What would you do with $3.5 billion dollars?

I guess my reaction could stand to represent about a million of us hockey fans worldwide when we read the paper, internet reports, or turned on the radio. Opening up the FAN 590 page, I get greeted with yet another bombshell of a headline. It's reached papers all over and here are some of the links for you to read it yourself. Yahoo! Sports has got the AP wire story as well as my local paper here in Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

It says that a Boston based financial advisory/investment group called Bain Capital Partners LLC and Game Plan LLC a sports management group made a proposal to the NHL owners in NYC while they were all together in one room. The NHL owners must have said, "okay, we'll humor you, make us your pitch." Well, as I understand it, the NHL owners were all offered a buyout in exchange for the rights to the NHL league, it's properties and all other interests.

Some of the owners probably even started salivating at just the thought, but for this idea to work... you need all of the 30 owners on the same page with the idea. It's too complicated for all the paperwork and all the management to handle.

The Toronto Sun reports on the aftermath of the proposal and I guess it didn't take long for the NHL to come back with a "thanks, but no thanks" response.

This is just crazy. Just crazy enough to stir up the talk about the NHL in the media and fan the flames of rumors and publicity. If the deal were to go down, then I'd like to see the NHLPA try to negotiate with one solid owner. It's already been speculated that this is just the NHL owners using another negotiation tactic for their own business. Time will tell if there is any other ideas that come down the pike. It's almost as exciting as free agency season.