I rarely center a post around a single story but this one from Yahoo’s Puck Daddy blog is too good to resist. John Raut, owner of the Canberra Knights, a hockey team in the Australian Ice Hockey League, announced at the end of last season that he was disbanding the team due to financial losses and poor competitive prospects. He didn’t bother telling the players before he told the media and when they found out they reacted in an unusual way. The players said to owner John Raut, “you can’t fire us, we refuse to quit” and began a quest to keep the team alive.
Once the players, led by team captain Mark Rummukainen, decided to try to keep the team alive, they had three challenges: they had to find $100,000 of operating funds, they needed to negotiate a new deal with their arena, and they had to prove that their team (which had won only 2 of 28 games the previous season) could be competitive. Owner (now former owner) Raut owned the arena and was willing to work out a deal to let the player-led team stay providing it did not use the name and brand Canberra Knights, which he owns. The money, as you might expect in 2014, came pouring in from fans through a crowd-sourcing campaign still open for donation and about 60% to their goal. In terms of competitive balance, the league helped out by modifying the rules to allow the new Canberra Brave team to sign more imported (European or North American) players. Additionally, some former Canberra players decided to come out of retirement for at least a season to help their old club. Of course, the irony here is that some of the players leading the charger to save the team may find themselves out of a job because of their own success.
It’s a great story and Harrison Mooney does a wonderful job of reporting it. As he writes:
Everything’s backwards in Australia. The toilet water swirls the other way, and the players run the hockey teams.
Read the rest of the story here.