the poor or protecting the rich.

If Ackerley is rebuffed - told that a city can't find a way to successful negotiate a deal so he can spend his $100 million - then he probably, and justifiably, will move his Sonics elsewhere, the NHL will forget expansion here, and the city will spend the next decade as San Jose and Orlando and St. Petersburg and Tampa have spent this one: convincing voters to spend millions of dollars to build an arena simply with the hope of luring a franchise.

Do you want to spend money to build a new building? I don't. I'd rather Barry Ackerley did.

Reducing the size of the Coliseum shouldn't be a big enough issue either to the city or Ackerley to squash the deal. Without the Sonics - they'd be playing in the new arena with the hockey team - the Coliseum will lose money. Moreover, if it is to remain 14,000 seats and be competitive with Ackerley's building, the city will have to spend millions to maintain and upgrade it.

For his part, Ackerley shouldn't consider a building he considers hopelessly inadequate as competition. He should be more worried about the Nordstroms pouring money into a new building for the University of Washington.

Bemused by all of this is Yuill, who a year ago bought the T-Birds and promptly had the vision to spend $175,000 for hockey hardware so the team could play some of its games in the Coliseum. He never dreamed they would sell outmost games, that his team, in fact, would be ranked No. 1 in junior hockey and attract a near cult following.

Yuill is an interesting person. He was born in the small Alberta town of Medicine Hat, and still lives there. His father owned one radio and one television station, a business the son has turned into Monarch Communication, 17 radio and TV stations in Alberta and British Columbia.

In 1977, Yuill, a sports fan, helped bring a Pioneer League baseball team to Medicine Hat, for fun and civic pride and a tax writeoff.

It came to pass that he was intrigued with owning sports teams. Since then, he has bought and made successful minor-league baseball teams in South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Arizona and California.

``When it gets to this level,'' he said of the possibility of NHL expansion, ``it is big business. You have to be sure in your own mind that you can make money. You don't do it for civic pride and fun, although surely it could be fun.''

Whether Yuill would have competition bidding for a hockey team here is unclear. Ackerley has said his interest is in the arena and the Sonics, but may well want to join others and try to own everything.

``We're in the hockey business right now,'' Yuill said, ``so it makes sense to take a look at the NHL. Seattle is a vibrant, growing market, but whether 12,000 people paying $8 for a ticket to watch junior hockey is comparable to 16,000 people paying $25 a ticket to watch the NHL is another matter.

``My gut feeling is that Seattle could support a team. But if you're going to spend $50 million to get a team, you'd better know your market.''

Yuill is doing that kind of market research right now. He is also trying to find out under what conditions the NHL would award a team to Seattle. Will a team here always be behind the one in the Bay Area, even though the two would always be compared, as the Mariners are with the Toronto Blue Jays?

Right off the bat, the San Francisco team will get 30 players from the Minnesota North Stars, the second pick in the 1991 entry draft and the first pick in every subsequent round.

``I'm convinced that the Toronto Maple Leafs would play to a half-empty building in Seattle because they are a last-place team,'' Yuill said. ``Here, you have to compete with the NBA, the end of football and the start of baseball and with a walk in the woods. You'd better be able to offer your customers a first-class product.''

In a first-class building. But, then, it can be no other way.

Blaine Newnham's column usually is published Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday in the Sports section of The Times.