MI attorney and former Whalers consultant Lou Beer is
"testing the ice" and contacting local Hartford business
leaders "to see if they'd welcome another go" at having an
NHL team, according to Tom Condon of the HARTFORD COURANT.
Beer would only "confirm" that he's had discussions with
people in Hartford about the possibility of landing a team
there, "but he wouldn't go into detail." Beer described the
talks as "preliminary" and called the project a "long shot."
Though he wouldn't comment on it directly, people whom Beer
has talked with say that his plan to get a team "indirectly
involves" the Penguins, as Beer's project would entail
organizing a group of investors to "refloat the Penguins and
keep the team in Pittsburgh." In return, his group would
receive an expansion team in Hartford that would play in the
Civic Center for two years before moving to a new arena in
Bridgeport (HARTFORD COURANT, 5/23). In Hartford, Jeff
Jacobs called Beer's plan a "pipedream" (COURANT, 5/23).
NEXT STEP: In Pittsburgh, Goose Goslin wrote that "it
is time for" Mario Lemieux to join with SMG and Fox on a
joint Penguins bid, because his contract "helped to spur the
salary inflation that has come to haunt the Penguins and ...
the NHL" (Pittsburgh TRIBUNE-REVIEW, 5/23). A PITTSBURGH
POST-GAZETTE editorial urged Lemieux to "either accept far
less money" or "enlist investors with still deeper pockets."
But it called the SMG/FSN Pittsburgh plan "no more viable"
than Lemieux's, because its financial commitments don't
compare to those of the Lemieux group (POST-GAZETTE, 5/23).
NOT FADE AWAY: Pittsburgh-based attorney William
Newlin, on if the city would try to block an effort by the
NHL to move the Penguins: "Absolutely, we would fight if the
league tried to dissolve the team" (POST-GAZETTE, 5/22).
