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Photo by Cole Burston/For National Post

To understand why not, it helps to do the math, and who better to run the numbers than Richard Peddie, the former CEO and president of Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment Ltd., and an executive often accused of monetizing every nook of Toronto’s Air Canada Centre (now Scotiabank Arena) during his 13 years at the top. “Looking at it, the financials aren’t great,” he says of the prospects for an eighth Canadian NHL franchise. “It is a thin investment, there is not a lot of earnings in it, and you need a rich person.”

Imagine, as per Seattle, that an expansion team costs around US$650 million. If you are not Quebec City, a new arena would need to be built, costing another $200 million, give or take, assuming the new owner convinces taxpayers to pick up a chunk of the tab. Now, almost a billion dollars later — huzzah — you have yourself an NHL franchise earning, in a good year, about US$25 million before taxes, interest, depreciation and amortization or, in other words, close to a zero-per-cent annual return on a huge investment.

Hence the need for a rich person, a billionaire at minimum, which in Canada limits the pool to about 100 potential buyers, seven of which — the Molsons, David Thomson, Larry Tanenbaum, the Rogers, Daryl Katz, Francesco Aquilini, Murray Edwards and Eugene Melnyk — already own, directly or indirectly through companies, at least a part of the seven existing Canadian franchises.

Photo by Kevin King/Winnipeg Sun/Postmedia Network

Thomson, the richest Canadian around, and Mark Chipman in 2011 paid US$170 million for the Thrashers and the right to move the team to Winnipeg. At the time, it was a boondoggle of a price for a terrible franchise with no discernible fan base in a non-traditional hockey market, and an ownership group that was slinging lawsuits at one another after losing millions for years. But Thomson was the right billionaire at the right time in the right place, willing to pay whatever the asking price was for what today amounts to a civic good-works project, with more or less break-even financials, though the Jets are now valued at US$415 million, according to Forbes.