Bring Back the Senators

Bring Back the Senators was an public campaign setup within Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It was formed as part of Bruce Firestone's plan to bring the NHL back the Ottawa.
==Campaign==
At the weekly Terrace Investments Ltd. management meeting on December 4, 1987, manager Duncan MacDonald tabled the initial idea of the NHL returning to Ottawa after learning in the Ottawa Citizen about the league's expansion plans for three new franchises in the 1990s. Real estate developer Bruce Firestone privately entertained the idea for months. He decided to launch a bid for the Ottawa franchise through his development firm Terrace Investments. Firestone first told his fellow Terrace executives, Cyril Leeder, and Randy Sexton, after a game of shinny hockey in March 1988. Both were surprised; Leeder thought the idea was "ridiculous".
A major obstacle was that while Firestone believed that Ottawa was ready to once again support a franchise, Terrace did not have enough assets to finance a team, let alone build an arena. Firestone's belief was that they could do both as part of a development project. Their plan was to build a mini-city (named West Terrace) of 9,000 around a arena and hotel development on approximately . Getting an NHL club for the arena would drive up the price of the surrounding lands and Terrace's net worth would jump from to by 1997. The strategy was straightforward: "Buy the site, win the franchise, build the building." In 1989, Terrace found what seemed to be a suitable site west of Ottawa, of farmland, located on both sides of the 417 Highway west of Terry Fox Drive in the then City of Kanata, that had been a prospective site for the Central Canada Exhibition.
On June 22, 1989, Terrace publicly announced their intentions to acquire an NHL franchise and revive the Senators name. The name choice provoked threats of legal action, though Firestone obtained permission from original-era / 1950s era Senators club owner Tommy Gorman's descendants to use the old Senators name and settled with the Ottawa Jr. Senators' owners.
To kick off the "Bring Back the Senators" campaign, Terrace held a press conference on September 7, 1989, with special guests Frank Finnigan, representing the old Senators' players, and Joe Gorman, representing the Gorman family. Finnigan, the last surviving member of the Senators' last Stanley Cup championship (in 1927), was presented with a new number 8 jersey and the promise to have him drop the first puck at the first game if they emerged victorious. Terrace unveiled drawings of the , 22,500 seat arena, then named the Palladium, designed by Rossetti Architects, architects of The Palace of Auburn Hills arena. Also unveiled was a logo for the team using a stylized Peace Tower and Canadian flag, designed by David O'Malley of Ottawa. The theme song for the franchise drive was Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down."
Jim Durrell, the mayor of Ottawa at the time, but later part of the Senators' front office, said, "It's not that the area isn't a big enough market to support a professional hockey team, it's just that we're not going to get it." National Hockey League Players' Association (NHLPA) head Alan Eagleson was quoted as saying, "Local fans are being led through the petunia patch if Bruce Firestone thinks he can land an NHL expansion franchise for Ottawa this century, well into the next or ever." Despite the naysayers, 11,000 fans sent in non-refundable pledges toward season tickets by November 1990.
Having already awarded a franchise to the San Francisco Bay Area that would become the San Jose Sharks, in December 1990 the NHL held a meeting in Palm Beach, Florida, to consider the remaining expansion applications. A well-financed bid from Tim Hortons founder Ron Joyce for Hamilton, Ontario, where an NHL-size arena (Copps Coliseum) was already in place, was considered a front-runner, and it was widely assumed the NHL would not add more than one franchise in Canada. Beneficial factors included that Ottawa was Canada's capital, had several television stations, had a reasonably large metropolitan population, and had a history of ice hockey.
The apparent decisive factor was that Firestone, along with the Tampa Bay group, was willing to pay the franchise fee without reservations, unlike the other proponents. The size of the expansion fee, which is approximately $117 million in 2024 dollars, had come as a shock to many observers and would-be owners. In nominal terms, this was more than eight times the that owners paid for expansion franchises in the 1970s, which was less than a quarter the NHL's proposed franchise fee even when adjusted for inflation. Moreover, it was also considerably more than the purchase price of the existing Minnesota North Stars, which had then recently sold for .
On December 6, 1990, NHL President John Ziegler announced that the Terrace group was approved to purchase one of the two franchises (the other being the Tampa Bay Lightning) to start play in the 1992–93 season. Since the location for the new arena was on land designated for agriculture, the arena and development needed approval by the Government of Ontario. The then-new Ontario New Democratic Party government of Bob Rae was openly hostile to the conversion of farmland and refused to offer any assistance to the project. As the rezoning hearings dragged on, Firestone was offered US$20 million to relocate to Anaheim, which had an arena, but no team. Firestone turned it down, claiming, "I didn't bring back the Ottawa Senators to play in Anaheim." Eventually, the rezoning was approved with conditions, thus ending the Bring Back the Senators campaign.
==References==
Category:Ice hockey in Ottawa